Old Enough to Forget

Here we go this month's Stylus Over Substance Volume 15. Good lord, if each volume contains five little incomprehensible blurbs, that means this year I've gacked out seventy five of these little literary turds. Man, I'm kind of proud of myself. I suppose I've gotten a little lazier with this, mainly because after a couple of years I've realized that Blogger is probably the worst platform I could have chosen. Few of my pages get indexed, and essentially I am doing this for an audience of one most of the time. Me.  Which is honestly okay, I do this for me because I enjoy it, and every so often something I write makes me giggle or smile. Which is good enough. Besides, this is all part of intentionally listening to the music I have. It may not always be good, or great, but it's always an adventure and I often have no idea where I'm going until I get there. With that here's another five carefully curated random selections. Jefferson Starship - Modern Times (...

Over here in Canada, well all of North America, Built for Speed was the "debut" album by Stray Cats. Back in England the band had released two fairly successful albums in 1981, and they generated enough interest to warrant a release over here. Cobbling together a eleven tracks from Stray Cats and Gonna Ball along with the title track Build for Speed hit at just the right time, and the band's raw rockabilly and '50s vibe caught on like wildfire.  Propelled by Brian Setzer's jaw dropping guitar work along with the one two punch of Slim Jim Phantom on his stand up kits, and Lee Rocker on the giant double bass, the band channelled the raw unbridled energy of a punk band with their old fashioned rock and roll. For most people, me included, this was where things started and stopped with respect to Stray Cats. While this didn't fit the definition of being a novelty act, the shtick wore thin pretty quick when they dropped the follow up in the summer of '83 it ma...