Old Enough to Forget

I was very late to the party with The 77s, and over the years I would work my way backward through the band's discography. The band's first three albums were on a wicked little CD box set, 123 that I spent entirely too much money on, but it was worth it. The downside was it was too much all at once and honestly I never spent enough time with the individual albums. It just ended up being an overwhelming experience and a check in the box for my completest tendencies. Don't get me wrong, I listened and I marvelled at the high points and pushed through the songs that didn't immediately resonate. I was taking in a band more than I was an album.  Whereas now, I'm sitting here four decades after the fact trying to process and catalogue an album that in a perfect world should have been in my collection from the get go. Did I mention I was late to the party? Live and learn right? In my defence 1984 was right in the heart of those dark years where I was disillusioned with so ...

The Seventy Sevens, the 77's, The 77s ... depending on what era you started with you're likely more than familiar with all of the spelling variations. The band's debut album must have been gestating a while before Exit was able to secure distribution. The back of the jacket has this as 1982 as that's when it was recorded, and the songs are mostly from 1980, with one of the newer ones 1981 and a cover of the old standard "Denomination Blues" that was attributed to Ry Cooder. This isn't an album I'd heard back in the day. Although the Christian bookstore I relied on was pretty good at bringing things in if I asked, I had to know what to ask for, and this wasn't on my radar at the time. By '83 my initial infatuation with a lot of Christian music had run its course, and my ability to try and like stuff that was inferior had more or less been exhausted. That isn't to say there weren't bands I still followed, but they were in the minority, an...