Old Enough to Forget

Boy howdy, this was more than a bit surprising - in a good way. Not long ago I'd found The Light of Smiles , Gary's follow up to The Dream Weaver , and while I enjoyed the album it really didn't have legs or stick with me after I'd put it back on the shelf. That's not a shot, I listen to a lot of stuff that frankly doesn't have a lot of object permanence - I attribute this more to me than the music. I'm old now, and I don't process things the same way. I either like it, or I don't. Sometimes I'll really like it, and sometimes things stick. When I first saw the cover of Headin' Home when I was poking around Gary's discography I was pretty dismissive. I mean really, who needed to see a deeply tanned and permed Gary sitting bare chested (okay not bare, it was covered in curly hair) and man spreading his red pants. Thankfully the image was cropped. So yeah, there wasn't a lot of appeal. I already knew there weren't any hits here, and...

Just about everyone's heard "Dream Weaver" - I suppose Wayne's World can take credit for that (although it is a different version, he did like to re-record this song). Still when I found this album I was pretty stoked as I happen to like that song, but I really liked "Love is Alive" and I'll be honest I'd forgotten about that one until I dropped the needle, then it was "Holy mackerel. I love this song." While my dollar bin copy didn't have an insert, there were decent credits on the back cover, and it was cool to see names like David Foster, drummers Andy Newmark and Jim Keltner and even a guitar cameo by Ronnie Montrose on "Power of Love" - it's the only guitar on the album and it comes at the close of the first side. After setting the tone with the various keyboard and special effects on the first four songs I actually didn't even notice the guitar the first time through - dang, even on the second pass it was there ...