Old Enough to Forget

Tim Finn, founding father of Split Enz, occasional member of Crowded House and half of The Finn Brothers with little brother Neil and a fairly odd but incredibly cool album by ALT (with Andy White and Liam O Maonlai) back in '95. It's weird, not a bad weird, just weird that I came to Tim Finn's solo work backassward through his association with little brother Neil. Of course I knew of Split Enz, and dang it I loved "Shark Attack" and thought "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" were awesome, but on balance I liked Neil's songs better. Those first two Crowded House records only cemented that opinion for me. When Neil and Tim turned what was to be a Finn Brothers record into Woodface I was still drawn to Neil, but I had to admit Tim was pretty cool ... maybe I was missing out. Me being me, which is to say a borderline compulsive, I started looking for Tim's solo work. I found his debut from '83 which was okay, and I kept going and going. Of his solo wo...

Ah, Split Enz - the new wave band who introduced the world to Tim's little brother Neil.  Thank you, good night. Don't forget to tip your server on the way out. But seriously folks, Split Enz.  Back in 1980 Split Enz was riding the crest of the first wave of new wave (it was clunky in my head too, but it is what it is). The band was creating something new and fresh and somehow still hearkened back to the roots of rock and roll. This was the album that had "Shark Attack" and the amazing "I Got You." There are others you may be partial to, but those are the songs I remember and frankly I never had any of their albums so pretty much everything is a deep cut when it comes to the band outside of the "radio" hits. Still, those two songs were indelibly marked into my musical DNA. All I knew about the band was they were from New Zealand, and that they'd been around a while before becoming an overnight success. "Wait a second, then how come you...

Digging through the pile and sorting the odds and ends up for grabs turned out to be a mixed bags of nuts. There were some here I'd not had a chance to sit with all the way through, and a others that were old friends I hadn't spent time with and it was time to catch up. Split Enz - Waiata (1981) A Flock of Seagulls - The Story of a Young Heart (1984)  Red Rider - Neruda (1983) The Moody Blues - The Other Side of Life (1986) Gordon Lightfoot - Don Quixote (1972) Split Enz - Waiata (1981) Right off the bat let's give credit where credit is due here. "One Step Ahead" is an absolutely killer track. I'd go so far as to say it's the centrepiece of the album. A close second is "History Never Repeats" another composition by Neil. Now I am fully aware that I never had this back in the day so sitting here listening four decades later is hardly fair. The lens I'm looking through is not the same as the one I had when I was a teenager. The songs on Wai...