Old Enough to Forget

File under: TLDR Note to the reader. First sorry, second not really, but I am sorry I don't have the ability to edit. Oh happy Valentine's day.  To celebrate let's take a gander at Meat Loaf's 1977 Bat Out of Hell. Over forty three million people disagree with me but for decades I thought this album was, and continues to be, one giant disappointment. I'll be the first to admit that despite decades of baggage the overwhelming power of nostalgia managed to erode even the hardest of convictions and I found that Bat Out of Hell was one of those albums I wanted to have in my collection, but I wasn't looking all that hard. It was an album I knew more about than I actually knew about. So at this moment in time I'm still holding firm on my long held opinion. But before I get into things, it's time for some meanderambling blurbage ... I remember seeing the cover when I was a kid and thinking it was the single greatest cover I had ever seen. What wonders were to b...

Hot on the heels of We're an American Band, Grand Fund teamed up again with producer Todd Rundgren and released Shinin' On in March of 1974.  The album is probably best remembered for the band's cover of "The Loco-motion" that took the Eva King classic written by Gerald Goffin and Carole King and turned it to eleven and delivered one of the greatest distorted guitar solos of all time. The album is short, just a little over half an hour and contained eight songs. Depending on how you look at it the album is pretty uneven and somewhat generic. However, then they were good, they were next level. The album opens with the title track, and that one is pretty great. The previously mentioned "Loco-motion" was the reason I picked up the album - well, that's not entirely true, it was in the dollar bin and in pretty decent shape - I would have picked it up regardless, but I was stoked to get the choo choo song. What I wasn't expecting was how unbelievably...

Utopia is one of those bands I was always curious about as this was Todd Rundgren's band, and for years I'd seen his name pop up on various albums over the years. After a fairly long dry spell (at least two or three weeks) where I could only find obscure show tunes and old Disney records in the dollar bin, up popped what looked to be a decent copy of Deface the Music . There was a slight wobble but I figured it was worth a chance so I brought it home and gave it a little TLC and put it in the queue. Well, the slight wobble was more than slight and effectively made the first tracks on both sides unplayable, which was a shame. But not all was lost. I'm not sure what I was expecting musically as I hadn't looked it up prior to dropping the needle. I suppose the cover should have given it away, but come on, everyone seemed to have a cover like this at some point. Of course as soon as the music started I found myself listening to a long lost Beatles record ... or The Rutles, ...

A few months back my buddy Olav, who has a surprisingly deep knowledge of classic rock and an ability to remember weird details that tend to escape us mere mortals sent me a note asking if I'd heard the song "Soviet Jewellery" to which I replied ... "Huh?" So he sent me a link, and I told him it was a pretty cool song, and that as far as I was concerned, was that. Except that it wasn't. Without going into a lot of extra pointless verbiage Olav and I were in a record store and I was rooting around the cheap bins. Rather than stand around Olav decided he'd look too, and in short order he emerged with a copy of BB Gabor . "Oooh," I said, "that's cool, put it on the pile." Yeah, it was a fruitful day and there was a pile ... except this one never made it to the pile. "I'm getting this one." said my rather impish friend. As our visit went on he found a couple more things that ended up on my pile, and when we'd paid an...

For a moment in the early '80s it seemed like The Tubes were finally going to get their due.  After back to back gold albums in Canada, a feat they never managed in the US - then again there were more zeroes required to go gold there, the band was on a roll. Then came Love Bomb ... I guess the band decided they needed a change and after a couple of albums helmed by David Foster that found the boys moving away from their more outrageous elements to focus on commercial success, they would once again bring Todd Rundgren back into the fold to produce their 1985 effort Love Bomb . Now I had been waiting for the follow up to Outside Inside for a couple of years and I remember seeing a video for "Piece by Piece" and liked the song, but the video was awful. I only ever saw it once ... it's on YouTube if you're inclined. I tried to find the record once or twice and then more or less forgot to keep looking. Besides, I had Fee Waybill's 1984 solo effort Read My Lips ,...

My first exposure to The Tubes came with "Talk to Ya Later" a song so good even Gil Fisher, The Fishin' Musician had them up to Scuttlebut Lodge to play it for his television viewing audience. It was at that moment I realized The Tubes weren't like most other bands as they opted to play "Sushi Girl" and not the big hit - that to me was cool. The Completion Backward Principle was the band's first release on Capitol, and was produced by David Foster, who wasn't yet known as the king of schmaltz, also co-wrote some of the best songs on the album. Those being "Talk to Ya Later" and the incredible "Don't Want to Wait Anymore" a song so good it's mind boggling that it was a massive hit - Bill Spooner took lead vocals on that one, and absolutely killed it - no small feat as I consider Fee Waybill one of rock's greatest vocalists. No, I'm not kidding. This was where I started with the band, so like any starting point i...

Grand Funk, without the Railroad. In 1973 The band released We're An American Band , and this was the song I remember from the radio as a kid. But it would take almost 50 years for me to get to the deep cuts on the album. I didn't really pick anything up by the band other than a greatest hits CD but I always like them, and my parents oddly enough had an 8 track copy of their live album I never knew they had, because apparently they didn't know they had it either, until I found it one day in a box in the closet. I remember it being awesome, with a drum solo that blew my mind. People tend to think of them as a trio, but on this Todd Rundgren produced effort they were officially four: Mark Farner, Mel Schacher, Don Brewer and Craig Frost, who had laid down keys previously on Phoenix , was now listed as a full fledged member of the band. Oddly enough after Grand Fund folded he would join the Silver Bullet Band with Bob Seger and stay there for a couple of decades. The album wa...