Old Enough to Forget

Back in the day I had two of Melissa's albums: this one and her follow up Brave and Crazy . I was a rocker (at least I said I was, but I still liked Christopher Cross, so go figure) and not hearing anything as captivating as "Bring Me Some Water" I stopped listening to her stuff. It didn't help that the radio stations I liked didn't seem to play anything of hers so I just moved on. Of course she'd go one to have one hell of a career I know little or nothing about. Despite me thinking her debut was as good as it got for her history tells another story. If you're a fan, I mean a REAL fan you know more than me. So I'm going to just listen to this one in a vacuum and contain my commentary to the ten songs on her debut. Seems like a reasonable compromise and it'll keep me contained and hopefully on track.  The album opens with "Similar Features" and man is it a great track - it still sounds so good. I bought the album because "Being Me So...

Linda Ronstadt has been one of those wonderful discoveries over the last few years. Get Closer came out in '82 and after her brief foray into new wave that featured a few Elvis Costello songs on her previous album Mad Love she was back to being Linda Ronstadt, and all was right with the world.  Times they were a changin' and Linda was content being herself and she was enough of a presence now that she could be herself and that was enough. For me at the time, Linda Ronstadt was about as far off my radar as you could get. Other than the few songs I knew from the radio she wasn't relevant to me ... at all. It may not have just been me me either, as Get Closer would mark her first album in almost a decade that wouldn't crack the top 5. The album would go gold in the US which is still a pretty solid accomplishment, but she had reached the summit, and no one stays on top forever. Anyway you can read that kind of stuff on Wikipedia, I know I did.  It's about the music, ...

"Short People" was the first song I'd heard by Randy Newman when I was a kid. It was also one of those songs far too many people took at face value based on the title, who didn't even bother to listen to the song. I still remember the tempest in a tea cup and even then it was perplexing. Dang, even Billy Barty wasn't very happy about the song.  I know there were a lot of people who seemed to pride themselves on not listening to the lyrics of a song as a way of defending themselves when listening to "questionable" music. At least that was a defence a lot of "Christian" kids used to defend listening to secular music. The ability to be tone deaf and easily offended isn't something new ... The problem with satire is to some folks it's just truth wrapped in humour as a way of sending in a Trojan horse filled with hate and bigotry. Randy Newman's affinity for first person narratives that cut deep can be a little on the nose, and with ...

For most of us Warren Zevon generally conjures up one song, "Werewolves of London" and that's about as far as it goes. That particular song was one I was very dismissive of back in the day. To me it was a hatchet job that borrowed too much from "Sweet Home Alabama" and tried too hard to be clever. Yeah, fifteen year old me was a pretty harsh critic. I will begrudgingly admit that over the years the song certainly had it's charms, and Warren's unusual voice and writing is oddly engaging. In the mid '80s my old roommate had the record, and I remember playing it quite a few times and I really enjoyed a number of the songs, particularly "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Lawyers, Guns And Money" as well as the title track, which was about as dark and twisted as songs come. With the passage of time I'd more or less forget the album, and when Kid Rock's oddly goofy and somehow catchy sampling of bits and pieces of "...

If there was an artist I actively despised as a kid it was Leo Sayer. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" was just plain stupid, and that horrific Frankie Valli falsetto was too much. I always thought he looked liked a diminutive version of Robin William's as Mork flying through the air. Which just shows how time blurs things, as Mork and Mindy wouldn't debut for another two years or so after this album came out ... but I remember the cover, and the blurring of time certainly hasn't helped.  I always thought of Leo Sayer as being huge in the disco era, and that songs like the aforementioned dancing song and the ballad "When I Need You" were later than this ... apparently I was wrong. Funny that. I have memories of Leo Sayer on those late night music shows, and I guess it just all sort of ran together. Anyway, back to my active dislike of all things Leo Sayer. It really wasn't based on anything other than he wasn't rock, and I didn't like how he s...

Coming in on the heels of Journey's 1983 album Frontiers , Steve Perry struck out on his own and released his solo effort Street Talk in 1984. To say Journey was a big deal during this period is an understatement. The band had been on an upward trajectory, and while Frontiers didn't perform as well as their 1981 release Escape , it was still a big deal. I suspect there was a lot of internal pressure within the Journey camp as to what was next so members of the band decided to strike out on their own. Neil Schon had previously released a pair of albums with Jan Hammer, and in '84 he teamed up with Sammy Hagar and released Through the Fire as HSAS (Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve). I had them all on vinyl, and frankly I can't remember much about them.  It was Steve though, who as the voice of Journey had the best shot at solo success, and with Street Talk , he dropped an album containing ten polished pop songs, that were closer to the generic adult contemporary artists o...

By 1983 I was already a huge fan of Joe Walsh. He was the court jester who also managed to be the king of his castle. I knew he was an Eagle, and he and Don Felder were the wonder twins thanks to "Hotel California" but what sealed it for me was his 1979 contribution to The Warriors soundtrack "In the City" a song that hit me in the feels, and to this day is one of my desert island songs. The Eagles version was okay too, but didn't have the same kick in the happy sack as the original. Fast forward to the spring of 1983 and Joe Walsh released You Bought It - You Name It , which to me is one of his best releases - ever. As much as I like his other stuff when I go to a Joe Walsh album it's this one. Go figure. I guess I was primed for this one given that one of my favourite songs from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High (the same records that introduced me to Oingo Boingo) soundtrack was his throwaway track "Waffle Stomp." When I lost most of my records ...