Old Enough to Forget

I am very late to the party with Frampton Comes Alive! Not that it's an excuse but I was just thirteen when this came out, and it really wasn't an album any of my friends had at the time, so I never had a chance to hear it. It also didn't help that for whatever reason the big hits seemed schmaltzy. Peter Frampton looked like a rock star who didn't really seem to play rock but played smokin' guitar. At the time I liked Kiss, Alice Cooper and BTO and this wasn't on my radar. Of course the album was huge, and Peter did play that really cool Les Paul. If two pick ups were good, three would put you over the top. But still, aside from the radio hits I didn't know anything about the guy or the album. Of course by the time I had enough money to buy things I never really felt this was anything I'd ever want or even listen to. Then a couple of years ago I was in a music store and got to talking with the guy behind the counter about players we liked. This young gu...

The first time I bought this I found it at a second hand store (Over the years I'd end up buying it a few times in different formats). The same place I got my comics and Robert A. Heinlein paperbacks. It was an awesome place. LIVE! is an overlooked gem from April Wine's early albums just before the band really broke wide open in Canada. They were already a pretty big deal, about to become more bigger. I think I got this just before First Glance came out (which is another story for another day), and I played it pretty much to death, or at the least to the irritation of my parents. There are so many killer songs here, and these versions were my introduction to the band. Of course being the 70s there's a blistery (yes, I chose that word on purpose) guitar solo to start off "The Band Has Just Begun" that my best friend thought was me with my fingers stuck in the strings. I thought that was a little harsh, but listening to it now I can't say I don't hear it - ...

It was 1985 and sixteen year old wunderkind Charlie Sexton was making a run for the brass ring. It boggles my mind the level of maturity in his singing and playing that is here at such an early age. I was in my early 20s when this came out and was leaning toward what was going to be affectionately known as "hair metal" but I liked a lot of new wave, Bryan Adams and even Corey Hart (the last one more a guilty pleasure) and here's young Charlie already a seasoned player making it look easy. I remember hearing "Impressed" (written by Steve Krikorian, also known as Tonio K.) on the radio and thinking it was okay, but it didn't inspire me to run out and lay out my cash. I mean, I was buying a lot of stuff, but it's all relative. What you think is a lot, and what I think is a lot, aren't necessarily in the same ball park. We also didn't have MTV, we had Much Music, and while close, weren't the same. Although they both actually played videos all day...

Ah, the 80s. Right about '84 things were hitting the sweet spot for me musically. I remember a buddy playing me a mix tape that had "No More Words" on it and I asked "Who is that?" I like synth pop with the big guitars and all that but I never got around to getting this album. Of course a couple years later after Top Gun came out every one knew "Take My Breath Away" a song that put the band in the upper echelons for a little while. Sadly, it was also a song written for the band by Giorgio Moroder who had a killer touch on soundtracks in particular, and it pretty much overshadowed anything they did before, and after. The other day I'm bin rummaging and there in between the ever present badly scratched Rod Stewart albums (I think people do it on purpose) was a decent looking copy of Berlin's Love Life . "Ooooh." I said to myself. I took out the vinyl, and it was just dusty and covered in finger prints but otherwise looked salvageable. T...

The year was 1979 and the battle between good and evil raged through the land. Disco was making it pretty much impossible to listen to the radio. Still it was a good time for rock and roll. I remember hearing Moon Martin and really liked "Rolene" but at the time I never picked anything up. Fast forward through the years, and I did have a decent retrospective on CD that covered the bases, but I wanted more. Recently I was digging in the bins, and I found a decent copy of Street Fever , which was his third album in three years. It was good, really good but I wanted to find his debut (let's be honest, as good as his version of "Bad Case of Loving You" is, Robert Palmer really made it his own) or his follow up Escape from Domination . As fate would have it I found a copy of the latter and brought it home for a little loving care. Aside from a nick in the vinyl on the second track, which isn't as bad as I'd excepted, it cleaned up real good (extra points for...

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the 90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984 my (dearly departed, and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read just go back and skim it, I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off and on again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

When I was a kid we moved to a small rural town that boasted an AM radio station that was quite literally all things to all people, which meant there was hardly ever anything good on. Every so often the station would indulge an ear worm and play the shit out of it. Low and behold a heavily bleeped version of "The Rodeo Song" was given the honour of spinning seemingly every hour for what seemed like weeks, but was probably two days. Still, this appealed wildly to my teenage goofball self and having a chance to hear the unedited version was a sought after treat. I never did get the album because I would have had hell to pay if my parents heard me playing it from my bedroom. Here I am four decades and a couple years later scouring the dollar bins and I'm passing over the ever present Bill Cosby albums and occasional Nestor Pistor album (I am looking for one in decent enough condition to be worth my dollar) and low and behold there's Showdown in all their glory. The jacke...