Old Enough to Forget

Back in '82 Headpins sounded a bit (a lot) like an aggressive offshoot of the band Chilliwack. Chilliwack had been around a long time - but really seemed to take things to another level as a trio comprised of Bill Henderson, Brian MacLeod and Ab Bryant. This line-up was at the top of their game. Brian's blistering guitar added a swagger to the band's sound, most notably on Wanna Be a Star and Opus X that was also released in '82. Whereas Chilliwack was very much Bill Henderson's band, Headpins were the manifestation of Brain "Too Loud" MacLeod. It was his band, although on the album the only credit listed is for Darby Mills as vocalist. Who knows how all this came about. Maybe Brian felt the need to stretch out a little more, so he started Headpins as a side gig to unleash his hard rock side. To that end he eventually discovered a young Darby Mills who would handle the vocals, and the band dropped Turn it Loud in 1982. It was an album that got people'...

Funny I thought I'd written about Pat Benatar before ... apparently not. Well, let's make up for lost time and start with her 1984 album Tropico . This was a gear change and an attempt to sort of stay ahead of the curve. Now to be fair, despite always liking some of the songs I heard on the radio - especially those early hits, I'd never picked anything up by her. Over the last couple of years I've found most of her early efforts, and for the most part they were good albums. It was the combination of Pat's vocals, and Neil's music that really worked - even when it was a cover, like "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" written by Eddie Schwartz. Considering the treadmill the band was on, cranking out an album a year like sausages from 1979 to 1985 and the consistency of the band's output is nothing short of spectacular. Seriously. By 1984 the rock and roll of the late '70s was moving toward big hair, and the early new wave had already crashed to the beac...

I suppose a theme driven month would be kind of cool. This sort of happened by accident, but I had picked up a few recently and figured it was worth jotting down some thoughts. Whether the thoughts were cohesive or not is a matter of opinion but there are a lot of words that have been strung together. Some of it may even make sense. If not, there are pictures. Soundtracks are really the original mix tapes, and aside from the K-Tel 20 songs in 30 minutes collections, soundtracks could be pretty cool. There would often be a surprise or two buried in grooves. Then all of a sudden you'll find a lot of stuff by artists that were never really on your radar. Music really is like a big sweater. You pull on a thread and all of a sudden you start unravelling all of these pieces you didn't think were connected. Five For Fighting No. 9 (number 9, number 9 ...) Various Artists - Roadie Original Motion Picture Sound Track (1980) Various Artists - Urban Cowboy Original Motion Picture Sou...

REO Speedwagon released Hi Infidelity in the fall of 1980. Through 1981, it seemed like the album was on practically every turntable in the country. Even my best friend Mike, who hardly ever bought a record, had it - so I borrowed his copy for a while so I could have it on my turntable, albeit briefly, as he took it back.  Of course, I now have my own copy on CD, a wonderfully loaded remaster, and now this one on vinyl. At the time, what I knew about REO Speedwagon was on par with what I knew about algebra - which was nothing. To my dear old basketball coach and math teacher, Mr. Cameron, who passed me on the condition that I never, ever take another math class in high school. I promised and kept that promise. I needed to get that C- so that I could meet the minimum requirements to graduate. He's passed away since, but he was a wonderful man. So, here was REO Speedwagon catching their big break with their ninth release. They'd been on the verge of hitting it big but w...

Funny how things have changed. As a kid I hated Chicago. I mean, I remember hearing "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" and I would think, "Yeah, it's time to turn off the radio." Then when David Foster unleashed "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" in the early '80s Chicago would release a series of insufferable ballads that resulted in Peter Cetera becoming bigger than the band. I have to admit I secretly liked some of those songs. I eventually bought my first Chicago album in 1988 when the band released 17 - because I liked "Heart in Pieces" - I even liked it when Tim Feehan put out his version of the song on his 1990 release Full Contact . Yeah I'm taking a while to get to the point, mainly because this is a weird album for me. I'm trying to process what I'm hearing. I found this for a buck, which means I paid fifty cents a side for this double album. Released in 1974 VII is a bit of an odd duck, is it a jazz record? Is it ...

1989 rock was a live and well. Seemingly out of nowhere Alannah Myles was suddenly everywhere, and propelled by "Black Velvet" she became an overnight sensation that took over a decade of hard work to achieve. I may as well get right to the elephant in the room right off the bat. "Black Velvet" is still an amazing song. Considering that musically the song is essentially a generic vamp on a bass driven 12 bar blues shuffle the song is immediately identifiable. It was also played to death and while it never got old, it sure did get overplayed. It also became the high water mark that everything else would be measured by. Fair or not, that's how things go sometimes. Hair metal and an abundance of musical excess and fret shredding was the flavour of the day, and Alannah Myles managed to be of the times but a step removed at the same time. The guitar work of Bob Bartolucci, who I remembered from the GNP album (also from 1989, I don't remember which came first), an...

 My journey with U2 started with October , and soon after I picked up a copy of Boy . I put both of those albums on a single cassette and it lived in my car for a long time. My first car, purchased off my parents: a giant green 1973 Mercury Marquis Brougham only had an 8-track player, so I bought a cassette adapter from Radio Shack so I could have tunes in the car. When the single dropped early in 1983 I eagerly snagged a copy, and then waited for the album. The title track was definitely U2, but it was different too. It was more, but it was hard to put a finger on, but it was awesome. Then there was the very rough "Treasure (Whatever Happened to Pete the Chop)" that remains to this day a lost track for the band. I suppose this was a rough mix, and was more reminiscent of their first two albums, and stylistically would have been ad odd duck going forward. The second side contains live tracks taken from a Belgium television special from July of 1982, and contained "Fire,...