Old Enough to Forget

The Doobie Brothers, yeah I know what you're thinking. Actually, I have no idea. More than likely you're likely asking, "What were you thinking?" Fair. As a kid it was "China Grove" that really got under my skin. That riff. Bam! My aunt and uncle had an 8 track copy of The Captain and Me along with a few others that to this day are indelibly stamped into my DNA. It's weird though that I don't remember more about that tape, aside from the weird fades and clicks as it moved from track to track and the cover. Something about that overpass just felt, sad . There were a few songs by the band I always really liked, but by the time I really got into music, the band was old and tired. Well, old at any rate they'd been around for years, how old were those guys? I mean my goodness I was listening to them when I was ten. Then when Michael McDonald joined the band things changed. There was a four year period between 1976 and 1980 then this new brand of Doob...

Ladies and gentlemen, MUD. I had no idea these guys existed until the early '90s when one Christmas I saw Bernard and the Genie . It's probably the greatest holiday movie ever. With Lenny Henry and Alan Cumming and an incredibly nasty Rowan Atkinson. I taped the movie from the television broadcast and for years and years we'd re-watch our spotty copy, complete with the cheesy commercials. The soundtrack to the Richard Curtis film was absolutely amazing, and among the many, many classics was "Lonely This Christmas" by MUD. Okay, to be fair I didn't know who sang the song at the time, but I really, really liked it. When I found a CD called Instant Christmas Collection that featured a lot of UK artists I finally knew. It was MUD. Of course it was produced by the kings of Glam, Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman. Goodness gravy them there two dudes were a gold spinning dynamic duo. Oh, the remake simply called Genie with Melissa McCarthy ... um.  Pass. I tried, and ...

This was an album I have loved for years and years. I had a buddy who I played guitar with once in a while, and we figured were were a band. Just two guitar players who didn't write, or sing, or have a bass player, or drummer. Didn't matter. We were a band. We could play "Don't Look Back" by Boston ... sort of. Which was to us, a pretty big deal. It was Andrew who introduced me to some pretty cool music. He got me into Harlequin and he played me 20/20's song "Yellow Pills" which blew my mind. This was probably early in 1980, because well ... it was. I had been down at the second hand store, probably looking for Robert A. Heinlein books, because I loved his books, and boy were there a lot of them. I would read Clarke and Asimov too, but Heinlein was my jam. When I was there I stumbled upon a cassette copy of 20/20, and I hemmed and hawed and then put it back. I wanted the record ... but there was no record, only a cassette.  Ick. I rode my bike home ....

It's been a long time since I've sat and listened to this one all the way through. When I wrote about World of Wonders almost a year ago I spent half of the meanderamble talking about this particular album before finally getting to the point ... or as close to point as I ever get. When I think of this album I think of two songs, which happen to be the one two punch that kick of side one. The title track and the awesome stick work by Dennis Pendrith, and "Candy Man's Gone" a song so good that it still stops me in my tracks. When Mister Cockburn had a mind to he could craft one hell of a pop song that had some real bite to the lyrics. There were no baby baby songs here. This was heavy stuff that you needed to sit and read as you listened. I'll be the first to admit that I like the shiny objects and the pretty music with a hook. For Bruce it seemed like he relished setting the hook early and then seeing how much he could getaway with before he lost the fish. In ...

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...

I'm not sure how I ended up so many releases that feature Chris Hillman. I knew of him of course, from that one time he appeared on a 77s album way back in 1987. Everyone always made such a fuss over Roger McGuinn, and David Crosby that was all I really knew about The Byrds ... of course there were other members of the band but they seemed to be a footnote. Right or wrong, perception can be a cruel and unfair thing. A while ago I found Chris' 1976 release Slippin' Away. It was on Asylum records (which I always associated with prestige back in the day) and the cast of characters on the album was really impressive. The album though? I can't remember it ... at all. It was instantly forgettable, but pleasant as well. It was enough that when I found anything with Chris on it, I bought it. From his collaboration with J.D. Souther and Richie Furay, to an album with former Byrds McGuinn and Gene Clark. I would snap them up. When I found a pristine, and I mean pristine copy of D...

I've been listening to a lot of rock lately, and every so often I'll dip deeper into collection and clean out my ears a little with some good old fashioned pop. 1962 and I wasn't even a tadpole ... but this album has so many songs that I remember as a kid. Considering the heyday of variety television when I was growing up I probably saw him perform many of these songs. It's hard to imagine what things were like in the early '60s. I'm scanning through Andy William's discography, and from what I can tell, Moon River And Other Great Movie Themes was his ninth studio album, and in 1962 he would release four albums, admittedly some were likely compilations. Still, that's a lot of wax baby. This album would go gold, and stayed on the billboard charts for an astonishing 176 weeks. Take that Dark Side of the Moon ! I really like this album. The big song here is "Moon River" that was a new song at the time, and over the years the song would be synonymo...