Old Enough to Forget

Ah, Split Enz - the new wave band who introduced the world to Tim's little brother Neil.  Thank you, good night. Don't forget to tip your server on the way out. But seriously folks, Split Enz.  Back in 1980 Split Enz was riding the crest of the first wave of new wave (it was clunky in my head too, but it is what it is). The band was creating something new and fresh and somehow still hearkened back to the roots of rock and roll. This was the album that had "Shark Attack" and the amazing "I Got You." There are others you may be partial to, but those are the songs I remember and frankly I never had any of their albums so pretty much everything is a deep cut when it comes to the band outside of the "radio" hits. Still, those two songs were indelibly marked into my musical DNA. All I knew about the band was they were from New Zealand, and that they'd been around a while before becoming an overnight success. "Wait a second, then how come you...

I was never really what you'd call a big fan of Talking Heads. I was a casual and I knew more than a few songs. They were kind of cool, but also irritating. I think part of my active ambivalence stemmed from when I was a kid watching them back in '79 when they were on Saturday Night Live. It was their performance of "Artists Only" with the child like lullaby that I found befuddling. This was '79 and art rock was pretentious and stupid - at least to me. I wanted to hear the big guitars and rock out. Why I still remember a performance I saw on TV a grand total of one time is a mystery. This was the cornerstone of my reaction to Talking Heads for a long time, and while I'd freely admit to enjoying a lot of what I heard, on balance my opinion was primarily dismissive. Then came the summer of '83 and I'm driving down the freeway in my little blue Nissan Pulsar and I've taken the sunroof out and the top of my head is poking out of the hole in the roof. I...

Foreigner was one of those bands people loved to dump on. They were a commercial behemoth, and the band had been on a killer run releasing one multiple platinum album after another since their debut in '77.  Apparently their previous albu m Head Games  from '79 had reportedly "under performed" compared to Double Vision. Which doesn't make any sense, for goodness sake the album has gone on to sell over 5,000,000 copies in the States alone ... sure Double Vision sold a couple million more than that south of the border but  Head Games was hardly a failure. Whatever the reason the band would take some time and literally regroup. They'd jettison Ian McDonald (keyboards, guitars, backing vocals) and Al Greenwood (keyboards) and emerge as a lean mean hit making machine. Depending on where you got on the wagon reactions to 4 were a little split. For me, I'd always liked the songs I heard on the radio, but my first album was Head Games , and that was a transitio...

Leave Your Bones in the Hall was the second album by The Cry. Kimball Fox (Kim Berly of Stampeders fame) and the band were back for another round. Although this time drums were provided by Chas Mitchell. This was a truly collaborative effort with most of the songs on the album being attributed to all of the members in the band. I'll admit that when I see that in the credits it makes me happy. One for all, and all for one stuff. Musically the guys were capturing lightning in a bottle and with their brand of harder rocking skinny tie new wave, even getting the flat robotic backing vocals down. Who knows why the band didn't catch on. Then again the debut suffered the same fate being relegated to obscurity. The band is more or less a footnote, or the answer to a trivia question. Which is a shame. The music was really good, although to be honest by '81 the new wave propelled by the organ and catchy hooks had already crashed to the shore but the tide hadn't gone out. It's...

I must admit I skipped over this one more than once when I was scouring the dollar bins. The album was actually in surprisingly decent shape, and the jacket was okay. The absence of an insert wasn't a big deal - most of the stuff I was mining from the cheap stacks didn't seem to have all of their parts, although I suspect in this case there weren't any notes or missing pieces other than a paper liner. I bought the album because I thought it would be silly kitschy fun. "Party Fun Songs from the Golden Age of Burlesque" indeed. As you may have guessed I did eventually lay down my loonie and a few cents to cover taxes and bought the album. It came home and was carefully cleaned (who knows where this had been) and then put it on my pile of records awaiting their turn on the turntable. It sat there for more than a year and my pile had grown past by ability to keep up, and while I was making progress I wasn't exactly following the FIFO inventory model. It was more o...

Obladi obla dah. This month has a double shot of The Knack a band I've gotten into lately. They were so much more than a one hit wonder. I also figured four was enough this time. Rick Wakeman - Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974) The Knack -  ... But the Little Girls Understand (1980) The Knack - Round Trip (1981) Foreigner - Inside Information (1987) Rick Wakeman - Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974) I bought this as a curiosity, and it was a curiosity I got. I'd seen so many copies in the dollar bin it just seemed too interesting to pass up. I'll be the first to admit this would have been an astounding show to see live; however, hearing it as a stand alone experience is a little more disconnected. While there were parts that were certainly engaging, and I was particularly enamoured with the narration by David Hennings, there there were quite a few sections where in the cold light of day you hear the imperfections evident in the performance. While it can b...

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ...  It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...