Old Enough to Forget

Back in the day it seemed like all the cool kids had a copy of the Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits 1974–78 . The band had been pumping out albums since 1968, but the label figured the keys to success were to be found by only taking songs from the holy trinity of albums released between (stop reading if you know where this is going) 1974 and 1978.* Although to be fair (did you add the extra 'to be fair' in your head?) the band didn't release anything new in '78 but the hits album came out ... I'm guessing on the assumption that it would be a hit before it was. The only thing I ever had as a kid by the band was a 45 of "Take the Money and Run" that I played a lot, and I always wanted to get more, but never did. Not even the legendary greatest hits record. Of course over the years I would end up with an awful lot of his stuff. There was a lot of good stuff out there by Steve Miller, but it was the hits I wanted to hear. I didn't mind his blues stuff...

Boy howdy, this was more than a bit surprising - in a good way. Not long ago I'd found The Light of Smiles , Gary's follow-up to The Dream Weaver , and while I enjoyed the album it really didn't have legs or stick with me after I'd put it back on the shelf. That's not a shot, I listen to a lot of stuff that frankly doesn't have a lot of object permanence - I attribute this more to me than the music. I'm old now, and I don't process things the same way. I either like it, or I don't. Sometimes I'll really like it, and sometimes things stick. When I first saw the cover of Headin' Home when I was poking around Gary's discography I was pretty dismissive. I mean really, who needed to see a deeply tanned and permed Gary sitting bare chested (okay not bare, it was covered in curly hair) and manspreading his red pants. Thankfully the image was cropped. So yeah, there wasn't a lot of appeal. I already knew there weren't any hits here, and...

Cutting Crew were one of those bands whose career trajectory followed Newton's third law - one that has been corrupted and oversimplified to: what goes up, must come down. It's not like I'm singling Cutting Crew out for a sophomoric drubbing with cheap innuendo. The band was in good company for all that. Heck a couple of years earlier Mr. Mister's Welcome to the Real World (1985) had a couple of absolutely huge radio singles. After all that "success" that band just disappeared. Now the difference between Mr. Mister and Cutting Crew for me is that I had the Mr. Mister album. All I knew of Cutting Crew was the big single, and it was big : "(I Just) Died in Your Arms" and to a lesser extent (because I'd forgotten about it until I listened to the record) the obligatory power ballad (not a lot of power, but a lot of ballad) "I've Been in Love Before" which was pretty good. Who knows why I didn't get the album back in the day, I mean...

Union Jacks fell in between the trio of albums I had by the band back in the day. My buddy Andrew, who I'd jam with back in high school, introduced me to some cool bands, notably Harlequin because he made me learn the guitar parts (as a fifteen year old I thought I got pretty close) to "You are the Light" and then we were farting around one afternoon and he was playing the lead riff to "Head First" by a band called The Babys. I thought it was really cool. It was probably not long after I picked up the album, and then when they dropped I'd snag Union Jacks and the band's last album On the Edge that came out in the fall of 1980. It's been a while since I've listened to The Babys and it's a bit weird listening now. Jonathan Cain would join Journey and John Waite would manage to carve out a pretty decent solo career. Then in the late '80s while Journey was in limbo, Jonathan Cain, John Waite and Ricky Phillips would team up with Neil Schon...

Gary Wright followed up his double platinum release The Dreamweaver in 1977 with The Light of Smiles . It must have been a surprise and a bit of a disappointment when the album didn't perform as well as hoped. It did chart as high as 23 on the Billboard top LP and Tape chart according to what I read on the wiki, but it must have been more of a spike than anything. As the album didn't seem to attain any certifications that I could see. Not that it matters, I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again (more than once) most of my favourite albums never really attained any significant commercial success. I'd seen this album over the years, but that was about it. Gary Wright was Mr. Dreamweaver and I'm sure somehow it was worked into his epitaph when he passed away a couple of years ago. For me I was really curious about this one, lately I've been a sucker for finding albums that follow a big release. For Gary Wright he was flying high after The Dreamweaver...

Henry Lee Summer hit it big in '88 with "I Wish I Had a Girl" from his third album and first major label release. Of course I knew none of this back in the day. I just knew the song, and for whatever reason I associate this with summertime and rolled down windows with the radio blaring. This was an album I almost bought more than once, but never did. Over the years the song and Mister Summer faded from memory but when I saw the album in the four dollar bin I couldn't resist. This is a bit of a conundrum as my initial reaction was pretty negative. All I could hear were the inevitable comparisons to other artists, the complete lack of a solid bottom end to the recording coupled with some really questionable drum sounds that seemed to belong on a different album. The most irritating moment coming on side two when "Wing Tip Shoes" tries to infuse some energy into the album as Henry repeatedly yells, "Git it goin'" as the band borrows from John Lee ...

I snatched this up when I found it. Up and Down was released in '84, the same year "Live is Life" was a worldwide hit. Polydor repackaged the album, dropped a couple of songs from the European release and tacked on "Live is Life" which, for those of us over here, was a pretty good idea. I also suspect they subbed out the studio version of "Flyin' High" as well. Despite their success, much of the band's catalogue was never released in North America, and even now the band has a surprisingly small digital footprint on the streaming platforms. The album is really good, and the title track "Up and Down" that opens the album is really strong with Herwig's soaring vocals and Ewald's tasty fretwork. The whole album is full of pleasant soft rock with hints of AOR and some progressive overtones. Knowing there are songs out there that were left off it makes me wonder what they were like. The nine songs here, seven studio tracks and two ...