Old Enough to Forget

Good old Sammy. I knew of Sammy at least a year or two before I ever heard the opening riff to "Heavy Metal" from the soundtrack album. It was a song I should have loved, but it always sort of stuck in my craw like a spoonful of cinnamon. It should have been tasty ... I'd seen Sammy's name in the credits of a couple of albums I had back in the day. I think the first time I saw his name was in the credits on a Servant record. Servant had incorrectly attributed "Rich Man" to Sammy on their debut album Shallow Water ... I was this many days old when I learned Dan Hartman wrote the song, not Sammy. His name also popped up on Working Class Dog . Rick Springfield covered "I've Done Everything for You" and absolutely made it his own. A few years later, when Sammy replaced Dave in Van Halen, everyone knew who the Red Rocker was. Sammy is cool. Absolutely and unequivocally cool. For whatever reason, I never really clicked with Sammy's stuff. I had ...

The first time I heard "Owner of a Lonely Heart" on the radio, I was smitten. "What in the heck was that?" It was one of those HOLY SHIT songs that seemed to come out of nowhere. KISM from Bellingham had a strong enough signal to reach over into the suburbs where I lived. The song quickly worked its way into heavy rotation, but I don't remember hearing it on the two big stations in Vancouver. It took me a while to find the record after first hearing the song. There was a record store across the street from where I worked, and I looked for this new Yes album. All I found were the old Yes records, nothing new. Of course, this only happened once, and I'm sure this was all compressed into the span of a couple of weeks, if that. Soon the song, along with the bleeding-edge orchestral blasts that were unlike anything I'd heard before, was everywhere. This was Yes? Yes. Of course, there was no internet back in the day, just word of mouth and the burgeoning age o...

My earliest memories of hearing songs from The White Album are probably from 1972. I remember this because my older cousins wanted to hear "Smoke on the Water" and I wanted to hear "Rocky Raccoon," and I was outvoted. My Aunt and Uncle seemed to have the coolest music, from Alice Cooper to The Doobie Brothers. The Beatles had broken up years earlier, and none of my friends listened to them. The Beatles were music for an older generation. Me and the other kids I knew were all over what was on the current Top 40, and we'd argue in class about whether CKLG or CFUN was the best station. I'd give a passive listen once in a while to a country station (ick) if my Uncle was on the radio over at CJJC, and I have one vague memory of us sitting around waiting for him to play "Kiss an Angel Good Morning" for my Aunt. Regardless, they had an eight-track copy of The White Album , and if the stars aligned I could get them to play it. I finally got a copy for mys...

Before Frank Mills punished the world with "Music Box Dancer" in 1979, Hagood Hardy had an unusual crossover with "The Homecoming" back in 1975. Okay, to the purists out there, yes, "Music Box Dancer" was actually recorded in 1974, but then "The Homecoming" got its start in a commercial for Salada tea in 1972. What this has to do with anything is beyond me, but there you go. By 1978, Mr. Hardy was a known commodity with his brand of piano tinkling, and it made sense that he put out a Christmas album at some point ... and then it happened. A Very Special Christmas was licensed to K-tel from Attic Records. Who knows how this came about, but there was a time the little label from Winnipeg wasn't that little. The album features sixteen tracks that cover all of the required bases. It should be noted that this album predates the A Very Special Christmas anthologies of Christmas music by about a decade. Those were good, but each album was a little...

Kids today have no idea that once upon a time, not that long ago, cable television was a luxury, and it wasn't until the mid-'70s that most of us had a colour TV. The channels that came in with the rabbit ears were the ones we watched. There was Gunsmoke , The Beachcombers , and on Saturday* it was The Tommy Hunter Show that I watched with my parents. Despite not being a country fan, I sure did like the guitar players. Wilf Carter seemed to be a staple, but chances are I only saw him a handful of times. I also remember a big deal being made out of fiddle player Al Cherney whenever he was on ... but I don't think he has a Christmas album. Wilf Carter was one of the first Canadian country stars in the classic cowboy tradition. Apparently, in the States, he was known as Montana Slim. Something I was this many years old when I found out. I was out to lunch the other day with my mum and mentioned I'd found Wilf Carter's Christmas album, and she told me how he was her da...

As a kid, the coolest name to say out loud that wouldn't get you into trouble was Engelbert Humperdinck. I could not figure out how adults were able to take this British helmet-haired crooner seriously. I mean, as soon as I heard, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Engelbert Humperdinck," I'd just lose it. Hump a dink, ha ha ha. In my twenties, my roommate had an Engelbert Humperdinck album, and every once in a while he'd appear in the living room in a black velvet smoking jacket and proclaim it was time for some Humperdinck. "Release Me" was fine, "Quando Quando Quando" was good, but we'd lose our collective shit and belt out "Lonely Is a Man Without Love" and then prance around. I never said I was mature, and for whatever reason, I had developed a begrudging respect for Mister Hump a dink as a fine vocalist. I'll also be the first to admit that there's a generic quality to his vocals that makes him hard to distinguish from many of h...

I actually really like these odd little double A-side collections. Take two somewhat related artists and cull a dozen songs from across their discography and try and make a buck at Christmas. There is no information printed on the spine, and no liner notes. To be fair, my used copy could have had some once upon a time ... but I doubt it. The double act Columbia Records decided to put together was Johnny Mathis and The Ray Conniff Singers. Whoever picked the songs for the Johnny Mathis side decided to stay with the sacred. From what I can figure, five of the six songs here come from his 1958 Christmas album, with "Ave Maria" likely coming from Good Night, Dear Lord , also released in '58. The sequencing follows a loose chronological telling of the Christmas story. The album kicks off with "O Holy Night", and when it comes to the French Kiss note, he does it with a full voice, no falsetto or warbly half measures. It's pretty impressive, and his voice seems to ...