Old Enough to Forget

Uncertain Country was another one of my Marco Polo Platters , and I bought this because it looked cool. I figured it would be artsy and independent. The back cover showed both Factor, and the government of Canada logos, which is code for artistic grants. I'm not judging at all (not yet anyway), I think it's great there's support for the arts. I just hoped it sounded good too. I'm going to give this a couple of spins before I sit on my stool of judgment and spew my nonsense. I am really looking forward to this one. I love the anticipation of the unknown.  First a little homework. For those in the know you can skip ahead to the parts where I jibber jabber about the record. Nothing I'm about to jot down will come as a surprise to the band's fans. I am for the most part largely oblivious to a lot of new stuff that's out there. I hear bits and pieces, often through my son who has a pretty eclectic CD collection. Yes, CD that's his media of choice. I like mos...

I got this a while ago, not like 1987 a while ago, more like a couple of years ago. I found this one still sealed and it was around ten bucks ... why not? The credits didn't give a lot away for me, but I saw Neil Geraldo's name listed in the special thanks, and as I am a sucker for word association that was enough for me. Now if I was a fan of Patti Smith I may have recognized "Dancing Barefoot" in the track list but I'm not (at least not yet, never say never) and although I've heard her version, back in '79 this more or less flew over my radar. Interestingly, the version here really isn't a cover, as Ivan Kral co-wrote the song with Smith and was a member of her band at the time. Her version is great, and I have to say the Eastern Bloc version is one of the standouts on the album. I am jumping ahead of myself a bit, but I'll leave that there as it may be important later ... or not. I'm as curious as you are now to see if I end up connecting th...

Eurogliders This Island was a nifty little trip down memory lane. I found the record a while back when flipping through a discount bin and something about it seemed familiar but I couldn't put my finger on anything tangible. The track list didn't offer up much in the way of hints (they were there) but I put it under my arm along with a few others I'd found and figured it would be fun finding out. It was.  Turns out the lead off track "Heaven" was why this was familiar. It may not have been a big hit, but I heard it enough for it to get lodged into my brain. As soon as it started I was like, "Ah, I remember this ..." It was pretty bloody catchy, but seemed to fade away as fast as it popped up. These are the kinds of albums I tend to get a kick out of revisiting. There's something really fun about this era of pop. 1984 was still pretty early into the new decade but the elements that would later be the defining sounds of the '80s were on full displa...

Hard to believe it's been a decade since I first heard My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall . I don't remember how I found it in the first place ... but I did. I honestly don't remember much other than the first cut "Believe (Nobody Knows)" was hypnotic. Such a great song. I'm going to have to listen to that one again ... but first I have a few things to jot down about the band's 2020 follow-up  The Waterfall II . I managed to snag a crisp new vinyl copy for under ten bucks. One of the many Marco Polo* bargains I've secured over the last year. I'll admit initially I was a wee bit perplexed by the title, but I also suspected there was a reason. My Morning Jacket is one of those bands I really don't know a lot about, they've been around a while. Their debut came out in 1999 and every couple of years a new album would get released. When Waterfall came out in 2015 it would be another five years before the outtakes were assembled into an alb...

I was very late to the party with The 77s, and over the years I would work my way backward through the band's discography. The band's first three albums were on a wicked little CD box set, 123 that I spent entirely too much money on, but it was worth it. The downside was it was too much all at once and honestly I never spent enough time with the individual albums. It just ended up being an overwhelming experience and a check in the box for my completest tendencies. Don't get me wrong, I listened and I marvelled at the high points and pushed through the songs that didn't immediately resonate. I was taking in a band more than I was an album.  Whereas now, I'm sitting here four decades after the fact trying to process and catalogue an album that in a perfect world should have been in my collection from the get go. Did I mention I was late to the party? Live and learn right? In my defence 1984 was right in the heart of those dark years where I was disillusioned with so ...

The Northern Pikes were never one of my go to bands. They skirted the periphery for me, although they had a couple of killer tunes: “Things I Do For Money” was a nearly perfect ‘80s songs with a wonderfully syncopated delay on the guitar and a head bopping groove. The other was “Hopes Go Astray” which was (still is) a captivating song from  Secrets of the Alibi but don’t remember much else. The only thing I remember was being a bit disappointed. I was probably mix tape hunting, and aside from that one great song ("Hopes Go Astray") I didn’t pull anything else off and I suppose that was enough for me to bury it. Who knows. I was pretty quick to pass judgment and often it was brutal, and as I've found out in hindsight my loss. The band would keep dropping albums I more or less ignored ... okay it was more but I'm trying to soften my ambivalence. When they dropped "She Ain't Pretty" I had to admit it was catchy, but the little hairs on my neck didn't s...

As a kid I'd belt out "All By Myself" whenever I heard Eric Carmen's song come on the radio. It was a huge song ... at least to me. For a long time that was all I knew about him. I was a product of AM radio and unless my older cousins or my cool Aunt and Uncle had it I was stuck in that tiny bubble.  The first time I saw a Raspberries record I was at my buddy Andy's apartment in the mid '80s and was sitting on the floor looking through his voluminous collection. Andy was a couple of years older than I was and back then he was on the local co-op radio doing his thing. The station didn't have a lot of bandwidth and I couldn't get it out in the suburbs, so I never got to hear him and his dulcet tones. Andy was cool, had a cool voice, and a cool record collection. He loved The Grateful Dead, Michael Nesmith, and thought commercial music was a cancer. His girlfriend, and one of my closest friends Lori and I happened to think Starship's "We Built Th...