Terence Boylan? Never Heard of Him...

Working at a record store for a number of years had many advantages, one of which was exposure to way more artists that radio could ever play.

Today's example: Terence Boylan. You've probably never heard of him, and I only did because I got a promo copy of his first album. I liked it well enough, liked his second "Suzy" even better. After 1980, he fell off my radar, but he worked on film music and made demos on his own. "Terence Boylan" was released in 1999, and it includes most of his first album, half of his second, and 3 or 4 new songs that fit right in.

Many albums in the late 70s featured a lot of the same studio musicians and guest stars, so Little Feat started sounding like the Doobie Brothers who started sounding like Steely Dan. Terence Boylan drew from the same stock characters, but his songs always were a bit more East Coast Urban rather than Southern California Cosmic Cowboy. And I enjoyed his slightly more sophisticated lyrics. One of my favorites was referring to a college girl returning from summer vacation "brown as a banged-up peach". And then there's the one that quoted T.S. Eliot -- well, this English major was smitten.

 

I've been weeding my collection more earnestly lately; as I get older, I just don't have time for third-rate music.  Terence Boylan never made it out of the singer-songwriter ghetto, but I've always enjoyed his work, and I'm still finding new things in the production and musicianship. And one song features a Chevy Chase Fender Rhodes solo!