The memory is a vivid one, complete with all the clarity and sharpness that come with five decades of living in HERC's head. It was a Sunday (maybe a Saturday) in 1978 (or even 1979) and we were playing outside (or possibly in the basement) and this song just came exploding out of the speakers of Dad's stereo, all piano and drums then guitar and vocals. It flipped all of HERC's switches, even ones he didn't know he had as a newly-minted 12-year-old. "Roll With The Changes" was HERC's introduction to the music of the band who had formed in 1970 just a few towns over from where HERC lived back then.
Sometime between Thanksgiving and Chrtistmas 1980, Dad brought home
Hi Infidelity after hearing "Keep On Loving You" once or twice on WLRW, the same station that had introduced HERC to the music of REO Speedwagon a year or two before. After Christmas, the song appeared for the first of twenty or so consecutive weeks on American Top 40 including a one week stay at Number One in March 1981.
After spending the winter, spring and summer of 1981 listening heavily to Hi Infidelity and its four radio singles, HERC purchased today's featured album in the late summer, A Decade of Rock And Roll 1970-1980. The chronolgical presentation of the group's singles discography before the mega-selling Hi Infidelity uniquely displays the stylistic evolution of the group's sound as well as the continuing development of their songwriting. On the advice of a mall record store clerk, HERC's Texas Grandma bought HERC a copy of this album on cassette as a surprise in the Summer of 1982. HERC's favorite track of the nineteen on A Decade Of Rock And Roll 1970-1980 is bassist Bruce Hall's "Back On The Road Again" which he finally got to see performed live in 1985.
Listen to A Decade of Rock And Roll 1970-1980
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