Retro Video of the Week: "Angel Eyes" by The Jeff Healey Band

This week's Retro Video of the Week was a tough choice because there are a lot of great albums featuring huge hits that were released this week on various five-year anniversaries between 20 and 25 years ago -- Huey Lewis & The News's Sports, UB40's Labour of Love, Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, to name a few.  The problem is that I've already had a few Huey Lewis videos (including "I Want a New Drug" off of Sports) as Retro Videos of the Week, and I've also had "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf -- arguably the greatest song ever made.  I would go with "Red Red Wine" by UB40, but Labour of Love was released in 1983, and that song freakishly became popular several years later, so it's not really an apt anniversary.

So what are we left with?  The Jeff Healey Band's debut album, See The Light, which was released 30 years ago tomorrow.  In case you don't remember him, the late Jeff Healey was a blind Canadian guitar player, which makes the title of the album somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but then again Canadians are generally funny like that.  Healey was blind since he was about one, after both his eyes had to be removed due to cancer (he received prosthetic eyes, presumably so others didn't think he was a ghoul).  He began playing the guitar at three, and he played the guitar on his lap, almost like a steel guitar.

See The Light was the band's highest-charting album in the U.S., reaching #22 on the Billboard 200 album charts, and it spawned the band's biggest hit, "Angel Eyes," which went all the way up to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- the band's only Top 40 hit in the U.S. (although they had 11 Top 40 songs on the Canadian charts).

Of course, you may remember The Jeff Healey Band as the Double Deuce's house band in Road House -- inarguably the greatest Patrick Swayze movie ever made.  To paraphrase Dalton, Healey plays pretty good for a blind white boy.  Here's the video for "Angel Eyes."