I surmise that it's one of those "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" things. Ever since I started investigating Joan Armatrading's music last November I've found one of her CDs and two LPs at local thrift stores, not to mention the .99-cent CD I ordered online from amazon.com that just arrived last week. So here's her 1985 LP Secret Secrets, a true product of the 1980s with production by Mike Howlett, best known for producing all of A Flock of Seagulls' hits in addition to some of OMD's artier early work like "Enola Gay." This was probably a big deal back then, and as a result the arrangements sound like a collision between Spandau Ballet and Simple Minds with tons of reverb. Depending on how much of a purist you are will determine your appreciation of it, and being an '80s aficionado I love how the synths accentuate "Moves" and "One Night." The most beautiful track, however, is "Love By You," where Armatrading's only accompaniment is Joe Jackson's piano pinging out one of the most gorgeous melodies I have ever heard. The only single from it was "Temptation," which hit a lowly #65 in the UK. If she had released "Talking to the Wall," she probably could've hit on the then-just-emerging Sade smooth jazz/snooze jazz market, because that's what it sounds like, making it the worst track here. Otherwise, an album not deserving a status of secrecy. Grade: B+
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I really expected more from Elvis Costello's 2015 memoir Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. I'm a huge fan of the artist, and after reading the exhaustive liner notes accompanying each of his reissue CDs that that thoroughly pick apart the albums song by song, well, I didn't really think this book would be so dull. I guess Costello's just getting old, or it's a British thing to ramble on and on about your family tree, but the only part of the beginning I really found interesting was how his father, a jazz singer, received acetates of the latest Beatles songs before they were hits so he could learn them for performances. The chapter about composing with Paul McCartney is almost worth the book's price, but too much of Unfaithful reads like a list of all the famous musicians he's met. "Look how hip I was then, I hung out with Joe Strummer!" "I'm cool now too, I sat next to Destiny's Child at the Grammies!" "I had a Polaroid taken with Aretha Franklin!" And speaking of African-American icons, he's not giving us any details about the infamous 1979 Ray Charles incident. Too bad, that story would've been a lot more interesting than the ones that made the cut, many of which should've been printed on disappearing ink. Totally on the other end of the spectrum is John Fogerty, a California country boy who channeled the Louisiana bayou into a string of hit records with Creedence Clearwater Revival. Why, he's so backwoods that he even describes an onslaught of creative inspiration as "the closer the horses got to the barn, the more they could smell the oats." Unlike Costello, Fogerty dishes the dirt, manure and anything else you could possibly heap on anyone in his 2015 autobiography Fortunate Son. Not only do you get the details on all his legal struggles with record exec Saul "Zanz Kant Danz" Zaentz, you learn that the rest of CCR, with the exception of his brother Tom, were so incompetent that he had to overdub backing vocals and drum parts onto the band's records to make them passable. While fascinating, this makes for a book clearly calling out for a counterpoint, but the only other voice we read is that of his wife Julie, who joins John at the end of the book to add her side of the affairs. You might find it mildly interesting to hear two sides of a "how we met" story, but eventually it just becomes a repetitive exchange of Fogerty discussing his depression countered with Julie's cheerleading "but I KNEW he could write another song, I just KNEW it!!!!" Both books:
Grade: B William Peter Blatty, best known for writing The Exorcist, died Thursday of myeloma - five days after his 89th birthday and missing Friday the 13th by one day. Blatty got lucky because his writing got a financial boost early on - he won $10,000 to finance it on Groucho Marx's TV game show You Bet Your Life in 1961. In 1964 he co-wrote the screenplay to the second live-action Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, and he was off and running. I am extremely critical of most fiction, but let me tell you The Exorcist kicks ass. My mother half-jokingly gave me her copy in the mid-'90s while I was in college, thinking I would enjoy a genuine artifact of 1970s pop culture. Damned if I didn't have that thing read in two nights, and then ran out to my local Blockbuster to rent a VHS copy of the movie, which didn't disappoint either. In Memoriam, here's a 1984 interview with Blatty and the The Exorcist cast on Good Morning America. Nice to remember a time when knowledgeable TV hosts actually did some research on their interview subjects and didn't fawn over them or adopt smug attitudes. And then on to Alpo!
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Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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