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!
George Michael died today at 53. Never was a big fan of most of his solo career, but his work with Wham! generated pop classics in "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," "Freedom" and "Last Christmas." I noted in my book Cannibals and Vixens that I consider the duo's second album, Make It Big, to be a lost classic of the 1980s. Wham!'s "Freedom" is my favorite Michael composition with its Motown beat, that "doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-n-doo" backing vocal arrangement and the lyrical put-down "You can drag me to Hell and back/ Just as long as we're together/ And you do." And here's his solo version of Wham!'s chart-topper "Everything She Wants."
Thanks to the Wonder Weird YouTube channel, here's a collection of toys you probably didn't get for Christmas... I'll start with Monkey's Uncle, probably not the best idea for the child with ADD. Ice Bird is actually cute, but I guess it wasn't successful. Probably couldn't compete with the Snoopy Sno-Cone Maker. I think I had the camping set from this Fisher-Price toy line, which came with a camper, plastic fire, picnic table, and a male doll whose body I used to delight in smashing into the camper's folding awning. It's too bad I wasn't old enough for this one, as I would've been 2 in 1977 - I would've really enjoyed having a TV news reporter playset. It's a really creative idea, but I guess it didn't catch on, as I never remember seeing it. It's The Gwen Ifill Action Figure! One of my favorite Christmas presents was my Atari 2600. I'm guessing this ad came from when its popularity was waning. Grab up that Journey game, kids, before they bury the excess inventory in a New Mexico landfill!! Finally, aren't you glad some Australian ad agency had the creative spark to visualize
Ms. Pac-Man in live action form? Greg Lake, the bass-playing "Lake" in prog trio Emerson, Lake and Palmer died Wednesday of cancer at 69. In tribute, here's ELP's "Pirates" and "Heat of the Moment" from his brief stint as an Asia member from that band's "Asia In Asia" 1983 concert in Tokyo.
This is my current favorite song. I thought Joan Armatrading did nothing but boring folkie crap until I found this New Wave-edged tune on one of a bunch of Midnight Special compilation DVDs I bought at a recent library book sale. It almost sounds like a whiny, petulant child's temper tantrum at times, but the lyrics are totally me, except that I do love myself and that the only person I want to see everyday is my girlfriend. I wanna be by myself
I came in this world alone Just me myself I So...here's where we were 40 years ago, celebrating Thanksgiving 1976: Back then, PBS used to show a variety of children's programs created by their affiliates across the US. Here's a Thanksgiving contribution from St. Louis' KETC, a little show called Celebrate. Notice that the cat-like puppet's name is Doodle, preceding Sprout's Noodle & Doodle by 35-odd years, except their Noodle doesn't have crooked eyes and an odd sideways overbite. Or a chef that burns the sweet potato. However, Sprout doesn't have any attractive blondes in tight turtlenecks, either. Here's Celebrate. Happy Thanksgiving!
Today marks the 55th anniversary of the 1961 date when Liverpool record store owner Brian Epstein visited the Cavern Club during lunchtime to hear a rock band performing there called The Beatles. Epstein ran NEMS (North End Music Store) in Liverpool, and had been alerted to the band's existence after two separate incidents in the two weeks preceding when a man, followed by two girls three days later, asked for a recording of the Beatles' performance of "My Bonnie" that was recorded in Hamburg. Epstein, who prided himself on keeping his record store well stocked with unusual releases, was astonished he did not know of the group's existence and tracked them down at the club. Here's his remembrance of the event from a 1964 interview: "They were rather scruffily dressed - in the nicest possible way or, I should say, in the most attractive way: black leather jackets and jeans, long hair of course. And they had a rather untidy stage presentation, not terribly aware, and not caring very much, what they looked like. I think they cared more even then for what they sounded like. I immediately liked what I heard. They were fresh and they were honest, and they had what I thought was a sort of presence and, this is a terribly vague term, star quality. Whatever that is, they had it, or I sensed that they had it." After catching a few more performances throughout the month, he would eventually meet The Beatles for the first time on Dec. 3, and a contract was eventually signed on Jan. 24, 1962. Here's a sample of what Epstein might have heard that day.
This week marks the 35th anniversary of the debut of one of the oddest singles ever to chart: a medley of classical snippets set to a disco beat titled "Hooked on Classics." The Royal Philharmonic's single came in the middle of a craze for medleys containing snippets of well-known tunes that began in the summer of 1981 when the Dutch act Stars on 45's medley of cover versions of 1960s oldies - mostly by the Beatles - interrupted the chart-topping run of Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" for one week in June. This was followed by a medley of Beach Boys hits performed by the act themselves titled - what else? - "The Beach Boys Medley" that placed in the Top 20. That collection was slipping down the Top 100 when the Royal Philharmonic's "Hooked on Classics" debuted at a lowly #90. However, the single would eventually reach a crescendo peak of #10 in January 1982, while the album of the same name placing in the Top 5, wedged between the Rolling Stones and Foreigner. It would eventually sell 1 million copies, but its pop instincts were probably assured seeing that the orchestra's leader Louis Clark had already crafted string arrangement for t Electric Light Orchestra. The single medley craze would last a little while longer, with Larry Elgart's swing medley and a movie theme medley created by Meco (of the disco Star Wars theme fame) reaching the bottom of the Top 40 in 1982. The last one to make any decent chart showing was by The Beatles themselves, with the hastily edited "The Beatles Movie Medley" reaching #12 despite a sloppy inability to even match the songs' beats. By the end of summer 1982, the medley craze had drifted away to be largely forgotten, although the Royal Philharmonic's single and accompanying album does contain a degree of craftsmanship and fun that still makes it listenable today. Here, then, is the original single version of "Hooked on Classics" with a video made for the UK TV show Top of the Pops. For comparison, here's the dance mix which is closer to the longer, uncut version on the album.
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Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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