6 posts tagged “80s”
I Wear the Face
1984
Their sophomore album, Welcome to the Real World, was a certifiable pillar of mid-80s AOR, but the two official albums preceding and following it were both limited-interest affairs (oddly enough, I think their unreleased fourth album, Pull, is their best).
This is by far their most cringeworthy album, and the last one I would recommend to people wanting to either get into this band, or the period. If you are a Pat Mastellotto completist, it might be worth about 12 seconds of ear time, but thats it. If you heard this, you would have no idea how the guy would eventually end up playing with the Sugarcubes, King Crimson and KTU.
he song is great, the video is enjoyably cringe-worthy. Its so low-budget, one wonders if even the set and wardrobe designers of Sylvester McCoy-era Dr. Who don't get a laugh.
Parade: Music from the Motion Picture,
Under the Cherry Moon
1986 Paisley Park/Warner Bros.
This is one of those albums that everyone and no one remembers. Everyone remembers the big hit Kiss (and if you are of a certain age, the very amusing video centered on Prince, a very odd female dancer, and Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin), but few really remember the album as a whole work. It kind of gets lost in the space between Around the World in a Day and Sign O' The Times.
This is quite unfortunate, as it had a cluster of songs that showcased and ever improving Revolution, especially Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman, who at this point were deeply involved in the arrangements, and whose impact are generally given short-shrift when one considers they may have been the true secret behind Prince's sprawling evolution in his most fertile musical period.
Apparently Parade was meant to be a double album, just as SoTT was supposed to be a triple album; this was a time when every minute not spent touring, Prince spent recording immense amounts of material. Parade was reduced to a single 41 minute teaser of what might have been. It jumps from from one motif to another, and rolls a certain bright eclecticism into musical proceedings full of psychedelica, pop, spartan funk and even a bit of cabaret.
I will also say that having heard the bands from 1986-1988 who played much of this material live, that it carries over to the stage better than much of his material prior, especially New Position and I Wonder U (was Prince the inventor of text-speak, because his typing habits have bugged me for decades). And while I stated that Kiss gets all the attention, there are a pair of tunes I felt should have been just as likely for big hit status, namely Life Can Be So Nice and Mountains. The former also gets a booby prize for having a lyric that has stuck in my head for years: No one plays the clarinet the way you play my heart (I think its the way Melvoin and Coleman do the accompanying vocals), and the latter has such a great spiralling pulse that it really sounds like it could go merrily on far longer than the 3:58 seconds it gets.
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For those who think of Naked Eyes as a Always Something There To Remind Me one-hit wonder, realize that they did chart with at least two other singles in the US, and maybe more in the UK. In this listeners opinion, When the Lights Go Out was probably the best single of their short career.
Rumors of a NE reunion were dashed a few years ago when one half of the duo passed away, but we still have those early cuts.
This would be a guilty pleasure, if I ever felt guilty about liking anything. But since I don't, it is more like a silly glimpse into the 80s. A one-hit wonder band helmed by a woman who actually wrote dozens of hits for others (including Tina Turner, Animotion, Ozzy Osbourne, Aaron Neville, Aerosmith, Pat Benetar, Scandal and even Elvira), Holly Knight.
New Order
316
A band that I really did not recognize by name until the utterly ubiquitous surreal video for True Faith was released, New Order nonetheless left a lasting impression during the 80s. I really did not appreciate the early material until seeing it live on this DVD (partially due to my lack of interest in their precursor band with the late Ian Curtis).
This DVD is divided into two main concert sections, with one from 1981 (originally the VHS only Taras Sevchenko released on the now classic and defunct Factory Records) and the other from their big 1998 Reading Festival "comeback" performance. A 25 minute interview section follows to close out the goodies.
The 1981 concert shows a band not yet too far removed from its parent, Joy Division, with an anemic cast and the kind of downward facing bandmates that make shoegazers look downright perky. But the sound quality is quite good, and it gives you a clear window into the period. It is certainly moody, and the highlight for me was (as it really always has been) Peter Hook and his rather unique approach to bass, using essentially cross-voicing with the synths to play atypical registers.
The Reading show is another animal alltogether. Gillian Gilbert and Peter Hook have taken on some weight, and the once perpetually stupored Bernard Sumner vacillates between being somewhat stoic and bursts of almost comedic posturing; he actually tells the crowd at Reading that they are there to "rock" with upraised fist, and during True Faith and Bizarre Love Triangle Sumners inept dancing, which is not as entertaining as Ian Curtis's seizure-like moves, makes you wonder what middle age has done to the lad. Hook still sounds excellent, bass slung low and often getting down into various planting poses as his lines chug and clunk about (his style is still jerky, but always obscured by his heavy use of chorus pedals and sliding around the neck). Stephen Morris is still the guy who looks like his playing is inspired by petit-mal convulsions, but someone has to actually move around a bit, so it may as well be him. They run through a stack of the hits, from Regret to Blue Monday, with the best of the JD cuts being possibly Isolation.
Reading runs through all the hits, but also gives the bonus that for the first time since their inauguration as New Order, they play three Joy Division songs, which Sumner explains as being due to the fact that they finally felt that they had established themselves enough that they would not be seen as using Joy Division material as a crutch for any inadequacies of their own. They do the material justice.
Bernard is quite humorous, especially when he does not mean to be, as when he states laconically "I'm not really an extrovert" , which for most people familiar with JD or NO, the resounding reply would be a giant "DUH". There is also some odd interview footage referencing some of their videos, which in some cases were quite amusing (anyone remember their hair metal spoof? Not in the US, because the video couldn't get played). Gilbert and Morris are practically mutes with Sumner and Hook taking the bulk of the interview duties, and thats ok, as when they do speak there is not much animation or substantive point to their short contributions.
This is all and all a good buy or rental for whomever wants to wax nostalgic or wants to get familiar with one of the stalwart outfits of the 80s andearly 90s.
