There is a calming effect that comes over you when you listen to a Laurie Anderson song. “From The Air”is no exception. Her soothing voice walks you through the harrowing experience of a plane that is about to crash. A performance artist usually doesn’t get a major record label contract, but LaurieAnderson isn’t your typical street minstrel either. “O Superman” was a moderate college radio hit fromthis debut album,and was a regular late-night cable rock video staple. Currently she has collaborated with herlong time partner Lou Reed on a number of projects.
Love Over Gold is arguably the most underrated album of Dire Straits career.The record is loaded with a number of longer, more relaxed songs, but today’s track, “Industrial Disease,” is a mover and a shaker filled with Mark Knopfler’s quirky ramblings.From a man of many obtuse lyrics, this song sets the standard!
One of the leading lights of the British reggae scene that blossomed in the wake of Bob Marley’s international success, Steel Pulse hailed from the hardscrabble streets of Handsworth, in Birmingham. The band’s defiant Rastafarian outlook meshed well with England’s growing punk movement, and Steel Pulse’s reputation climbed on the strength of a strong live show and their first albums for Island Records. They switched labels to Elektra for 1982’s True Democracy, which became their first release to chart in America. Tracks such as “A Who Responsible?” showed that Steel Pulse could embrace accessible production (by reggae vet Karl Pitterson) without conceding any lyrical ground. With its Santana-esque guitar opening, lilting rhythm and catchy “They don’t give a damn, no” chorus, the litany of social ills rattled off by singer David Hinds could easily fly under a listener’s radar.
With the summer winds just around the corner, this sweet breeze of a track is here to remind you of a “Hot Hot Summer Day”. The Sugarhill Gang played a musically soulful part in the history of old school hip hop. From the suave raps to the spicy instruments in the background, the gentlemen from Englewood , New Jersey have strolled their way through the charts. After the dance floor hopping hit, “Rapper’s Delight” the gang dropped8th wonder, the albumfeaturing the Grandmaster Flash favorite, “Apache” and today’s funky selection.
In 1982, Ric Ocasek stepped away from The Cars to further indulge the space-age voodoo at which his more hit-oriented band could only hint. The result was the eerie Beatitude, an aural feast that left many fans reaching for their jackets to prowl its Arctic soundscapes. The cadaverous frontman was free to expound on an apocalyptic universe of “night screams and rainbows” to his electronic heart’s content. It all builds up to “Time Bomb,” a slow accumulation of synthesized shivers and sustained tension that crashes into a boiling six-string explosion punctuating the lamentations of a soul whose torment can’t be soothed by man or machine.
Change is a good thing.INXS were looking for a new direction in 1982 and hired producer Mark Opitz for their 3rd album, Shabooh Shoobah.The result was a worldwide breakthrough.After hooking up with the legendary Chris Thomas, that breakthrough became domination.So, where to now?A decade after the first collaboration, INXS again recruited Opitz, who helped them create the most diverse and arguably best album of their career.From its Eastern-flavored opener to the orchestral closer, Welcome To Wherever You Are is an album full of surprises and textures.But, it isn’t all bells & whistles all the time. The album’s true strength lies in how tight the band is.You can feel it, especially on tracks like “Wishing Well”.The deceptively simple groove slowly builds upon itself, finds its way into your brain and doesn’t let go.And, once it’s done, you find yourself wanting to hear it again.And again.
I’ve never been a big fan of retro ska, which may be why Special Beat Service was for years the only album I’d owned by The English Beat. With videos in rotation on MTV, it was the record that put the band on the brink of crossover success – from my college apartment just off frat row, I could often hear this disc blasting away at nearby parties. Not this song in particular, of course; the Greeks generally favor more raucous material than the mannered, mid-tempo “She’s Going.” As you’d expect of a band also favored by Mods, there’s not a hair out of place in this performance — sharp vocal and instrumental lines weave in and out of the sonic traffic like a fleet of Vespas. Unfortunately the band splintered shortly after Special Beat Service, and while Dave Wakeling might have gone on to bigger successes, I’d trade a thousand General Public records for a fourth English Beat album…
Nestled unobtrusively at the tail end of Side One of Van Morrison’s quietly intense Beautiful Vision LP stands “Cleaning Windows,” one of the oddest and most endearing paeans to music and the spirit of Van the Man’s long, strange journey into the mystic. Morrison must have enjoyed a good chuckle when his muse dropped the unlikely image of a window cleaner as spiritual seeker; he’s just a happy workingman in his prime, keeping the view clear. Against a sprightly, loping backbeat, Morrison sounds almost giddy as he calls on the ghosts of Jimmy Rogers, Leadbelly, Jack Kerouac, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, all the while watching the skies for signs. There are more intense and more bizarre tunes in Morrison’s canon, but not many as joyous and carefree as this one.
The playwright Anton Chekhov insisted that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. And much like in one of his plays, The Roches are three sisters looking for meaning in the modern world. This super-cool closer from their third release adds album producer Robert Fripp and his King Crimson bandmates Tony Levin and Bill Bruford. The Roches handle the acoustic side of things. Their vocal acrobatics and trademark harmonies sit perfectly atop the electric soundscape generated by their guest trio in what almost feels like a perfect mash-up created decades before such a thing existed. Folk-prog, anyone? Suzzy-tronics? Well, whatever you want to call it, it works. Perfectly.
You can thank a British tagger for inspiring one of the most drop-dead gorgeous creations by Mark Knopfler and Co. While living in the Deptford area of southwest London, Mark noticed this graffiti on a wall: “Love Over Gold.” The words stuck with him over the years, until he eventually used them in a tribute to a girl he knew who—as he put it—“seemed to be living two feet away from an accident all the time . . . living on kind of an edge.” As far as personally choosing love over gold, Mark talked it and walked it: He refused his record company’s demand’s to edit the album’s opening track, “Telegraph Road,” down from 14 minutes to five so they could sell more singles. Even in this economy, it’s still an easy choice.
Coming from their highly criticized 1982 record Hot Space (too much disco and pop, not enough rock and pomp), this is Queen blasting out a power pop classic that is all sweet hook and clever musicianship, not to mention a few witty production tricks from a guy simply called Mack (Billy Squier’s Don’t Say No, Sparks’ Angst In My Pants). The chiming 12-string acoustic that opens this readies you for a great candy-floss moment, and these four guys deliver it with such glee it got me up and giddy, dancing like a mad kid on a sing-along high. That’s my kind of party.
There’s a saying in south Florida that it rains at least once a day for 15 minutes, but after that, the weather is always beautiful. It’s how you know you’re in the tropics. When I get caught in a sunshower like that, especially down in Miami (where most of my wife’s family lives), Donald Fagen’s “Walk Between The Raindrops” always runs through my head, particularly when I’m caught in the rain with her. Simply, this is one of the most romantic songs one of modern pop music’s reigning cynics ever wrote. I mean, what’s more romantic than sharing an umbrella in a sudden storm?
