Gregory Abbott - I’ll Prove It to You (1988)
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Hello, ladies. Are you ready to be shaken down?

Don’t get excited — this album does not contain Gregory’s superfine hit, “Shake You Down.” Nope, this is the follow-up, released two years later, a span of time you’d think would have been brief enough to leave Abbott’s freshly shaken audience mostly intact. Nope! In a fascinating example of the way pop’s fickle winds can quickly turn from summer breeze to bitter wintry chill, the defensively titled I’ll Prove It to You crapped out at #132 on the Billboard Top 200 in the summer of ‘88 — and Abbott wouldn’t release another album for six more years, when he returned on what I can only assume was his own label with One World! (containing! A live version! Of “Shake You Down”!)

Wait, did someone say “Shake You Down”? (more…)

Living in a Box - Gatecrashing (1989)
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All right, show of hands — how many of you have ever wondered what an album of Rick Astley B-sides would sound like?

Well, whether you raised your hand or not, here’s your answer: Living in a Box’s second album, 1989’s Gatecrashing. Hooray, right?

No? Anybody?

All right, fine. But we’re still going to talk about this album — no matter how hard we have to try to come up with something interesting to say. Gatecrashing’s cutout runs so deep that not even the All Music Guide bothered to review it (or upload the album artwork). I even cheated a little, and hit up some of my fellow Popdosers for their feedback. As you can see, cheaters never prosper:

Q: Do any of you have anything to say about Living in a Box?

Will: All I can say is that when your most memorable song on your debut is the one you’ve named yourself after, do you really need a second album?

David: Not really, except that I thought the song “Living in a Box” was okay.

John: Just that they were Living in a Box with the single, “Living in a Box,” from the album Living in a Box. A cardboard box. (more…)

Dan Hill - Real Love (1989)
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Mmmmm. Can you smell that? Nothing says “cutout” like “a Dan Hill album from 1989,” does it? It’s almost like Dan was thinking about this series when he took Columbia’s money 19 years ago. Or when he took pretty much any label’s money at any point, really; our man Hill has been making records for more than three decades — 11 studio albums, if I’m looking at a correct account — and I’m not sure any of them are in print outside his native Canada. In fact, I’m betting most of you are looking at Hill’s name and saying “Who?” while the remaining 10% are saying “Have we really stooped this low?”

I take offense at that second question, mostly because we’ve always been this low, but also because, for a guy who recorded a whole bunch of incredibly bland pop ballads, Dan Hill is really sort of fascinating.

For starters, Hill’s dad is Daniel G. Hill, the Canadian sociologist and civil rights activist who founded the Ontario Black History Society, has been awarded the Order of Ontario, has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and was the first full-time director of the ontario Human Rights Commission. Dan’s brother, author Lawrence Hill, has written a number of important books, among them his 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada, as well as his collaboration with United States Army soldier Joshua Key, The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.

Okay, so admittedly, the fascinating bits of Hill’s background really don’t have much to do with him, and compared with other members of his family, his career accomplishments are really sort of lame — but he’s still far from your garden-variety AC singer. (more…)

Various Artists - Largo (1998)
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Before telling you how much I love this album, and how I’ve hung onto it since stumbling across it in a used bin in the spring of ‘98, I will tell you what it is:

1. A full-length tribute to Antonin Dvorak’s From the New World.
2. Mostly written by Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, also known as the creative engine that drives the Hooters.
3. Featuring special guests including Cyndi Lauper and Joan Osborne.

So now that I’ve gotten that out of the way — and you’re probably thinking this is something you’d never want to hear — let’s talk about why Largo is better than it has any right to be. Let’s talk, first, about Dvorak. For the sake of making things easy for me, I’ll assume you know nothing at all about nineteenth-century classical composers, and begin by telling you that Dvorak was one. Specifically, he was a Czech nineteenth-century classical composer, which makes him seem like a bit of an odd choice for a ’90s pop tribute, but appearances can be deceiving. (more…)

Oran “Juice” Jones - To Be Immortal (1989)
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For the first time since starting this series, I’m not sure if “cutout” is sufficient to describe the level of commercial failure achieved by the title we’re discussing. Honest show of hands: how many of you have never heard of Oran “Juice” Jones? How many of you think I might actually be making him up?

I thought so.

Well, here’s the good news: Oran “Juice” Jones is real, and he actually had a hit. (more…)

Susanna Hoffs - When You’re a Boy (1991)
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As longtime readers of this space are no doubt aware, I have a severe weakness for Susanna Hoffs, quite possibly as a result of having won tickets to a stop on the Bangles’ Different Light tour, and thus being exposed to dangerously high levels of Hoffs rays at the tender age of eleven.

Anyway, I admit that I will use just about any excuse to write about the doe-eyed Bangle, but today it isn’t my fault — I was all set to write about Club Nouveau’s Listen to the Message, which was totally a cutout the last time I looked, but it turns out that the stupid Amazon MP3 store is selling it as a download.

I believe I was bitching about this exact phenomenon last week, was I not? Before long, we’ll be stuck writing about Wesley Willis fanclub releases. Everything else will be back in print.

Until then, friends, we’ve got When You’re a Boy. (more…)

Various Artists - Dragnet Original Soundtrack (1987)
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You know, writing about cutouts in the digital age is more difficult than it looks. Not a week goes by that some knucklehead doesn’t decide to start up a reissue label, hoping to license crappy old records on the cheap and siphon mythical big bucks out of niche markets. (For instance, as we discovered last week, both the Village People’s Rendezvous and The Ethel Merman Disco Album are in print.) To find an album that’s both out of print and worth writing about is easier said than done. (For instance, I’ve had a copy of the last Quarterflash album in the Cutouts Gone Wild! on-deck circle for close to a year.)

But this? This, friends, is the magic fucking bullet. Today we gather to discuss an album that will never be in print so long as Tom Hanks, or any of his heirs, walk the earth.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Dragnet soundtrack. (more…)

New Monkees - New Monkees (1987)
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When all is said and done, the 1980s may not go down as the decade with the highest per-capita quotient of misbegotten sequels — it was the rise of the direct-to-video market in the ’90s, after all, that brought us films such as The Stepfather 3 and The Land Before Time MLXLM — but still, it’s hard to discount the era that brought us Smokey and the Bandit III, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

And who can forget the New Monkees?

Oh, right. Everybody. (more…)

Howard Jones - In the Running (1992)
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To type these words pains me more deeply than words can say, but it’s altogether likely that many of you aren’t — urgh — old enough to remember when Howard Jones was a commercial force to be reckoned with. Indeed, you may scoff at the notion of a Top 10 artist who got his start backing up a mime, or the idea that anyone named Howard could ever be a rock star. This is understandable, but the charts don’t lie — between, say, ‘84 and ‘89, the synth-loving HoJo was all over the radio, thanks to the sticky pop hooks embedded in oh-so-sensitive singles such as “No One Is to Blame” and “Everlasting Love.”

Then came the ’90s, and the dawn of the Nirvanazoic Era, and all wimpy keyboard-toting singer/songwriters promptly died. Howard apparently missed the memo, however, and issued what was to be his major-label swan song, In the Running, in 1992. I hope I won’t be spoiling the ending for you if I tell you that the album was not a hit. (more…)

Mr. Mister - I Wear the Face (1983)
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Well, well, well. If it isn’t Mr. Mister.

First things first: I have to give credit where it’s due here — if it weren’t for the impassioned words of our pal Kurt, who favorably compared the Misters to XTC in an old Chartburn, I might never have realized I had a copy of this fossil on my shelf. In fact, I probably would have gone the rest of my life without listening to it again.

Wait, did I say “give credit”? I think I meant “lay blame.” (more…)