Chuck Mangione - Love Notes (1982)
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In all the months since Jefitoblog bit the dust, I don’t think a week has gone by that I haven’t received some kind of communication from a distressed former reader, wondering if and when the site would be coming back.

Well, friends, we’re back together again. This is what you’ve been waiting for: Chuck Mangione! Right in your ear! Ha ha ha! Was it worth the wait?

Mangione has actually undergone a sort of rebirth since the mid-to-late ’90s, thanks to his appearances on King of the Hill, as well as the fact that he performed “Feels So Good,” also known as “The Greatest Smooth Jazz Song of All Time, Ever,” a song so good it very nearly validates the existence of smooth jazz. But not quite. (more…)

Cheryl Lynn - Start Over (1987)
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My wife and daughter went out of town a few weeks ago, leaving me alone in the house to do what I normally do when they aren’t here, which is write a lot, eat a lot of bad food, and watch hours and hours of horrible television — which is how I wound up sprawled in front of the TV one night, watching VH1’s 500,000 Most Awesomely Awesome One-Hit Wonders or whatever it’s called, which is how I finally learned that Cheryl Lynn got her start on The Gong Show.

Right now, you’re probably either saying “Pshaw! Who didn’t know that?” or “Who the hell is Cheryl Lynn?” I’m only answering the latter question. You know Cheryl Lynn’s music, even if you think you don’t; there isn’t a person on this planet who hasn’t heard her defining hit, “Got to Be Real.” Seriously, even Tibetan root farmers could probably sing along with it, and if you don’t believe me, check out this Soul Train footage:

See? I told you. Great song, right? And you’ve heard it thousands of times.As you’ve probably guessed by now, Cheryl’s career took a bit of a downward turn after “Got to Be Real.” Lynn bios tend to focus on the “R&B hits” and “other successes” she enjoyed, but really, she ended up on VH1’s Big Fat Assload of One-Hit Wonders for a reason. By 1987, she was reduced to titling her seventh album Start Over, even though Over would have sufficed. And hey, it just so happens that I’ve had a copy for years and years, so why not listen to it?

I’ll tell you why: It sucks.

It’s important for me to say here that Cheryl Lynn is a vocalist of monstrous talent, and the way she’s been underrated and neglected is really one of the music industry’s more egregious failures. Even the best singer is only as good as her worst material, though, and lordy, these are some weak songs. I don’t know who EMI put in charge of finding tracks for this album, but they should have been fired, after being beaten with the limp body of the person who designed the cover.

God, that cover. Even on her best day, Lynn was never exactly overflowing with sex appeal, but this looks like the product of a Glamour Shotâ„¢ session arranged to cheer up a receptionist after her second divorce. And the wardrobe, even for 1987, is appalling — it looks like her jacket and earrings are fighting over who will swallow her head first. The whole thing hurts to look at.

The songs, fortunately, are better than the cover, but they don’t have as much personality, and the production renders them all anonymous; Start Over is shellacked with that slick, mechanical sound we all remember from ’80s R&B albums. Synth after synth after synth. To her credit, Lynn never stops trying to rise above the material; she’s in fine voice throughout the record, and the album is dotted with little touches of her personality. The net effect is sort of heartbreaking, but whatever; her vocals are still a pleasure to listen to.

Anyway, get a load of this stuff. “New Dress” (download) sounds like the soundtrack to the opening montage in a crappy Blake Edwards movie. “Don’t Bury Me” (download) finds Lynn doing a spoken-word vamp at the end to say — I’m not kidding — “If you bury me, you’ll be burying mounds of pleasure.” “Don’t Run Away” (download), her reunion with “Got to Be Real” producer/co-writer David Paich, features some unfortunate synths, not to mention one of the least interesting drum tracks Jeff Porcaro ever committed to tape. (Seriously, I’m not convinced they’re real drums.) And the title track (download), God bless it, features a synth harp, and sounds like the soundtrack to the big slow dance scene in a crappy Blake Edwards movie.

She’s released a pair of albums since Start Over, neither of which I’ve heard, which I imagine puts me in some pretty good company. She’s apparently a pretty solid live draw in Japan, however, and don’t count her out for a second act — she’s still a ferociously talented singer, and a new album is supposedly just around the corner.

Paul Shaffer - Coast to Coast (1989)
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The following was reproduced, unaltered, from this album’s booklet:

Here was the idea: that for one year, every time I had a weekend off, I would fly to one of the musical centers of the U.S.A., to one of the towns from which had emanated the music that shaped my life; and in each town I would get with my favorite friends (my favorite mentors, actually), and we would hang, party out, and make a song together — this can’t be a bad time!

So where’s the party? I started in MIAMI, looked up K.C. (he still “gets down” each night), and he started me on the coast to coast groove. NEW ORLEANS never closes, especially if you know Toussaint: when we got together, fun was number one. I met with Brian Wilson in his hot tub (no kidding), and we decided to write a song. Then when Dick Dale, Walsh and Satriani showed up, the L.A. surfin’ guitar hootenanny really kicked in.

I approached the emperor of soul, Covay, to do MEMPHIS justice. He pulled in Cropper, and we set about reassembling the legendary Soul Clan — Pickett, Womack, Ben E. — talk about a function!

DETROIT — what if I gave a party for George Clinton and the P-Funk kids and invited Valerie Simpson — wouldn’t that be Motortown meets Sci-Fi — the party event of the year.

MINNEAPOLIS, the veritable center of garage rock of the ’60s, sure became the purple party center now. Maybe Z and I could give an old song the new funk.

In the NEW YORK street, doo-wop then, hip-hop now, ain’t nothin’ but a party — Dion, Carole, the Fresh Prince, Ecstasy — they can tell you that. And don’t forget the World’s Most Dangerous Band and that Late Night groove those boys throw down, then hit CHICAGO for a live jam session with some blues greats and a cat from Newcastle — there’s the sad blues and the party blues.

Anyway, eight cities, ten songs — join the party — already in progress.

Translation: Capitol gave Paul Shaffer enough money to pay a bunch of his buddies triple scale, so he invited everyone he could think of and made a record stuffed to the gills with special guests. An old-fashioned party album, in other words — pretty much what you’d expect from a guy who had been hobnobbing with the world’s best-known musicians for over a decade.

And it flopped. It flopped hard. Didn’t even register on Billboard’s Top 200. It wasn’t just consumers who weren’t interested in Coast to Coast — critics peed all over it too. Shaffer (or, as I like to call him, “The Shafe”) didn’t take it sitting down; I remember him saying that the people who didn’t like the record thought they were “too cool for the room.”

Looking back, I sort of agree with Shaffer. This album isn’t perfect, or even a work of art, but it’s fun, in a glossy late ’80s way — and in spots, it’s even sort of incredible. Take, for instance, the leadoff track and first single, “When the Radio Is On” (download), which features lead vocals from The Shafe, rapping from the Fresh Prince, and background vocals from Dion and Carole King. What. The. Fuck.

How was this not a hit? Capitol was awash with the proceeds from two years of Richard Marx hits, and yet they couldn’t paper this song onto the charts?

The record only gets stranger from there. I bitched last year about Elvis Costello hogging the lead vocals on his album of “duets” with Allen Toussaint, but now that I’ve heard “One Cup of Coffee,” with Shaffer singing lead and Toussaint relegated to piano and backgrounds, I’m forced to amend my complaint. Again: What. The. Fuck.

And then there’s “What Is Soul” (download), which features the following credit:

Vocals (in order of appearance): Paul Shaffer, Ben E. King, Bobby Womack, Wilson Pickett, Don Covay

Shafe. Look. I know it’s your name on top of the booklet, and I know you wrote the song with Covay and Steve Cropper, but if Womack, Pickett, and King are singing about what soul is, it’s time for you to step away from the microphone. Quickly.

The title track (download), as promised, is a duet between Shaffer and Harry Wayne “KC” Casey, of the Sunshine Band. It features appearances by Clivillés and Cole, not to mention a rap from Freedom Williams, making this the album that introduced the world to C+C Music Factory.

Whathefuckwhathefuckwhathefuck.

Deeper into the rabbit hole we go on the next song. “Metal Beach” (download), the Brian Wilson cowrite, is a mentally ill blend of seemingly every A-list musician who happened to be in the 213 area code when it was recorded. Swear to God. Check it out:

Guitars: Dick Dale, Joe Satriani, Joe Walsh
Saxophone: “Teenage” Steve Douglas
Hi-hat cymbal: Mick Fleetwood
Percussion: Brian Wilson

Not to mention the spoken intro from Eugene Landy. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathefuck.

This is unfortunately where the album runs out of guest-star mojo. The next few cuts feature appearances from Eric Burdon, Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy, Valerie Simpson, and George Clinton, but none of them are as delightfully insane as what’s come before. If you don’t count a terrible version of “Louie Louie,” the rest of Coast to Coast is fairly normal. Even the Shafe only has so many names on his Rolodex, I guess.

Long story short: This album is available for less than five dollars, with shipping, from various Amazon sellers. It’s worth picking up, for no other reason than having it around to play at parties, or perhaps having the cover art framed. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

Aretha Franklin - Aretha (1986)
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Often, when researching potential albums for this column — yes, I do research; quit laughing, fuckers — I’m surprised by what’s in print. (I’m looking at you, Taylor Dayne’s Soul Dancing.) This is partly due to the rise of digital outlets through which artists can “reissue” their works, as well as the neverending stream of fly-by-night reissue labels that’s forever buying rights to cult classic albums, but there’s also a longstanding tradition of spectacularly poor catalog management in the record industry.

Anyway, on quite a few occasions, I’ve taken an album down from the shelf, blown the dust off, and prepared to write a Cutouts Gone Wild! post about it, only to find it isn’t out of print. This week’s entry, however, marks the first time I’ve been shocked to discover that an album is out of print. (Not coincidentally, the album in question was released by Arista, the same bunch of goons that has continued to sell Soul Dancing.) If you’re anything like me, finding out that any of Aretha’s post-Columbia albums have slipped off the line is a little like watching Denise Richards play a nuclear physicist in The World Is Not Enough: It doesn’t compute, and it’s sort of enraging besides. Yes, Aretha has turned in more than her share of clunkers, but she’s the goddamn Queen of Soul, and even her worst music is required listening for the human race.

Well. Okay. Not her worst music. But 1986’s Aretha — Franklin’s third album with that title, and otherwise known as Aretha 3-D or Aretha III: Season of the Witch — is not her worst. Matter of fact, it’s actually quite good.

If I sound surprised, it’s because I am; I had only dim memories of this record, and most of them centered around “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” the duet with George Michael that became Franklin’s second #1 pop hit (and biggest-selling single overall). Having never been overly fond of George Michael, I’ve always sort of scoffed at “Waiting,” but listening to it now, I’m forced to admit that it’s really sort of perfect. I mean this sincerely; from a songwriting perspective, the tune almost approaches Great American Songbook levels of craft and polish. You can get it plenty of other places, so I’m not linking to it here, but why not embed the video?

I also remembered this album’s cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (download), but I’d forgotten that Keith Richards produced it, and that it’s kind of awesome. The rest of the album has no shortage of ’80s sheen, but on this track, Aretha gets to wail with an honest-to-God rock combo (most of the Stones, Chuck Leavell, and Steve Jordan, plus the Queen herself on piano). Listening to that voice frequently makes me want to weep, and this song is no exception.

Actually quite a bit of the album is admirably solid, particularly for mid ’80s R&B; aside from a pair of clunkers (the ballads “Do You Still Remember” and “If You Need My Love Tonight,” a duet with Larry Graham), it’s as good as you’d hope for a Top 20 collection that was just shy of going platinum when it was taken out of print, along with seemingly the rest of Aretha’s Arista catalog (minus Who’s Zoomin’ Who). Franklin and producer Narada Michael Walden meant to recapture the lightning they’d bottled with Zoomin’, and they succeeded — it’s a pop record, but it’s got enough of Aretha’s signature fire to elevate the material (some of which, like “Rock-A-Lott [download], would sound downright pedestrian coming out of any other vocalist).

Aretha even produces a pair of tracks (and thanks herself for it in the liner notes), one of which, the self-penned “He’ll Come Along” (download), is about as good as mainstream soul music got in the ’80s. Hell, even Andy Warhol got in on the fun — the album’s cover art was apparently his last commissioned work.

Her renaissance was short-lived — 1989’s Through the Storm was a half-hearted piece of product, and the less said about 1991’s embarrassingly titled What You See Is What You Sweat, the better — but she scored another gold record at the tail end of the ’90s, and I wouldn’t rule her out for more; she’s apparently working on a new album, to be released by her own label, the humbly named Aretha Records. Perhaps she’ll rectify this travesty of musical justice by reissuing those Arista albums her own damn self.

Pointer Sisters - Hot Together (1986)
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To my generation, the Pointer Sisters were an act that leapt fully formed out of the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack; we knew their mid ’80s hits, from that album and 1983’s genre-crushing bajillion-seller Break Out, but we had no idea that, by the time that album was released, the Sisters had been making music — and hit songs — for a decade. (Not that we would have known what to do with their early records even if we’d heard them; for Izod-sporting New Edition fans, the comedown from “Neutron Dance” to “Yes We Can Can” might have been significant.)

Anyway, the point is this: By 1986, the Pointers were all but finished as recording artists of any commercial significance — a harsh, undignified end to a recording career whose momentum was built as slowly and savvily as anyone could have hoped or planned. Coming a mere three years after Break Out’s release (and only two years after its singles were all over the charts), Hot Together was essentially a non-starter. Sure, it peaked in the Top 40 (barely) and spun off a medium-sized R&B hit in “Goldmine” (download), but these were whimpers from an act that had recently seemed unstoppable.

What gives? Does Hot Together suck? Much as I’d love to say yes — these posts are always so much more fun to write when there’s snark to be had — it really doesn’t. It isn’t what you’d call a distinguished record (egad, just look at that cover), but the Sisters and producer Richard Perry knew exactly what they were doing, and the players — including Nathan East, Glen Ballard, Jeff Lorber, and Robbie Nevil — were session aces. Songs like “All I Know Is the Way I Feel” (download) and “Sexual Power” (download) might not show the trio at its absolute best, but for ’80s R&B, you can’t ask for much more.

I think it’s R&B itself that was the problem, actually. Every genre is a harsh mistress, when you get right down to it, but R&B and hip-hop careers tend to run hot and cold faster than most, and those musical forms allow for reinvention less often than rock & roll. By the time Hot Together came out, kids were hearing the first strains of New Jack Swing, and acts like the Pointer Sisters seemed quaint by comparison. More importantly, they couldn’t adapt to the new trends without sounding awkward (as subsequent releases would prove, painfully and irrefutably).

This post wouldn’t be complete without a Pinball Number Count video:

…or a link to Jason’s infamous “Mr. Pointer” gag. But that’s really all I’m going to say about the Pointer Sisters. Their story gets sad (and sadder) from here on out, and I’d rather remember them half-clothed in a shower stall (except for Ruth — she scares me) than talk about what came next. (If you’re curious, the Pointers’ Wikipedia entry is impressively comprehensive.)

Billy Ocean - Tear Down These Walls (1988)
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Oh, Billy Ocean. How is it we’re just now getting to you?

Wait, I know — I fucking hate Billy Ocean’s shitty music. That’s how. If that sounds harsh, I don’t care; I still bear the psychic scars of “Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run),” “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Shit Your Pants in Frustration),” and “When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Use Parentheticals,” along with the rest of Ocean’s unbelievable seven Top Ten hits during the ’80s. (Jason, who calls him “William F. Ocean,” has written about three of them, and he likes them all. There’s no accounting for taste. Check ‘em out here.)

This album, thankfully, represented the end of the platinum-bricked road for Billy Ocean; though it gave him his last two Top Ten hits (”The Colour of Love” and the unbelievably crappy “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car”), it peaked just inside the Top 20, and Jive could read the writing on the wall clearly enough that it released an Ocean hits collection the following year. (Billy Ocean knew it too — his next album, which took five years to finish and found him dreadlocked and working with R. Kelly, was the aptly titled Time to Move On.)

Needless to say, I panned this album when it came out, and listened to it again with extreme trepidation. There was not a single minute of the ’80s when I thought to myself, “You know, Billy Ocean isn’t so bad,” nor have I grown nostalgic for his reign of terror — and I’m the guy who can’t suppress a grin when I hear the opening strains of, say, Samantha Fox’s “Naughty Girls Need Love Too.” But here’s the thing: As much as I was prepared to hate Tear Down These Walls all over again, I did not. I found it to be exceedingly competent in a very inoffensive way — even songs such as “Gun for Hire” (download) and, oh God, “Calypso Crazy” (download), stupid as they are, don’t piss me off. And how can you do anything but marvel at the title track (download), which features the mind-boggling credit “Arranged by Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange & Teddy Riley”?

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t miss Billy Ocean. And I will almost certainly never listen to this album again. But even if it’s just the last two decades talking — decades which have given my ears far worse abuse than anything Ocean could muster — I think I’m finally ready to set aside my Billy Ocean vendetta. At least until he makes his comeback.

UPDATE: Commenter Jonah reminds us of the “Get Outta My Dreams” video, oh dear God:

Al Jarreau - Heart’s Horizon (1988)
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First of all, I love Al Jarreau. Let’s start there. And by “I love Al Jarreau” I mean I love his music, although he gives off such a blissed-out vibe that, if I ever met him, I’m sure I’d love the man. With his sweaters and his kind, reassuring smile, he’s sort of a scatting, Grammy-winning Mister Rogers. What isn’t to love?

Well, okay, there are a few things not to love. For instance, his tenth studio album, Heart’s Horizon. Jarreau had been with Warner Bros. for fifteen years in 1988, and Warners celebrated the anniversary by shunting him off onto their adult-contemporary imprint, the recently reactivated Reprise. There had always been a large AC component to Jarreau’s sound, of course, but the latter-day Reprise was home to acts such as Chicago and Christopher Cross; there’s a big difference between, say, “Mornin’” or “We’re in This Love Together” and “Look Away.” Jarreau was a few years removed from his commercial peak at this point, but the memories were still fresh enough — and Top 40 radio was still omnivorous enough — that a pop comeback didn’t seem out of the question, so when it came time to record Horizon, the requisite concessions were made.

For the purposes of this series, artistic concessions are wonderful; if nobody ever tried to fit in with a trend and failed, listening to these cutouts wouldn’t be nearly as fun. More of them would be good, actually, and their failure to find an audience would just be sad.

Shed no tears for Heart’s Horizon.

Having come this far, I should point out that all this talk of concessions and trends mildly overstates this album’s sound and direction — if you aren’t really familiar with Jarreau’s music, you’re liable not to notice much of a difference — and it also bears mentioning that even if Jarreau hadn’t scored a Top 20 pop album in half a decade, he did receive a Grammy nomination in ‘88 for his performance of the theme to Moonlighting, so it really isn’t as though his career was a mess. Still, if you are familiar with Al’s Jarroeuvre, this album’s deficiencies are immediately apparent. This (mostly quite dull) batch of songs allows him to display precious little of his charm.

Not coincidentally, the record didn’t come cheap — it was recorded in no fewer than seven studios, boasts a small army of producers, and includes session work from a cast of dozens. Seriously, the credits on this thing are as long as your arm. Here are a few of the players:

Bobby Caldwell
Bill Champlin
Stanley Clarke
Gardner Cole
Paulinho da Costa (who I think was required by law to play on every album released in 1988, but still counts)
Russell Ferrante
Tommy Funderburk
Randy Goodrum
Jerry Hey
Paul Jackson, Jr.
Bobby Kimball
Earl Klugh
Abraham Laboriel
Michael Landau
John Robinson
David Sanborn
Vonda Shepard
Kirk Whalum

You get the idea. Clearly, Jarreau could still command a decent production budget, which makes it that much more of a shame that the results aren’t more interesting. The songs are partly to blame, but the real culprit, wouldn’t you know, is the production.

Jarreau hired several producers for Heart’s Horizon, but the bulk of the record was supervised by George Duke and Jay Graydon. Duke played with Zappa, and Graydon played with David Foster, a combination which sounds bizarre enough to be awesome on paper; in reality, however, the “David Foster” side of the equation always barfs synths and drum machines all over everything else, so the end result sounds pretty much like a Peter Cetera record with a few extra teaspoons of keyboard-driven funk. An unintentionally hilarious clue as to just how square and over-produced this thing is can be found in the production credits:

* Produced by George Duke for George Duke Enterprises, Inc. and Jay Graydon for New Music, Inc.
+ Produced by Jay Graydon for New Music, Inc. and George Duke for George Duke Enterprises, Inc.

Yeah. This is one of the only times you’ll read a credit like “Album Coordinator: Shirley Klein” in a set of liner notes and think, “I’m sure she completely fucking earned her salary.”

The album’s big “hit” was “So Good” (download), which found a home at R&B (and a few AC) stations, but didn’t cross over, and it’s indicative of Horizon’s overall blandness that the cut actually stands out here. (The Sanborn solo is nice, but it sounds a lot like everything else he was doing at the time; I’m not totally convinced he was awake when he played it.) At least you can tell the song has real drums, which is more than you can say for most of the rest of the album, which sounds more like the catchy-but-freeze-dried “I Must Have Been a Fool” (download).

The album does contain a couple of quirky numbers, both of which are just suggestive enough of better things to aggravate you. Most intriguing is the brief Jarreau/McFerrin summit, “Yo’ Jeans” (download), but “10K Hi” (download), a collaboration with producer Philippe Saisse built on vocal samples, is also worth hearing. Together, they represent a brief glimmer of what might have been.

Happily, after one more album — 1992’s almost-as-disappointing Heaven & Earth — Jarreau stopped dicking around with the synths and got back to bending the walls between jazz, pop, and R&B. His Warners swan song, 1994’s Tenderness, was a triumphant return to form; as luck would have it, it’s also out of print, so I’m sure we’ll get around to covering it here at some point. You can never have enough Jarreau.

Bunny Sigler - The Best of Bunny Sigler: Sweeter Than the Berry (1996)
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[Jefito's Note: My brother's visiting from out of town this week, so I've got less time than I normally do for blog-type stuff; fortunately, our friend Robert, of the always-entertaining Mulberry Panda 96, has returned for his second stab at a Cutouts Gone Wild!, and fans of Philly soul are going to be glad he did. Thanks, Robert! —J]

Memphis and Detroit have nothing to be ashamed about, but for me, the most exciting soul music came out of Philadelphia in the 1970s, particularly the strings-laden, socially conscious kind produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at Philadelphia International Records, home to artists like the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Billy Paul, and Bunny Sigler. (Here’s where you say, “Bunny who?” Here’s where I repeat his name.)

Sigler never scored huge crossover hits like those other artists did, but as Epic/Legacy’s retrospective of his years at PIR proves, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. He did have a #22 pop hit in 1967 with “Let the Good Times Roll/Feel So Good” on the Cameo Parkway label, but by ‘68 the label had expired. Unfortunately, Sigler’s contract hadn’t, and until it did, he wasn’t allowed to record for anyone else. Frustrated by this sudden halt in his career, he started hanging out at the offices of Gamble and Huff, who were friends of his, and chose to vent his frustration by practicing karate moves in the hallways, which scared visitors. In order to get Sigler out of the halls and away from clients, Gamble and Huff moved him into a room with a staff writer and put him to work.

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Aldo Nova - Twitch (1985)
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All right, enough screwing around — time to set the controls for the heart of the cutout bin! We’re heading into Aldo Nova territory!

My first exposure to the man his parents named Aldo Caporuscio came during the late ’80s; I was just a little too young for his days as an AOR god (those days, for the record, were during 1982), but we had a family friend who was deep into FM rock, and his LP collection made for a terrific gateway into the world of bands like Prism, Touch, HSAS (a prize goes to the first rock nerd who says what those initials stood for):and Aldo Nova.

For quite awhile, I wasn’t sure what to make of Aldo Nova. Literally. Looking at the cover of 1983’s concept album, Subject: Aldo Nova, was a source of endless intrigue and confusion. Was “Aldo Nova” the name of a man or a woman? A solo artist or a band? All of the above? Or was the band’s name Subject, and the album’s title Aldo Nova?

Of course, as I’ve already revealed, Aldo Nova is a man, and (despite all the things I’m about to say) an extremely talented one at that; his double-platinum debut, 1982’s Aldo Nova, was largely — if not entirely — written, played, and performed by Aldo himself.

(I believe I may have just set the world record for the number of times anyone has ever used “Aldo” in one sentence.)

As you either remember or are beginning to understand, Aldo was a big deal, once upon a time. He was a Portrait Records artist, back when Portrait was something more than a logo being co-opted by John Kalodner • John Kalodner as a distribution pipeline for new Cinderella records. He had a few hit singles on rock radio, but he made the classic mistake of releasing a concept album (the aforementioned Subject: Aldo Nova) as his follow-up, and the result was 1985’s Whiff Twitch.

Aldo’s label, you see, wanted to make sure he didn’t repeat the mistakes of his second album, so they fell back on the favorite plan of labels everywhere: They made him bring in outside writers, thus ensuring that Twitch would be an album of all-new mistakes.

Nova still co-wrote the bulk of the record, as well as producing it, so the bulk of the blame for Twitch is on his shoulders, but seeing as how his earlier albums had a little personality, it’s hard not to believe this one wouldn’t have been better if the boardroom had stayed out of it. Nothing here is outright awful, but for an artist believed by many to be a melodic rock pioneer (whatever that means), the songs are depressingly bland. The usual ’80s studio ringers are on board — The Bolton on background vocals (I think that’s him on “Lay Your Love on Me” [download]), Anton Fig on drums, Robbie Kilgore on synths — and it’s got the usual ’80s sound; there isn’t a track on the album that isn’t begging, even 20-odd years later, to be used as the soundtrack to a montage in a teen summer comedy. I can only think that Savage Steve Holland somehow didn’t hear Twitch.

(And while we’re on the subject of the ’80s and all its wonderful clichés, how many records released during the decade contained songs called “Surrender Your Heart” [download], “Long Hot Summer” [download], “If Looks Could Kill” [download], and especially “Fallen Angel” [download]?)

Poor Aldo Nova. Despite Portrait’s meddling, Twitch crashed and burned on the charts, and the world wouldn’t get another album out of him until 1991, when Jon Bon Jovi plucked him off the ash heap for Blood on the Bricks, one of the inaugural releases from Jon Bon’s short-lived Jambco label. After Bricks stiffed, Aldo retreated from recording almost completely; although he released something called Nova’s Dream awhile back, his main focus has been on producing and writing for others. And by “others” I mean “artists including Clay Aiken.”

Twitch, indeed.

The Greenberry Woods - Rapple Dapple (1994)
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Now this is more like it.

It may not seem like it, but this album is the kind of thing I had in mind when I started Cutouts Gone Wild! — a jewel neglected by its corporate parents, left to gather dust in remainder bins and two-for-a-dollar racks at used CD shops. Unfortunately for me, there aren’t very many of those albums, at least not in comparison with the number of woefully misbegotten turds, and the turds are usually so much more fun to write about.

Not Rapple Dapple. I have very fond memories of this album — if I’m remembering correctly, I received my advance copy in the fall of 1993, right in the heart of the darkest days of the Candlebox Age, and its sunny harmonies and perfect pop hooks were a shimmering oasis in an arid wasteland of gloomy, flannel-shrouded crap. The Greenberry Woods were on Sire, back when it was more than a logo, and this, their debut, was co-produced by Andy Paley, who was in the middle of writing a bunch of songs with Brian Wilson. Power-pop nerds should have flocked to this record.

Then again, maybe they did flock to it — maybe there just aren’t enough people who love this kind of music to make a difference. Either way, the Woods only lasted for one more album, 1995’s not-as-good-but-still-worth-hearing Big Money Item, before splintering into a pair of bands which proceeded to sell even fewer records (although it must be said that one of those bands, Splitsville, is still around and making music that I don’t love as much as the stuff on this album).

Thirteen years later, this stuff sounds as good as it did the day it was released. Used copies are shamefully cheap — after listening to “Trampoline” (download), “Sentimental Role” (download), “That’s What She Said” (download), and “Adieu” (download), pick one up and hear the rest of the album for yourself.