[Jefito's Note: This week's Cassingle Vault comes to us courtesy of The Big Takeover's Matthew Berlyant, whose past guest posts have included comprehensive Idiot's Guides to Joe Jackson and Graham Parker. Who knew he had a soft spot for the tastefully loud stylings of Tangier? Or that he'd send me a dusty, coverless cassingle so he could share it with all of you? The sound is pretty dodgy — young Berlyant clearly played the tape at least a hundred thousand times — but that sort of adds to the charm. Enjoy! —J]

It was 1989 and I was 14 years old.

My favorite bands, generally speaking, were the ones I saw on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, Hard 30 and Dial MTV, the show that used to count down the day’s 10 most requested videos — among which happened to be this song. Since I used to see the video for “On the Line” (download) in fairly regular rotation in the fall of 1989 and liked it, I bought the cassingle and later the album Four Winds, which both songs come from.

Tangier also have the distinction of being one of the first bands I ever saw overall (the first two were Blue Murder and Bon Jovi, if anyone is keeping score). This was also in the fall of 1989, when they opened for White Lion and Cinderella at the Baton Rouge Centroplex. Of course, I was stoked, having only seen one concert before and being a fan of all three bands. I don’t remember much about the show, but I can tell you that their bluesy hard rock sound (positioned somewhere between The Black Crowes and perhaps Whitesnake or Kingdom Come) was a favorite of mine at the time. I liked it so much that when I (along with the rest of the students in my ninth grade English class) was asked to choose a particular song to play for the class and to describe why I liked it, I chose “Sweet Surrender” (download).

Later during my freshman year, I discovered Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Cream, The Doors and other similar classic rock acts, thanks, in large part, to WBRH (my high school’s radio station) and the record collections of several of my dad’s co-workers. By the following summer, due to my ever-increasing musical curiousity, I was listening to not only my classic rock favorites, but also The Cure, R.E.M., Midnight Oil and other similar bands. I began watching 120 Minutes every week, and hearing bands like The Specials, The Clash, X and Black Flag for the first time.

By the end of my sophomore year, I was a full-fledged punk rocker, leaving Tangier and their ilk a distant memory. Fittingly, I sold off most of my metal and hard rock cassettes, including Four Winds.

I was surprised, therefore, when I came upon this cassingle amidst boxes of cassettes that I recently salvaged from my parents’ house, all of which had been collecting dust for years. I hadn’t played it in 17 years, so I didn’t know how it would hold up. I was pleasantly surprised that, actually, it held up quite well — better than many similar songs from the era. Despite the fact that my tastes have changed a lot since then, I obviously still have a soft spot for this sort of stuff. Now I want to locate a copy of (the out of print and somewhat pricey) Four Winds.

Giant – I’ll See You in My Dreams (1990)

Well, this is awkward. What are the odds that a Cassingle Vault entry during Power Ballad Month would wind up being a power ballad?

Pretty high, actually. Even before the influx of the 160 or so free cassingles that showed up here last month, the power ballad quotient in the Vault was probably pretty high; now, it’s just embarrassing. (I’ve seen the names Firehouse and Saigon Kick in there more than once.) So we’ve got back-to-back power ballads today, which is pretty horrible, but I close my eyes when I reach into the Vault and take whatever comes out, so don’t blame me for this. It’s the forces of the universe at work. Clearly, those forces hate us all.

“I’ll See You in My Dreams” (download) is a new addition to the Vault, from one of the donation boxes. I didn’t hate Giant when they were around, but I never gave them much more than a passing thought before the release of their second album, 1992’s Time to Burn, and that probably had more to do with reflexive nostalgia for hair metal in the early grunge era than anything else.

Still, it’s hard to bag on Giant too much. The band was led by the Huffs, guitarist Dann and his drummer brother whose name I can’t remember, and filled out by bassist Mike Brignardello and keyboardist Alan Pasqua. Though Giant never made much of a dent in the marketplace, the names of everyone in the band should be instantly recognizable to anyone who ever spent too much time poring over liner notes; these guys were all in-demand session cats who played on a ton of records in the ’80s (and, to some extent, still do today — especially Dann, who made the obligatory ass-saving migration from L.A. to Nashville in the ’90s, and is now a popular producer).

Dann was always the best-known of the bunch — his distinctively round, chunky guitar work popped up all over the damn place during the ’80s, and if you were around at the time, you know its sound, even if you aren’t aware of it. (Witness: Richard Marx’s “Endless Summer Nights” [download].) Everyone in the band had a solid pedigree, though; Pasqua, for instance, is a jazz-trained pianist whose synth and organ fills for Giant didn’t even hint at the work he’d previously done for artists such as Dylan and Tony Williams.

What does all this say about “I’ll See You in My Dreams”? Not much. The most interesting thing about the song, I think, is how much of an earworm it is, given that it plods along like my great-grandmother pushing a full shopping cart through the grocery store parking lot; I doubt anyone ever got too worked up while they were listening to “Dreams,” but after I transferred it to the hard drive, I found my brain repeating the chorus for the rest of the day. Which is probably why it was Giant’s only hit.

The B-side, “Stranger to Me” (download), is totally unremarkable in a perfectly 1989 way. The band still has its fans — in fact, I think it’s still together, minus Pasqua — and Giant was far from the worst thing to happen to the charts during the era. Far from the best thing, too.

Glenn Frey – True Love (1988)

We’ve covered some crappy songs here in the past — and trust me when I tell you that we will cover many more — but out of all the artists who have ever, or ever will, suffer this column’s wrath, I think I hate Glenn Frey the most. Plenty of people have given me shit for this. It isn’t that they like Frey’s music, really; as far as I’ve been able to tell, these folks look at his songs as possibly guilty of being stupid, but pleasant enough anyway, and certainly not worthy of hatred.

They’re wrong. Glenn Frey’s music is horrible. Mojo Nixon should have recorded “Glenn Frey Must Die” instead of, or at least as a sequel to, his anti-Henley screed. I will happily admit that he managed to (co-)write some decent stuff during the Eagles’ first run, but as a solo artist, he was never anything but awful; when the high points of your career are “The Heat Is On” and “You Belong to the City,” you might as well just fucking pack it in.

Which, to his everlasting credit, Frey did — but not before dropping four solo albums, like turds in a punchbowl, the penultimate of which — 1988’s Soul Searchin’ — spewed this miserable excuse for a single. To be fair, when you compare it with “Sexy Girl,” it seems as intelligent as anything Dylan ever wrote, but by any other standard, “True Love” (download) is a half-step above rabid monkey gibberish.

Frey apologists have defended Soul Searchin’ by pointing out that he was more interested in lifting weights than making music at the time; those of us old enough to remember when the album came out no doubt have nightmarish memories of Frey’s ad campaign for 24 Hour Fitness, the posters for which showed him as an Eagle (”Hard Rock”) next to his musclebound ‘88 self (”Rock Hard,” ladies). But you know what? Nobody put a gun to his head and made him release this shit. How long did it take Frey and his frequent accessory, Jack Tempchin, to write:

I just know what I feel, and it’s a true love
She’s my baby, she’s my girl
She changed my life, oh, she changed my world
She’s my buttercup, oh, fill me up
Talkin’ about love, talkin’ about love,
it’s gotta be a true love

Say it all together now: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. As in, “Fuck you, Glenn Frey.”

Did I mention that this song was a Top 20 hit?

The only thing worse than Glenn Frey singing about love is Glenn Frey trying to sing about something important, like the plight of the “Working Man” (download). I know Frey was born in Detroit, and I’m sure he’s familiar with the struggles of working-class families, but that only makes it more insulting that he couldn’t be bothered to write something more interesting in their honor. No amount of PBR can wash away the insult this song adds to injury:

I’m a working man, that’s what I do
I’m a working man, just like you
I’m a working man, I know who I am
I sweat for my money and I work with my hands

But hey, maybe Glenn Frey isn’t so bad. He did stop making solo records after 1992’s wretched Strange Weather, after all. And it turns out we both make the same face when we hear his music:

Salt-N-Pepa – Let’s Talk About Sex (remix) (1991)

Aww yeah.

Yet another box of free cassingles showed up here this week — eighty of ‘em this time — meaning that this series may not end until my grandchildren are in college. I’m ambivalent about this, mostly because I’ve spotted the word “Cher” in the Vault an alarming number of times since these donations arrived; on the bright side, though, I’m now the proud owner of all sorts of late ’80s/early ’90s songs I never bothered to buy or review the first time around (now with 100% more tape hiss!)

Such as this song. It isn’t that I disliked Salt-N-Pepa — although I did, at age twelve, find “Push It” to be vaguely threatening — but “Let’s Talk About Sex” (download) never really resonated with me, probably because I was somewhere around sixteen and had a Mormon girlfriend, and talking about sex would most likely have caused some kind of explosion.

This cassingle’s A-side, the “Super Crispy Remix” (download), came from the Salt-N-Pepa remix album, A Blitz of Salt-N-Pepa Hits: The Hits Remixed. Many of you are probably too young to remember the remix album craze of 1990 and 1991, and you should be very glad for this — just typing the words “remix album” still makes my right eyelid twitch. (For more on these albums, why they sucked, and which one was probably the worst, keep an eye on Jason’s place.)

Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with this song, even if the remix does leave a lot to be desired. Probably the worst thing about “Let’s Talk About Sex” is that it led to Salt-N-Pepa releasing the awkward PSA “Let’s Talk About AIDS,” which shoehorns an explicitly safe-sex moral into a song that didn’t need it. (The best thing about “Talk,” obviously, is the Staple Singers sample.)

A happy postscript for VH1 viewers suffering from Flav burnout: October will apparently be bringing us The Salt-N-Pepa Show, a reality series detailing the trio’s comeback efforts. Will they pull a Mardones, and release “Let’s Talk About Sex ‘08″? Cross your fingers!

Chris Rock – Your Mother’s Got a Big Head (1991)

Before kicking off his career as a star of terrible romantic comedies, Chris Rock was one of the best young comedians in the country. “Your Mother’s Got a Big Head” (download) offers very little proof of this, but I thought it was funny when I was seventeen, so it was sitting in the vault when I reached in for this week’s selection, and since it’s the type of irritating novelty record that defies analysis, it’s perfect for what promises to be a very busy day.

Don’t forget the instrumental B-side (download)!

Queen – Too Much Love Will Kill You (1995)

[Jefito's Note: As Mr. Davis (of Mrs. Davis fame) astutely and oh-so-humorously noted a couple of months ago, jasonhare.com is this blog's longtime companion. Not only did I design the site, but Jason is a true friend — there are days when I probably talk to him more than I talk to my (tirelessly patient) wife. And yet, Jason has never written an Idiot's Guide; he's an expert on a handful of artists who'd qualify and benefit from the treatment — including the Who, Barenaked Ladies, Indigo Girls, and, um, Queen — but he's too busy crying about being too busy to actually sit down and write one.

Of course, this means that Jason, nice guy that he is, is full of guilt, meaning he's periodically a very soft touch for posts like the one below. He says I'm a jerk; I say you should thank me, because what you're about to read is the kind of thing I wish I could write more of. Enjoy. —J]

When Jeff informed me that Queen’s “Too Much Love Will Kill You” was an upcoming choice for his famed Vault O’ Cassingles, I immediately lit up and, like any obsessed respectable Queen fan, began spouting useless facts about the song and its origins. Rather than allowing me to bore him back to sleep on a Monday morning, Jeff wisely suggested I write the entry. I know that at first glance, this sounds like a generous offer; however, take a second to realize that he’s just sharing his misery with all of you. What a jerk.

“Too Much Love Will Kill You” had been lying around the Queen vaults for at least seven or eight years before its release. The track was originally written sometime in the late ’80s by Elizabeth Lamers, Frank Musker and guitarist Brian May, most likely inspired by his recent divorce. May presented the song (either as a solo version or as a duet with Lamers) to Queen during sessions for their 1989 album The Miracle. The band gave the song a few attempts, but ultimately, it wasn’t included on the album; some say it had to do with legal/copyright issues, some say it’s simply because the band had stronger material from which to choose. (This doesn’t explain or excuse at least three of the songs that actually made the album, but I digress.) Whatever the reason, the track was left behind when Queen moved on to 1991’s Innuendo.

After Mercury’s death in late 1991, Brian May dealt with his grief by going straight back to work, and forged ahead with a solo record, 1992’s Back To The Light. I rushed to my local CD store and bought the import as soon as it made its way to the U.S. See, I was 15 years old, and was in the unfortunate position of becoming a die-hard Queen fan only months before Mercury’s death. I was desperate to get my grubby little hands on any Queen-related material possible, and May’s solo album was going to be the best I could do for at least the foreseeable future. (I did, however, draw the line at any Roger Taylor solo records. I have standards, you know.) “Too Much Love Will Kill You” was included on Back To The Light (download), and I immediately loved the track. The lyrics are ridiculously, almost humorously morose (”I’m just the pieces of the man I used to be / too many bitter tears are raining down on me,” to say nothing of the actual line “too much love will kill you”), but hey, at the melodramatic age of 15, I was feelin’ it. May doesn’t have the strongest voice in the world, but that was part of what made the track so beautiful; the fragility in his vocal was utterly sincere.

May gave a tentative performance of the song at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in April of 1992; by the time he took his band out on tour with Guns N’ Roses a year later, the song had become half ballad and half rocker, picking up after the second verse — which finally brings us to the version Jeff originally suggested I write about. I’m nothing if not long-winded.

After the release of Innuendo, it was painfully clear that Mercury only had months left to live, and he wanted to spend them recording with his band. Rather than go to the effort of writing new material, the band chose to focus on previous Queen songs in the vaults. Mercury made his way to the studio and gave whatever he could, before his body got the best of him and forced him to return home. One of the songs the band returned to was “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (download).

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with the song, quite honestly, it pales in comparison to May’s solo effort. Mercury’s voice is strong, but it’s absent of all passion or desperation (a little odd, considering the title), and the song becomes little more than a pop ballad. Sadly, it resembled much of the other songs on their final album with Mercury, Made In Heaven; it’s clear that this was a band running on borrowed time, making the best of what was available to them. It’s for that reason that I can’t really rip this song (or the album) apart for being relatively lame. I’d almost rather hear Freddie Mercury sing his heart out on bland material than not at all.

The B-side, “Rock In Rio Blues” (download), is barely worth a listen. Queen wasn’t known for their brilliant improvisations in concert, yet in the late ’80s, they insisted on including a “jam” in every one of their shows. What makes “Rock In Rio Blues” different from any of their other jams is beyond me, other than the brilliant lyrics.

Looking through my vast Queen collection, it barely fazes me when I realize that I have at least seven different versions of “Too Much Love Will Kill You” lying about: multiple demos, instrumentals, instrumentals with lead guitar replacing the vocal line, etc. At the end of the day, I’m still going to go with May’s version as the best of the bunch. And although it’s never been confirmed, I’d put money on the fact that Mercury sings on the very opening vocal lead-in.

Shorty after receiving my import copy of Back To The Light, a girl in my high school asked if I would accompany her on piano while she sang at our school’s talent show. I agreed (she was hot), and offered that we sing “Too Much Love Will Kill You” as a duet. (Shut up, you bastards! I was 15!) The song was cheesy, our version likely mediocre, but it was the first time I had ever really sung in front of an audience, and was also the first time I worked with Mike, who had only picked up the guitar a couple of months prior. If not for that silly performance, I don’t necessarily know if I ever would have joined a band, nor would I have performed with Mike or that girl ever again. (As it stands, the three of us will be performing together again in a few months, some 15 years later. She’s still hot.)