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Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Lost in the ’90s: Alison Moyet, “Whispering Your Name”

by John C. Hughes

lit90s

On Tuesday, we talked about Jules Shear’s “Whispering Your Name,” a failed single from his solo debut, Watch Dog. While the single and album flopped, it stayed in the hearts of many musicians and fans.  In 1984, Cyndi Lauper had a Top Five hit with a cover of “All Through The Night,” the second song off Watch Dog.  And ten years later, Alison Moyet would finally make a hit out of “Whispering Your Name.”

While Shear sang “Whispering Your Name” (download) from the point of view of a guy in love with a girl who still pines for her ex, Moyet kept the pronouns the same on her version.  As a result, Moyet’s take adds a sexual twist, as she sings to another woman.  While Moyet is happily married to husband number two, she obviously wasn’t afraid to tweak sexual mores a bit and make the cover all the more intriguing.

Even more intriguing was the single version of the track (download) which was miles away from the stripped down acoustic take featured on Moyet’s album, Essex.  The single mix makes “Whispering” a dance floor pleaser, complete with disco strings and a Chicago House beat.  The video version goes yet another step further, as Moyet’s Yaz mate, Vince Clarke remixed the single, making it a New Wave synth throwback.  And hey, look!  Dawn French!

A 12″ mix  (download) was worked to the clubs, and while I did hear the song quite a bit while clubbing in 1994, none of my sources show it charting anywhere on the Dance Charts.  Can anyone confirm it charted here?  As far as the UK goes, “Whispering Your Name” became Moyet’s biggest hit in quite some time, peaking at #12.  But sadly, as far as the States go, Moyet’s cover suffered the same non-charting fate as Jules Shear’s original.  Too bad, since I love all four versions.   The CD single is well worth the penny you can snag it for on Amazon.

“Whispering Your Name” did not chart.

Get Alison Moyet music at Amazon or on Alison Moyet

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Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Lost in the ’80s: Jules Shear, “Whispering Your Name”

by John C. Hughes

lit80s

I gave Jules a quick once-over a little over three years ago, so I think it’s high time I spotlighted another track of Shear beauty, this one from his stellar solo debut, Watch Dog. Bearing the distinctive production stamp of Todd Rundgren as well as guitar work from Elliot Easton, Watch Dog is one of the shining gems of 1983, or as it’s more commonly known around these parts, the Best Year for Music Ever!

Besides featuring “All Through the Night,” later a top-five hit for Cyndi Lauper, Watch Dog is jam-packed with hooks and memorable tunes like “I Need It” and “She’s in Love Again.” It’s a damn shame it was only on CD for a fifth of a second; used copies, should you ever be able to find one, run upwards of $100 or more. The brightest moment on the album has to be its opener, the heartbreaking “Whispering Your Name” (download), the story of a man who discovers his lover still has another in her heart thanks to her sleeptalking. Here’s where Rundgren’s production is patently obvious, but whereas it usually tends to overpower the artist in question, with Shear it works beautifully.

Let me take a moment here to rant about record companies and their stranglehold on out-of-print masters. EMI is sitting on both Watch Dog and Shear’s second solo album, The Eternal Return (1985), letting them rot in a vault somewhere. Music consumers, especially you wonderful people who read Popdose, know how easy it would be to digitize these masters and throw them up on iTunes or Amazon. So why the delay? Especially in this economy, where the low overhead makes this a slam dunk. Argh. Drives me nuts. Rant over.

Although it was released as Watch Dog’s lead single, “Whispering Your Name” failed to chart. The album didn’t move that many copies, either, but it obviously had fans, as Lauper’s cover of “All Through the Night” proved. Another artist a decade later covered yet another song off Watch Dog, and we’ll feature it on Thursday’s Lost in the ’90s. Be here, won’t you?

“Whispering Your Name” did not chart.

Get Jules Shear music at Amazon or on Jules Shear

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Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Book Review: Robb Walsh, “Sex, Death and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover’s World Tour”

by Jeff Giles

Robb Walsh – Sex, Death and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover’s World Tour (2009, Counterpoint)
purchase this book (Amazon)

To say that I’m not a foodie would be an act of extremely polite understatement. I spent much of my 20s subsisting on Top Ramen, corned beef hash, and pasta, and like my colleague Jon Cummings, I probably ate my first salad sometime around the age of 27. As for oysters, well…my only experience with the raw variety came in a Nashville restaurant about 10 years ago, and although it didn’t end as terribly as eating raw seafood in Tennessee probably can, it wasn’t all that pleasant, either — kind of like swallowing phlegm with Tobasco sauce.

As a reader, though, I’m easily persuaded by good writing; I’ve come away from impassioned defenses of music I know I hate (see: Floyd, Pink) feeling like I might actually be able to enjoy the stuff, simply because I enjoyed reading about it. My eighth-grade English teacher would probably disagree — and wave a goddamn sentence diagram at me, too — but I think that kind of contagious enthusiasm for one’s subject might be the most important asset a writer can have.

Robb Walsh, the author of Sex, Death and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover’s World Tour, has that enthusiasm; simply put, the man loves oysters, and I mean L-O-V-E-S them — enough to spend five years traveling the globe in pursuit of what it is that differentiates one region’s fruits de mer from another’s. Walsh is the restaurant critic for the Houston Press, so he naturally begins his journey by shucking through the oyster bars in and around Galveston Bay (and vigorously fighting the widespread belief that Southern oysters will kill you, especially when eaten in moths without an R). From there, it’s off to Florida, where oystermen still farm their crop with old-fasioned tongs — and from there, Walsh goes all over the world, testing claims to half-shell greatness in the United Kingdom, France, Canada, the American Northwest, and anywhere else oysters are grown, often dragging his teenage daughters and girlfriend (turned fiancee, turned pregnant second wife) along with him. (more…)

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