Editor’s note: This week’s mixtape has an inordinate amount of song edits. While the prog purists who prefer the full-length epics might take offense, we simply cannot post 12-or-so tunes at 13-plus minutes apiece (and two songs clocking in at a half hour each). We hope you’ll understand why we’ve done as we’ve done and then show your support to the bands below by buying their albums.
10cc – Une Nuit a Paris from The Original Soundtrack
Transatlantic – Duel With the Devil from Bridge Across Forever
Frost* – Milliontown (Ballad Edit) from Milliontown
Dream Theater – Finally Free from Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From a Memory
Kerry Livgren featuring David Pack – Ground Zero from Seeds of Change
GTR – When the Heart Rules the Mind from GTR
Fates Warning – A Pleasant Shade of Gray Part Six from A Pleasant Shade of Gray (1997)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Take a Pebble from Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Fish – A Gentleman’s Excuse Me from Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
Genesis – Fading Lights from We Can’t Dance
King Crimson – Model Man from Three of a Perfect Pair: 30th Anniversary
Marillion – Whatever Is Wrong With You from Vol. 2—Happiness Is the Road: The Hard Shoulder
Wetton Downes – Let Me Go from Icon
Yes – Soon (from The Gates Of Delirium) from Relayer
“When you think cogs, think Cogswell Cogs!”
If I didn’t collect ‘80s music I most certainly would have missed out on these gems and thought that “King of Wishful Thinking” (1990) was Go West’s first single and Indian Summer (1992) their first album. If you ever wanted to get into Go West for some reason, that album could easily be the place to start and stop. However, you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not going back and listening to their 1985 self-titled debut. The follow-up, 1987’s Dancing on the Couch, wasn’t quite as good as Go West, but it still contains some catchy-as-hell pop tunes. All three of the great songs featured here are from Go West, and though they sound dated today, if you think back to 1985 they actually sound a little too sophisticated for that era. Maybe that’s why none of them made an impact on the charts. Go West had one single in ‘87 barely crack the Top 40 — “Don’t Look Down (The Sequel)” hit #39, but it isn’t even included on the British version of Dancing on the Couch.