Posts Tagged ‘Lulu’

  
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Bottom Feeders: The Ass End of the ’80s, Part 55

by Dave Steed

feeders52

So it’s been at least nine months, if not more, since I stopped buying ’80s albums. I made a conscious effort to stop spending the cash on records once my son was born last September. But I was recently writing up a future track by a group called Millions Like Us when I realized I knew nothing about them, and my lone 45 didn’t tell me anything either. So I ended up purchasing the CD for a simple penny over at Amazon. Let me tell you how good it feels to not only get “new” music but to get it for a measly little cent. Of course, my ears perk up as I hear cheap CDs calling me, so I end up purchasing like 40 CDs to help me complete my rock and R&B collections. In reality I don’t know how many people would get excited over this mailbox full of CDs I opened on Friday: Joe Cocker’s Unchain My Heart, David Crosby’s Oh Yes I Can, Michael Anderson’s Sound Alarm, .38 Special’s Strength in Numbers, Extreme’s Extreme, and Pete Bardens’ Speed of Light, but damn if it doesn’t get me tingly inside. Ah, the geek in me.

This week we finish up the letter L with another half post to make a clean break. Enjoy these tracks from the ass end of the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the ’80s.

Love and Money
“Halleluiah Man” — 1989, #75 (download)

Love and Money were this funky and soulful Scottish band that was only able to manage this one hit in the US. This was the lead track off their second album Strange Kind of Love. If it wasn’t for the little rap-like breakdown in the middle of the song, it would be easy to mistake this for a Tears for Fears song.

Love and Rockets
“No Big Deal” — 1989, #82 (download)

“No Big Deal” comes from the self-titled 4th album from Love and Rockets, which is all the members of Bauhaus minus Peter Murphy. As opposed to the first three Love and Rockets records, this one is a bit of a mess as Daniel Ash wrote the more poppy songs and David J had more experimental tracks. The mish-mash of sounds makes for a pretty uneven listen and it seems that Love and Rockets understood this as well, as they broke off for solo careers after touring for the album.

loverboyLoverboy
“The Kid Is Hot Tonite” — 1981, #55 (download)
“Dangerous” — 1985, #65 (download)
“Lead a Double Life” — 1986, #68 (download)
“Too Hot” — 1989, #84 (download)

Loverboy provided me with one of my favorite moments in TV history when they appeared on the 2005 show Hit Me Baby One More Time and the host announced them repeatedly as “Louverboy!” To this day, anytime we hear Loverboy my wife and I both turn to each other and say “Loooooooverboy!” It’s much funnier than it seems on paper.

Loverboy’s entire hit making career managed to stay in this decade as they had 13 Hot 100 hits starting with “Turn Me Loose” in 1981 and ending with “Too Hot” in 1989. The weird thing for me is that I think they made some pretty excellent albums, but I can really only remember their major hits. I couldn’t have identified the artist of “Dangerous” or the strangely new-wave “Lead a Double Life” if you put a gun to my head. I’ve listened to all of their albums numerous times, but there’s just something about them that doesn’t stick in my head. I do however recognize “Too Hot” which was their final single from the 1989 Greatest Hits record called Big Ones.

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Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Hooks ‘N’ You: Richard Barone, “Cool Blue Halo” and Other Works

by Will Harris

Live albums have been a staple of the music business for ages, and even if you’re someone who loudly proclaims to have no interest in them whatsoever, it’s probable that you have at least one or two buried somewhere in your collection, even if it’s stretching back to your vinyl or cassette days. I’m pretty sure the first live album I ever purchased was Wings Over America, which served as my transition from the Beatles into Paul McCartney’s ’70s solo output – to this day, attempts to sing along to the studio versions of the songs from that record never fail to throw me – but there are quite a few other live records that I’ll spin with regularity, from the Smiths’ Rank to Robyn Hitchcock’s Storefront Hitchcock to Howard Jones’ The Peaceful Tour Live. (Yeah, I know, that last one might sound like a bit of a head-scratcher, but my wife and I saw HoJo in concert while on honeymoon in the UK in 2001, and that disc is a solid representation of the set he performed.)

On the whole, however, I must admit that I tend to prefer those live albums where the artists reinvent their songs by placing them in an acoustic setting. Nowadays, it’s something that everyone does…and more often than not, when they do so, it’s with an attitude generally reserved for someone who’s just reinvented the wheel. It’s as if they’re saying, “I am so awesome because I could take my song and de-rock-ify it,” when the reality is that they probably just figured, “Hey, here’s a way I can make a few more bucks off my old hits!” I’m not saying that I don’t still tend to enjoy them, anyway, but…okay, look, here’s the deal with acoustic live albums: the last one that truly mattered was Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York. Now, as far as the best acoustic live albums that mattered before Nirvana, you can vote for Clapton or Tesla or even McCartney, but I only ever think of one: Richard Barone’s Cool Blue Halo.

Now, if you’re a regular NPR listener or find yourself scouring their website, you may be saying, “Hey, this guy is totally jumping on the bandwagon started by Tom Moon in March 2007!” Not true. I picked up my copy of Cool Blue Halo on cassette in a cut-out bin way back in 1990, and I’ve loved it ever since. The reasons I picked it up were threefold: 1) I’d seen his name in my copy of the Trouser Press Record Guide and remembered the write-up as being favorable, 2) it included a cover of the Beatles’ “Cry Baby Cry,” and 3) it was less than $2.00. (C’mon, gimme a break: I was a poor college student at the time!)

As it turned out, I found myself in love with the album long before I ever hit that Beatles cover.

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