The 1980 Listening Post - Girl - Sheer Greed

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu

Released: January 1980 Girl Sheer Greed Genre: Rawk Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Requisite 80s cover: “Do You Love Me” by Kiss. The original is better, this sounds like a soundcheck. Before they were in LA Guns and Def Leppard, respectively, Phil Lewis and Phil Collen were members of this British glam rock band. Okay. Remember how great Buckcherry’s first album was? And how much of a disappointment the follow up, Time Bomb, was?? Think of this as that in reverse. What those two guys would go on to is much better than this, and maybe that’s a testament to other songwriters being involved in the process. I think Traci Guns and, well, we all know what the Leppard guys can do. This, on the other hand is just a lot of lead licks and rhythm guitar smacking. “My Number” is okay. Nice, snotty glam, influenced a bit by Boomtown Rats.

The 1982 Listening Post - Arthur Brown - Requiem

 Reviewed by Tom Mott

Released: 1982 Arthur Brown Requiem Genre: Psychedelic Techno-Pop Rating: 4.2 out of 5 Highlights: Requiem The Fire Ant And The Cockroaches Wow. Arthur "I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE" Brown is mostly known as a one-hit wonder for "Fire" (1968) but that entire first album "The Crazy World of Arthur Brown" is a psycheledic prog classic. Fourteen years later, Brown has a new sound, deeply seeped in late 70s techno-pop synth-pop. This album is a heady mix of Kraftwerk, Hawkwind, Lothar and the Hand People, Blancmange art rock, and some Laurie Anderson art rock. It's never boring, completely fascinating, and sometimes brilliant. No wonder Pete Townshend liked hanging out with him. Requiem might even be better than this 1968 album. If only the whole album were as strong as "The Fire Ant and the Cockroach."

The 1982 Listening Post - Weekend - La Variete

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu

Released: 1982 Weekend La Varieté Genre: Early Twee Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: The End Of The Affair Carnival Headache Drum Beat For Baby What have we here? Kicking off this post-Young Marble Giants venture is a gentle, French cafe piece that portends the Marine Girls and The Style Council. This is twee. You could put this on and tell someone it was a Belle & Sebastian album and they wouldn’t know the difference. I do not say this like it’s a bad thing. There is more energy on a lot of this (I.e. “Carnival Headache”) than on many albums of this type. But, perhaps had Tracey Thorne had a bigger band and these types of aspirations, this is what she would have put out. The instrumental “Life in the Day of pt 2” is the thing of summer days by the ocean and should be used in every montage of the Northern California Coast line. In any case, it belongs on your shelf if you like this kind of stuff. Lovely.

The 1982 Listening Post - The Virgin Prunes - ...If I Die, I Die

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

Released: November 4 1982 The Virgin Prunes ...If I Die, I Die Genre: Dark Wave Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: Decline And Fall Sweethome Under White Clouds Theme For Thought You know what we forget? That The Edge has a brother. That that brother, Dik, was a founding member of U2, that he was edged out of the band (he he he) and that he would go on to form this post-rock experimental weirdness. Boy, that second track, “Decline and Fall” sounds a LOT like “Kokoku” by Laurie Anderson and I have to wonder if she was influenced by it/interpolated it. This is a haunting, gothic, dark and wet record that is also, bizarrely, campy and self knowing. Look at that single, “Baby Turns Blue”, which is actually the least successful track on the album. But it’s also the most campy and fun. On a record that seems, at first glance, to be whole heartedly against having fun of any kind.

The 1982 Listening Post - Tracey Thorn - A Distant Shore

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu

Released: September 1982 Tracey Thorn A Distant Shore Genre: Indie Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: Small Town Girl Femme Fatale Requisite 80s Cover: VU’s “Femme Fatale”, given the street corner solo artist treatment and it’s my absolutely favorite version on that song ever. Before Everything But the Girl, after Marine Girls, Tracey Thorn recorded this record. And it’s … fucking lovely. One of the great moments in The Listening Post history was when I heard Lazy Ways by Marine Girls. I wrote about that in the album review. It was something that someone I knew in college had and I heard it once but it stayed with me, even though I forgot the name of the band AND the name of the record. And, then, like magic, there it was. If you take that Marine Girls record and you swirl a bunch of Style Council (for whom she sang) in you get this delightful coffee shop girl-with-a-guitar record. I don’t know how many songwriters count Thorn as an influence but it must count in the hundreds. Did she play Lilith Fair? Cuz she IS Lilith Fair made manifest. The entirety of Riot Grrl is here, stripped down to a single acoustic guitar. Because Riot Grrl was all attitude.

The 1982 Listening Post - Toby Redd - A to Z

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

Released: 1982 Toby Redd A To Z Genre: Power Pop Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: Can't Get A Job More Time Make It Up To You Melea Requisite 80s Cover: An unrecognizable “It Ain’t Me Babe” that proves that good songs are good songs are good songs. A tight power pop group from Detroit that boasts Pre-RHCP Chad Smith as the drummer. But not on this record, apparently. He would join on the next one. What’s happening here is a solid set of rockers with swagger and punch. Are they in the wrong timeline? Yes, definitely. But they got the riffs and the licks and I bet they threw a helluva party. The pair of quntuplet drum hits in the solo of “Make It Up To” made me wish that fucker streamed. I neeeeeeed that on a playlist.

The 1982 Listening Post - Toxic Reasons - Independence

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

Released: 1982 Toxic Reasons Independence Genre: Hardcore Punk Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: Mercenary Noise Boys Ghost Town White Noise Requisite 80s cover: I love their version of “The Shape of Things to Come”. Not as much as the original, though. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that was a song by a fictional band in the terrific ’68 cult film, Wild in the Streets. Toxic Reasons amp up the psychedelic craziness, more so than the prefab band for the movie and much much more than Paul Revere and the Raiders’ version. Me like! Listen to “Drunk and Disorderly” and tell me it doesn’t a) sound like they are yelling “Toy story!!” And b) that they don’t sound like a bunch of musicians who showed up to play songs but they are all wanted by either the law or by the big brothers/uncles/fathers of girls they’ve wronged and they promised a full set, so they are playing like they have to prove themselves but also get the fuck out of the joint as fast as possible. You could pretty much pick any track from this record as a highlight to represent the style. Toxic Reasons understand the assignment and dammit if Bruce Stuckey can shred. If you ever wanted to know what a Reggae song would sound like if Lemmy fronted The Clash, have no fear, “White Noise” is here for you. I wish the album was produced with a little less echo as I think it needs to be rawer. But, no matter. I’ll take it. It’s an adrenalin shot.

The 1982 Listening Post - Toiling Midgets - Sea of Unrest

 Reviewed by Allen Lulu

Released: 1982 Toiling Midgets Sea Of Unrest Genre: Post-Things Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: All The Girls Cry This is some heavy sludge music that calls to mind, early on, believe it or not, “You’re So Physical” by Adam and the Ants. Now the thing about early Adam is that they were very post-punk. Influenced at first by art school and the Sex Pistols. So, when I heard the plodding metal and wailing vocals against the deep, almost grungy Vox warbling “Don’tcha lie to me!” My mind went straight to that early Adam song, which I’ve seen him perform live as though it’s a declaration of just how “PUNK” he always was. From there, this thing goes into strange directions incorporating all sorts of instrumentation from acoustic guitars, like buskers from Hell to clashing electric feedback. It’s nothing short of amazing in it’s mind bending, depressing way. And! The “band” (really a collective now, yes?) is still doing stuff. And you can buy this album on vinyl along with a whole shit ton of others on their band camp page and I, for one, am thrilled that exists. These guys are poppy compared to, say Swans, but that’s just because I find them slightly more accessible. But, really, when we are talking about experimental music for Heroin addicts, at this point I’m just picking nits.

The 1982 Listening Post - Mission of Burma - Vs.

 Reviewed by Chris Roberts

Released: October 11 1982 Mission Of Burma Vs. Genre: Post Punk Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Chris’ Rating: 5 out of 5 Highlights: Trem 2 Deadpool Learn How Mica Weatherbox That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate (… but please, just listen to the whole thing) Biting, anxious anthems, awash in stormy texture and effects presaged the buzzy, angular college radio sound of fellow-Bostonians The Pixies, the breakthrough success of Nirvana, and the angst of countless post-punk others. This one-and-done touchstone arrived ten years too early for the year that punk broke, but the music continues to resonate today (I heard it playing in Amoeba last weekend). Among their storied peers: more epic and decodable than The Fall, more dangerous and less jangley than R.E.M., more punk than Sonic Youth. Mission of Burma’s noisy stuff is insane—and Vs. is mostly noisy stuff. Guitarist Roger Miller’s progressions build and repeat until they explode and reset. “Secrets” reverberates in Nuggety fashion, speeds up, adding layers upon layers of feedback and screams; then the singing begins and it all starts again. “Learn How” is a downhill bike ride on a rickety bike, where you’re going faster and faster, dodging potholes, but then you hit one and wipeout into a trashcan. The industrial grade groove in “Fun World” nearly shakes vs. off the spindle. And the closer “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate” … is a blast. While Vs. is a fuzzy, swirly maelstrom, there’s space to shake yer booty (“Weatherbox”) and zone out (“Trem 2”) and shoegaze (“Dead Pool”). The mission of the Burmen is to capture the maelstrom of internal conflict—the “versus” of everyday thinking, exclusive to us smartypants non-neanderthals. Issues include trust (“Secrets,” “Train”), progress (“Learn How”), faith (“New Nails”) or just getting out of bed (“Mica”). At album’s end, MOB suggests the flaws are so bad, it might be better if you just go away. To Tulsa. It’s really not that far from Boston. Need more convincing? Look at those morning glories on the cover. They’re there to hide a chain link fence, (and aren’t even doing that good a job). For unseen context, flip the jacket over— it’s a xeroxed forest filled with wolves.

The 1982 Listening Post - Kate Bush - The Dreaming

 Reviewed by Doug Harvey

Released: September 13 1982 Kate Bush The Dreaming Genre: No Light Without Shadow, No Harmony Without Cacophony, No “Hounds” Without “The Dreaming” Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Doug’s Rating: 5 out of 5 Highlights: Sat In Your Lap There Goes A Tenner Get Out Of My House There’s recently been a flukish revival of interest in Kate Bush, due to the inclusion of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” as a pivotal plot element on the soundtrack of Season Four of the retro-80s sci-fi Netflix show “Stranger Things,” resulting in a massive spurt in sales and Bush’s induction in the Guinness Book of Records for Oldest Female Artist To Reach Number One, Longest Time For A Track To Reach Number One On The UK’s Official Singles Chart, and Longest Gap Between Number Ones. While it’s great that a new generation has been made aware of Bush’s remarkable talents, and the enormity of her accomplishment with the “Hounds of Love” album, the déja vu is even more striking when you consider that when “Running” became Bush’s big North American breakthrough in 1985, it was in the wake of the lowest-selling, most misunderstood, and perhaps most extraordinary artistic accomplishment of her career. 1982’s “The Dreaming” was the first of Kate Bush’s albums produced entirely by the artiste, and the first written from scratch - she’d previously been depending on a backlog of prog piano balladry dating to the onset of puberty, which showed. In contrast, “The Dreaming” was reverse engineered - Bush building songs on top of looped rhythm tracks and electronic soundscapes, applying her accomplished and idiosyncratic song craft on top of experimental musical structures. Much of this was inspired by the sampling and looping capacities of the Fairlight synthesizer, which had recently revitalized Peter Gabriel’s sonic vocabulary - not a coincidence, as Bush had close ties with Gabriel and had sung the cryptic “Jeux sans frontières” vocal hook on his1980 hit “Games Without Frontiers,” amongst other collaborations (their hit duet “Don’t Give Up” was a major factor in her 1986 year of post-“Hounds” superstardom). Yet in spite of its reputation for alienating experimentalism, “The Dreaming” is, at its core, a collection of finely-but-oddly-crafted piano-composed songs featuring layers of virtuosic pop vocal overdubs - the same basic formula that originally brought Bush to (UK) superstardom. The album opens with “Sat In Your Lap,” the first single, which had been recorded and released well over a year earlier, but nevertheless sets the bar for the LPs sonic challenges, as well as one its the main conceptual threads - that of spiritual crisis, frustration, and despair. Having peaked at #11 in the UK charts, it also foreshadowed the album’s chilly reception. As mentioned, “The Dreaming” remains Bush’s lowest-selling album, barely shifting 75,000 units in the 40 years since its release(!), her -ahem- 1986 greatest hits collection “The Whole Story,” by contrast has sold 1.5+ million copies. “Sat In Your Lap” is explicit in its references to various spiritual tourist destinations (Mecca, Tibet, Salisbury), though Bush is cagey about specific disciplines. References to Gurdjieff, Vedanta, and occult visualization exercises crop up elsewhere in her discography, and it seems likely that her specific practices are as much a piecemeal collage as her musical vocabulary. Nevertheless, lyrics like - I've been doing it for years My goal is moving near It says, "Look! I'm over here" Then it up and disappears - pretty explicitly equates Bush’s frustrated spiritual aspiration with the difficulty of realizing her enormous creative ambitions - the very ones shaping the remarkable racket these lyrics grace. Over an urgent (though arcless) bed made from percussive piano vamps, very 80s gated drum patterns, + bursts of speedy synth-trumpets, Bush rapidly alternates between conventional and avant-garde vocal techniques. These include her crowd-pleasing winsome girly-voice, but also echo-laden guttural shouts, percussive vocalizations that sound like somebody getting punched in the stomach, and histrionic narrative rants with more than just a smidgen of the schizophrenic. Which turns out to just be a sampler of the yodels, chirps, whines, and caterwauls she brings to bear over the course of “The Dreaming.” Bracing! The next track is probably the most user-friendly number on the LP, though it tanked even worse in the singles charts. “There Goes A Tenner” is a jaunty Music Hall-style tune about a botched bank robbery, which introduces two more of Bush’s primary narrative devices. Deployed throughout “The Dreaming,” cinematic framing - close-ups, flashbacks, soliloquies, montage, etc. - create formalist structures that resonate or clash with their musical beds. The jaunty songs are dark. The mental songs are funny. It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. Delivered in a slippery stew of clichéd English accents veering from cockney to Lord Snooty, “There Goes A Tenner” begins as an homage to Ealing Studio and Hollywood capers and climaxes with a visionary time-shift, with the protagonist left frozen in a kaleidoscope corona of explosive debris and floating banknotes, trailing off with the odd comment “There's a ten-shilling note. Remember them? That's when we used to vote for him.” (Especially odd because, as wikipedia larns us, the final version of the 10s note - discontinued in 1970 - had a portrait of Queen Elizabeth on it.) "Pull Out The Pin" takes both of these aforementioned narrative devices - the cinematic framing and the frozen moment — and pushes them into a more hardcore contemporary genre — Arsenic and Old Lace morphs into Apocalypse Now. It’s a riveting narrative that unfolds inside the mind of a North Vietnamese soldier as he’s preparing to grenade his American counterpart. You learn to ride the Earth When you're living on your belly and the enemy are city-births Who need radar? We use scent They stink of the west, stink of sweat Stink of cologne and baccy, and all their Yankee hash With my silver Buddha And my silver bullet (I'm pulling on the pin) Just one thing in it: Me or him And I love life! (pull out the pin) Musically, "Pull Out The Pin" is propelled by a mash-up of Martin Denny exotica and slinky Joni Jaco Jazz grooves (courtesy folk rock genius Danny Thompson, who also gave Pentangle and Donovan the funk) that mutate into an industrial/postpunk chant, hovering helicopter sound effects, and an angular Robert Fripp-like guitar solo from Brian Bath, while narratively the pin appears to be arrested mid-pull. “Suspended in Gaffa” is another of the more superficially conventional numbers, portraying the same Dark Night of the Soul described in “Sat in Your Lap,” but in waltz time, with clickity-clack percussion, nearly inaudible girly-vox whispers, and ambient washes of synth. It makes a gorgeous bed of sound for a lyric that is sorrowful and humorous; Beckett-like in its spare description of the futility of trying to recapture fleeting glimpses of the numinous: “Am I doing it? Can I have it all now? I want it all. I can’t have it all.” Propelled by a marching beat, “Leave it Open” introduces another of the LP’s major themes: the patrolling of the boundaries between inner and outer, self and others, property, territory, etc. and the need to know when to keep your mouth, eyes, mind, and heart open or shut. It’s an amorphous metaphor, a wide net made even more indeterminate by the use of heavy electronic effects - particularly phasing - on the already extremely mannered multitracked vocals. For example, without printed lyrics one is unlikely to understand the chorus-chant-thing to be stating “Harm in us, but power to arm,” or the final vocal arabesque to be repeating “We let the weirdness in” - let alone what the hell Kate is on about with these proclamations. Which seems to be the point - the opening lines state (almost intelligibly): With my ego in my gut, My babbling mouth would wash it up. (But now I've started learning how,) I keep it shut. The emotional impact of the music itself is unequivocal, almost martial in its advocacy of its primary sensual validity compared to the always-compromised truthiness of verbal utterances. A powerful sonic experience - though perhaps the least memorable track on the album - “Leave It Open” closes out side one of the LP, which, much like its acclaimed follow-up, follows a grab-bag first act with a masterful suite of interlinked prog-operatic vignettes. The album’s title track opens side two with a bang, literally. Actually more than one, as the first sound is the visceral thump of a Linn drum pattern, followed hard on by a sampled sound effect of a screeching and crashing car, and the lyric “Bang goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van” enunciated with another of Bush’s eccentric theatrical accents, an Aussie drawl that comes and goes as needed. The mood is ominous, with Rolf Harris’ didgeridoo and brother Paddy Bush’s bullroarer mixing with tribal beats, droning synth, and layered vocals. The “chorus” is astounding - the drums and drones back off and are supplemented by an array of animal noises, over which a melody is whistled (apparently through the Fairlight) and Bush utters a staccato chant that sounds like a hebephrenic stutter but on closer inspection consists of fragmented phonemes making up the word “Dreamtime.” The song is also about as close to political commentary as can be found on the album, condemning, in its roundabout way, the Australian colonial government’s genocidal policies towards the oldest surviving continuous culture on our planet. (They have since apologized.) The odd coda to “The Dreaming” is a continuation of the didgeridoo drone superimposed with a fragment of the swinging but sorrowful Irish folk instrumental backing that reappears in the climax of the following track, "Night Of The Swallow,” which begins as a sparse piano ballad. The segue is seamless, and provides yet another glitch in the narrative matrix that blurs the spatial and temporal boundaries of these seemingly disparate stories. “Night Of The Swallow” is a story about another disruption of territorial boundaries - a pilot preparing for a clandestine nightflight, apparently smuggling human cargo from the white cliffs of Dover to safety in Malta, while his lover pleads for him not to take the risk - threatening to turn him in rather than stand by helplessly. Bush alternates masterfully between these two voices, and the musical backing shifts between a simmering piano and synth with minimal drums to a swaggering, exultant, desperate blast of trad Irish swing - repetitive in a loopy way that resonates with the swooping hypnotic “Let me go…” chorus on top of it, not to mention the pervasive digital nuances of the Fairlight sampler and Linn drum machine, almost offhandedly generating the new genre of TechnoCeltic, which - along with the drink - is said to have driven poor Shane McGowan off his knob! Another auteurist masterpiece. Throughout her career, Bush’s virtuosity as a singer depends as much on her acting gift as her technical vocal accomplishments. The emotional spectrum encompassed across her oeuvre is as comprehensive as any great theatrical player’s. The Dreaming’s tilt towards narrative darkness - fear, rage, betrayal, contempt, loss, regret, spiritual crisis, alienation, madness and death death death - is communicated at least as much through her ability to conjure these states through vocal tone, timbre, dynamics, and accent as it is through her often-cryptic lyrics and exuberant, experimental soundscaping. "All The Love” moves away from the fictive cinematic storytelling of the first Side 2 tracks, into another ambiguous, amorphous space - starting from the opening conundrum - “The first time I died was in the arms of good friends of mine” through to the improbably heartrending collage of truncated messages from Bush’s actual malfunctioning answering machine, which construct a Matrix-level bubble of alienation. “Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?” “Although we are often surrounded by people and friends, we are all ultimately alone,” the artist observed in the Oct 1982 issue of the Kate Bush Club newsletter. Indeed. Yet Bush’s musical settings are exquisite - and shared with at least 75,000 other humans - exposing Bush’s underlying faith in the capacity for aural sensuality - and art - to bridge the gap. Nevertheless, the text of the song is distinctly solipsisitic: “Only tragedy allows the release Of love and grief never normally seen. I didn't want to let them see me weep, I didn't want to let them see me weak, But I know I have shown That I stand at the gates alone.” With it’s piano/slinky bass combo and smart, mournful lyrics about human relations, "All The Love” strongly conjures Joni Mitchell’s then-recent reinvention as a jazz-fusion diva. But, as with all great popular artists, Bush’s baroque collage aesthetic transcends any single influence. The sad groove of the intro is exquisitely interrupted by a solo boy soprano singing “We needed you… to love us too… we wait for your move” over a loose beat of what sounds like the same Fairlight phoneme samples Bush used in her chilling cover of Donovan’s “The Reedy River” - the B-side of “Sat In Your Lap.” The effect is breathtaking. And the heartbreaking barrage of answering-machine farewells at the end is a landmark use of musique concrete sampling in popular music. Bush shifts into a harder narrative focus with “Houdini," whose “with a kiss I’d pass the key” inspired the powerful archetypal LP cover image - appropriately, as this song is perhaps the heart of “The Dreaming” - a cubist picture of the séances held by Houdini’s widow Beth to test the possibility of life after death. “Houdini" is performed in the voice of Beth speaking to the to the escape artist (and militant spiritualist debunker)’s memory or spirit or something, employing string quartet interludes to structure pauses into the narrative in a way more reminiscent of great cinematic storytellers than singer-songwriters. Speaking of great cinematic storytellers, “The Dreaming”’s final cut "Get Out Of My House” has been alleged (and persuasively so) to have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” Summarizing the album’s themes of isolation, alienation, control, madness, territoriality, and bodily vulnerability, "Get Out” is a tour-de-force of danceable bad vibrations. Opening with a foreshadowing of the guitar-flourish-decorated braying-donkey climax, "Get Out” quickly focuses on the propulsively tribal rhythmical spine that carries it through to its frayed apocalyptic climax - and Bush’s anxious narration, which quickly escalates into a vigorous and unrestrained paranoia. The unrelenting momentum of fear generates a narrative split where the voice of the trapped house occupant is replaced by a “concierge” who overlays a sleazy “Cabaret” calm over the proceedings - but just briefly. From the 2:13 mark, one of the central rhythmical elements is Ms. Bush’s repeated hysterical shrieking of the phrase “Get out of my house!”, rendered conspicuously low in the mix - but in a way that establishes a sense of pending cacophonous doom. This mixture reaches a kind of equilibrium, over which Kate and (brother Paddy?) articulate a shadow version of The Runaway Bunny (“I turn into a bird … I turn into the wind … I change into the Mule …) which culminates with the aforementioned donkey apocalypse, which then fades into what sounds to me like an appropriated aboriginal chant, or something from WIRE’s “dugga” phase. Whatever, it works. Back in the day, my friend Carol Vernallis made an obsessive art school video interpreting “Get Out” as a glitch snapshot of unwanted pregnancy, with the “Get out” injunction directed at Mr. Fetus. I’ll buy that! But it must be said that Bush operates on a deep psychological level that supports innumerable specific interpretations. One of the underemphasized lyrics, responding to the concierge’s speaking of the law, is an unattributed "It's cold out here!" - harkening back to Bush’s breakthrough hit “Wuthering Heights” - “It’s me Cathy, let me into your window, I’m so cold” The self as a house - requiring defense, but subject to haunting - is one of Bush’s central philosophical zingers. In more personal terms, she seems to seek closure on the first phase of her own artistic arc - marked by a playful emotional openness that naively ignored the incompatibility of hippy philosophy with celebrity culture. Clearly, she felt invaded, and her response was to board up the windows and change the locks. “The Dreaming” was recorded at Abbey Road studios, and Kate was living and working in London at the height of of the social unrest that culminated in the election of Margaret Thatcher and the ensuing 2-month-long Falklands War, which was being waged just as the finishing touches on the album were put in place. Bush moved from her London home to a farmhouse in the countryside in Kent, where she installed her family (and a state of the art recording studio) and disappeared from public view for the next couple of years. When she reemerged, it was with “Hounds of Love.” … I chose “The Dreaming” for my initial contribution to this forum because I’ve thought about it a lot. I actually pitched a book about it to the 33 1/3 guy in the early days, but he passed. It’d been in my Desert Island Ten list since I first heard it. Still, I totally get how a lot of people were completely alienated by it, whether because of its deviation from Bush’s (relatively) conventional romantic persona, its perceived abandonment of populist forms in favor of avant-gardism, or its sheer sonic weirdness. Polarizing Bush fans, it was a major commercial and critical disappointment - the most traumatic in a career that had unfolded in a cloud of rapturous approval since the artist was a precocious adolescent mentored by Dave Gilmour of “Not Syd Barrett” fame. You’d think that an album that was so narratively occupied with encapsulating a series of painful, anxiety-filled, and downright frightening scenarios would be a bummer listening experience, but “The Dreaming” is ultimately an exhilarating entertainment, alchemically transforming its dark content with a supernova of creative radiation emanating from the heart and mind of a 23-year-old breaking free. Brilliant as it is, the “Hounds Of Love” LP smacks conciliatory, as has every recording since to a greater or lesser degree. “The Dreaming” is an album crafted - written, performed, and produced - by a phenomenally ambitious 23-year-old(!) auteur who assumed her audience would trust her as a guide into whatever zany antics or earthshaking formalist deconstructions she might lead them … but was mistaken. But “Hounds Of Love” isn’t an artistic retreat so much as a gentler reiteration of the same insights - aesthetic and philosophical - that animated “The Dreaming.” Not without its dark side (“Mother will hide the murderer” anyone?), “Hounds” is deeply positive: erotic, sensual, spiritually uplifting and psychologically affirmative, rooted in 2 years worth of pastoral, familial retreat. It’s belovedness is well-earned. Nobody’s going to escape the grasp of Vecna listening to “Get Out Of My House.” In fact that’s probably what Vecna had on his Walkman! That’s the thing, and a thing of which Bush is well aware - it’s all about the balance. There’s no light without shadow, no harmony without cacophony, no “Hounds” without “The Dreaming.”

The 1981 Listening Post - Zeabra - Makin' Tracks

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Zeabra Makin' Tracks Genre: AOR Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Tell The World Together Your Fool Again Promises (The following review is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely based on the two websites that had any information at all about the band Zeabra.) If you walk into Music Unlimited on Kickapoo Spur Street in Shawnee, Oklahoma, you just might run into three former members of Zeabra, a melodic AOR band whose 1981 album Makin’ Tracks catapulted them to fame. Or at least that was the plan. “Yeah we made that record with high hopes,” says drummer and sales rep Pat Kelly. “Figured it was just a matter of time before we’d hear our songs on the radio.” [1] “We even put them radio sound effects on there, remember? Right before that Together Forever song? Made it sound like our song was comin’ up next, right between Styx and Foreigner,” Chris Kelly, Pat’s big brother, fellow sales rep and keyboard player adds. “Thought that was pretty clever.” “It was,” Jeff Hawkins states quietly. “The song was just called Together, Chris. There’s a kid in the keyboard section needs help with that Roland,” he adds. Chris nods and wanders off. It’s Jeff’s store, after all. [2] Was he expecting a hit? Jeff says he wasn’t sure. He just loved the feeling of being in the studio. “I grew up listening to the Beatles, thinkin’ about McCartney and George Martin at Abbey Road, making those amazing albums. We’d played a lot of gigs by then, had some good songs, a sound we thought could break through. But a hit? Well … maybe.” “I thought that song with the sax mighta done something. People liked that kinda wimpy sax sound, so I was hopin’ that was the one. What was it called?” Pat asks. “Your Fool Again,” Jeff answers. “Puttin’ the sax on there was the producer’s idea though really. We weren’t nuts about it.” “Big Ron!” calls Chris from the keyboard room. [3] “Big Ron, yeah,” Pat laughs. “That guy made us a buncha promises. Not a one of ‘em paid off. Hey, Promises. That was a good tune. You wrote that, right?” Jeff nods. Chris returns to the main room. “That kid wasn’t serious. Just wanted to mess around.” He turns to me. “Promises was a helluva song.” “Mostly cuz of your keyboard solos!” Pat says, leaning back on his stool behind the big Premier drum kit in the corner. “Jeff wrote it and played some nice guitar on it,” Chris adds humbly. Jeff shakes his head. “Nobody noticed.” He walks over to the door, where an older gentleman wearing a sheriff badge is just entering the store. “Hey Mike.” Mike picks up a Fender Precision bass, sits on a stool, and fingers it quietly, looking a bit sheepish. “This here’s Mike Hembree. Thanks for coming in, Mike. We was just discussing Makin’ Tracks,” Jeff says. “Mike played bass on that record.” Mike says nothing, just smiles. I ask if he, too, thought the record would be successful. He shrugs. “Long time ago.” He looks a bit distant, but not unfriendly. There is a pause. “S’pose we oughta mention Mike’s brother, Mark,” says Pat, then looks away, unsure of himself. “I mean, if it’s OK with you, Mike.” “Yeah, it’s fine,” Mike mumbles. He looks directly at me. “Mark believed in the band. Believed in Zeabra. He and Chris co-wrote most of the songs.” “Hell, he wrote ‘em. I just helped him put the chords and notes down on paper,” Chris adds, sipping from a coffee mug emblazoned with the Casio logo. “I mean, he invented all of it. The lyrics, the hooks…” “My, my, my,” Pat sings, playing 4 beats on his knees. “That’s from Tell The World. That coulda been Journey, REO – one of them Power Pop bands even! ‘Cept we made it more rockin’. First time Mark showed me that song, I was blown away. Damn, that shoulda been huge! Even had a cowbell in it.” He laughs. “His harmonies were killer, guitar solos too.” Mike looks down at the floor. “Miss him every day.” “We all do,” says Jeff. The four men look uncomfortable, yet completely in their element. It’s not hard to imagine them 42 years younger, full of hope and dreams. “We still play now and then, you know.” “Not so much anymore,” Chris adds. “Still, no regrets. We gave it a shot.” “Damn good shot,” says Pat. “Can I play that Fender up there? The red Strat?” an anxious young man asks. “Sure, let me grab that for you,” Jeff answers, smiling. “Go ahead and plug it in. Rock out.” The surviving members of Zeabra nod approvingly. *********** 1. All quotes are fake. My apologies to Pat, Chris, Jeff, Mark, and Mike, whose lives I completely fictionalized, other than working at a music store, being a sheriff, and playing in the band Zeabra. 2. Jeff does own the store. Pat and Chris are sales reps. That part is true. 3. “Big Ron” O’Brien, radio DJ and record producer, real name Richard Walls (1951-2008).

The 1981 Listening Post - Twitch - Twitch and Shout

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Twitch Twitch And Shout Genre: Power Pop Rock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Ring True This Boy’s Got It What Do You Say Something I Can Touch Back in 1962, in a season 6 episode of The Flintstones, Rock Roll had a big hit in Bedrock with The Twitch, a dance craze record best known for the line, “Twitch, twitch.” Sixty years later, kids get their Twitch on via the video streaming chat app, best known as a gaming platform, but also handy for watching old movies while interacting with friends. Somewhere in between, Garwood Wallace, Bryan Pratt and Steve Feldman started a rock and roll band and named it Twitch. They released one long player, titled Twitch and Shout, on Bomb Records out of Toronto. Twitch were a Power Pop Power Trio, which is kind of fun to say. They seemed to be going for that New Wave look, based on the album cover and publicity photos. Musically, they were influenced not only by the usual suspects (Buddy Holly, Raspberries, Big Star, etc.), but also by Rockabilly, Boogie, Pub Rock, and even Stadium Rock (minus the distortion). Most of the songs don’t fit the New Wave blueprint, and the ragged performance energy and predominance of bass in the mix makes me think they really didn’t want to be New Wavers at all. Lead singer’s glasses aside, there’s precious little Elvis Costello influence here, a rarity in 1981, apparently. This is a pretty fun listen, even if none of it is earth shaking or life changing. There are a few missteps (not sure what they were going for with Take It Back – John Denver maybe?), but there are also highlights, all of which hint at a band that was probably very entertaining live. Ring True harnesses a Bo Diddley beat to channel some Stray Cats energy. This Boy’s Got It uses a simple but effective fifties rock guitar riff to propel a high speed romp with some stop and go rhythms. What Do You Say, which probably should have been a single, opens with a ZZ Top style boogie before downshifting into a sweet Power Pop chorus, throwing in a brief Loggins & Messina bridge and finally crashing down with a jamming fadeout. The irresistible Something I Can Touch piles up multiple hooks over a driving beat while telling the old sob story: “Staring at the microphone / I know you’re out there, but I feel alone / Give me a sign / Call out my name…” Clearly Mr. Wallace had some songwriting chops, and the band delivers the goods, especially on these tracks. Sadly, they only Twitched for a very short time, and as far as I can tell, they shall Twitch no more, forever.

The 1981 Listening Post - The Reflections - Slugs and Toads

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: November 1981 The Reflections Slugs And Toads Genre: Post-Punk / Garage Rock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Tightrope Walker Zigzagging The Interpreter “The Reflections were a post-punk super-group formed by Mark Perry (Alternative TV, The Good Missionaries, The Door And The Window), Dennis Burns (Alternative TV), Karl Blake (The Lemon Kittens) and Nag (The Door And The Window).” - Forced Exposure Can I tell you how much I hate the misuse of the term “super-group?” I have no issue when it’s used appropriately (from CSNY to Traveling Wilburys to boygenius). The problem is it's so often abused such that the term becomes meaningless. Newsflash: THERE IS NEVER GOING TO BE A PROPER SUPERGROUP THAT IS COMPRISED OF MEMBERS OF ALTERNATIVE TV AND THE LEMON KITTENS. Worse yet, despite having heard albums by both of those bands, I have no %$%ing clue who “The Door And The Window” even is. Talk about a name destined for obscurity! The proper way to describe this album is a SIDE-PROJECT. Cancel my subscription! (End of rant.) But it would be patently unfair to judge this album based on the stupidity of a single word in a Forced Exposure blurb. “Slugs and Tools” isn’t half bad. I suppose stacking your band with members from three (barely known) artists is the key to their moderate quality? “Tightrope Walker'' kicks things off with a cheery, twee, garagey duet that reminds me more of the shabby but friendly fare of bands like The Clean or Television Personalities than the more “serious”, angry, angular sound common in the post-punk scene. They get a little more edgy with the next cut “Zigzagging”, veering a bit more towards Minutemen territory, but there remains a sweetness that keeps things in check: “I could blow raspberries… stay in bed with you, and zigzag between opti-pessimism.” It’s not all this lighthearted. The sax comes out on the next couple tracks, showing a free jazz / skronk side reminiscent of Missing Presumed Dead, and later piano ballad “Clamming Up” is positively dreary. But on the plus side they keep things varied. Better yet is the dreamy organ-drenched post-psych fare of “Demon of My Desires” and Roky Erikson’s “The Interpreter”, which sound like they recorded while hungover but to good effect. The vocals on this album wouldn't win them any mainstream success. They're more reminiscent of a sour version of Dick Van Dyke's lovable chimney sweep in Mary Poppins (to my American ear) than a proper singer . But unlike Alternative TVs 1981 album that I also reviewed, Mark Perry’s vocals here fit the songs well and give them a certain charm. While there’s plenty of forgettable stuff here, it’s a good listen on the whole, and I found myself enjoying “Slugs and Toads” beyond the highlights.

The 1981 Listening Post - The Crowd - A World Apart

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: 1981 The Crowd A World Apart Genre: New Wave Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Can’t Talk Right Time On My Own As You Were (Tomorrow) Huntington Beach’s The Crowd was a fixture in the early surf punk scene that coalesced around Orange County’s The Cuckoo’s Nest venue. They made their recording debut on the 1979 “Beach Blvd” comp, posting four punk tracks clearly reminiscent of The Ramones – fast, hard, simple. [1] [2] By the time they got around to a full length their sound had moved on quite a bit though. Opener “Something Said” sets the stage from the outset – the off-kilter midtempo rhythm and chorused bass underscore the new wave tendencies here, which don’t fully let up even as the chorus straightens things out with more of the post-Ramones vibe. “Can’t Talk”, “Right Time” and “On My Own” return to the pace of the Ramones, and the claps on “Right Time” are reminiscent of the earlier rock’n’roll eras that the Ramones tweaked. But the vocals have become more affected and there are just too many chords for the Ramones wannabe vibe to stick. “He” meanwhile reminds me of a more demented version of Adam and the Ants. It’s a good album, but there are downsides. The recording quality isn’t great – better than a lot of their punk peers but worse than a lot of new wave. Meanwhile Jim Decker’s vocals are a bit all over the place too. He’s got a good sound, with an acidic delivery and a thick vibrato that reminds me of a less cloying Jello Biafra. Unfortunately, Decker has a tendency to show emphasis by raising his pitch and shouting, which makes him sound a bit like a drunken karaoke singer belting out a song everyone in the bar already knows. Many songs come unmoored by the vocal – “Desmond and Kathy” and “As You Were” have a lot of potential but lose the plot thanks to the vocals. The Crowd broke up before ever releasing another album, in part due to increasing violence at their shows, only to reform at the end of the decade. [3] If Decker tamed his vocals it would have been interesting to hear them develop further. “A World Apart” showed a musical ambition that wasn’t defined by their scene alone. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfhj-ewRB2w 2. https://deathburger.doodlekit.com/blog/entry/4535342/the-crowd-a-world-apart- 3. http://www.oocities.org/sunsetstrip/club/9953/history.htm.tmp

The 1981 Listening Post - Telefones - Rock-Ola

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: July 25 1981 Telefones Rock-Ola Genre: New Wave / Ska / Power Pop Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Brave New World Sports Automatic Man On August 6, 1982, R.E.M. opened for The Telefones at the Hot Klub in Dallas, Texas. Listening to Brave New World and Sports, the first two tracks on their sophomore LP, I get it. The high energy, 2-tone-ish new wave - edgy vocals, ringing guitars and thumping drums, punctuated with flugelhorn solos - would probably have connected more readily with many fans than the darker, murkier stuff Stipe and company were playing. And then song 3 comes in, kinda dark and murky. Automatic Man is a minor key, new wave protest against… robots? “He can do it better than you or I can He’s fully metallic Automatic Man.” The harmony vocals, scratchy chorus guitar, secret agent bass line, and legato horns keep this one moving along. Murky but catchy! Mon Cherie’s angular power pop sounds a bit like The Romantics, but also references “that old song by Ernie Tubb” and stretches the word “baby” out to five syllables. Stranger in a Strange Land uses a vaguely Middle Eastern tone to tell the tongue-in-cheek tale of a US soldier overseas: “It’s so hard makin’ conversation In a language you don’t understand And it’s real hell tryin’ to find a good rest’raunt You’re a stranger in a strange land.” The theme continues with Arabian Wars: “They’re calling it a holy war But why’s everybody so sore?” Lyrically interesting, but musically less so, other than the XTC-like guitar break that opens and closes the song. Radio Rebels is about soldiers of a different kind. The listener is urged to “twist around your dial ‘til you locate those radio rebels, and dig the sound.” It’s actually refreshing to remember indie radio from the early ‘80’s and how rebellious it seemed. It’s a fairly dull song, really, but the sentiment is great. Farmer’s Daughter incorporates a bit of Some Girls-era Rolling Stones into an infectious ska bop. Oddly, the flugelhorn player is less effective here, too front-and-center and not creative enough to pull it off. The guitars are great, as they are throughout the album, really. With a song titled Circles Under Sunshine, I should have expected some white reggae, but extending the album’s most boring track and calling it Circle Dub feels unfortunate. There’s some mumbled speech that turns out to be backmasking, but I didn’t play the record backwards to find out what it said. The Telefones were three brothers: Chris, Jerry and Steve Dirkx, and one other guy named Mark Griffin. Rock-Ola! was their second of two albums. It has its moments, just as the band did, before disappearing into the mists of time.

The 1981 Listening Post - Sad Café - Olé

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: October 1981 Sad Café Olé Genre: MOR Pop Rock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Love’s Enough Follow You Anywhere Misunderstanding Serious Shoes Sad Café played easy listening pop rock, what might have later been considered yacht rock, but only if anyone remembered any of their songs. Lead singer Paul Young later joined Mike + the Mechanics and provided lead vocals for some of their hits (notably not their biggest hit, Silent Running, which featured guaranteed-top-ten-guest-vocalist Paul Carrack). Olé was their second consecutive flop, yielding zero hits, despite the expert production, skillful playing, and technical precision of their sound. Or maybe because of it. Opener Love’s Enough features keyboards reminiscent of Michael McDonald’s Doobie Brothers, a smooth sax intro, and some fairly compelling vocals from Young, who rises to a sweet falsetto on the last chorus. There is no particular reason why this song shouldn’t have found its place between Every Woman In The World and The Best of Times on FM hits radio in late 1981. But it didn’t. And I’ve already forgotten the hook. I suppose that’s what separated Sad Café from bands like Toto or Foreigner. They certainly had the talent and musical chops to play in that league, but somehow their hooks don’t compare to Africa or Hold the Line. You could argue that’s because we’ve heard those songs ten thousand times, unlike Nine, which does have a nifty keyboard riff supporting a rich chorus harmony or Follow You Anywhere, with its bouncy circus organ chorus coupled with emotionally spare piano verses and elegant lead guitar. I could see some of these songs growing on me if I was interested in giving this kind of music more than cursory attention. Maybe it’s the genre itself. How many people are passionate about middle of the road pop rock? I know there are bands that invite that kind of love: Fleetwood Mac is an obvious example, but they’re also fascinating personalities whose personal lives overlap intriguingly with the music itself, putting them in a different category. Does anyone care about Lou Gramm’s love life or what Steve Porcaro says about Steve Lukather? They make music that blends in easily with everyday tasks. People like it, but who really goes out of their way to find anything new? No matter how long it took to layer the many tracks on the Hall and Oates-like 7th track, Misunderstanding, virtually nobody was interested in hearing it. Being a charitable listener, I’m going to say that’s unfortunate because all the basic ingredients are here. Like Love’s Enough, it’s very easy to imagine Misunderstanding, or even the Men At Work-meets-Steely Dan bop, Serious Shoes, sliding in comfortably after Kiss On My List and before While You See A Chance. Maybe in some alternative timeline, these are beloved songs that were later featured in silly teen movies and covered by annoying acapella groups. In this timeline, they’re just pleasant tunes to have on in the background, and God knows we’ve got more than enough of those in the world. Sorry Sad Café. I did manage to write this review while your album was on in the background though, so thanks for that.

The 1981 Listening Post - Picture - Heavy Metal Ears

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: October 1981 Picture Heavy Metal Ears Genre: Heavy Metal Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Heavy Metal Ears Spend The Night With You I'm Just A Simple Man “We're going to change the world, a revolution, every day heavy metal at school, it’ll be a world of destruction, we're gonna lock up the disco fools.” Move over Lipps Inc, move over Chic – there’s a new sheriff in town and he is declaring war on you with a heavy Dutch accent and a clunky lyric sheet. I mean, how much sillier does it get than “Spend the Night With You”? “I'm looking for a girl and I would say to her, would you like to play with me? We're going to drink a bit and if you want to, you can spend the night with me. I want to have it, I think I'll do it now. But after all my thoughts, I think I'd better spend the night with you. Ain't got no money, but after all, it's the best thing I can do. I want to have it, I think I'll do it now.” Words that just tumble off the page with all the grace of a pile of bricks. Didn’t he ever learn not to pepper his writing with filler like “I think?” And those lyrics were from the best tracks on the album. Thankfully the music is brisk, chugging and taut, with an economical approach to fills and guitar solos that keeps the listener’s focus where it needs to be. Maybe it’s not particularly distinct from their NWOBHM contemporaries, but the recording captures the energy well such that it’s hard not to move along with it. Apparently this is Picture’s second album, and they churned out five more before hanging it up in the late 80s. I would assume it is worth a listen for fans of the genre, and won’t be any more repellant to non-fans than other metal of the era. Bonus highlight: If you have a sense of humor about metal (and as a non-fan, I confess I do), the call and response vibrato fest at the 3:00 mark of “Nighttiger” is worth a chuckle.

The 1981 Listening - Orbits - Q: What... Ans: Nothing

 Reviewed by Stephen Romone Lewis

Released: 1981 Orbits Q: What... Ans: Nothing Genre: New Wave/Synth Pop Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Rear View Mirror Q: What’s it sound like? Ans: Lots of Devo-esque “Pssoo-PSSoo” laser sounds mixed with that nasal guitar sound The Cars use. The interplay between the band members is fantastic: the bass, guitar and synth lines weave together, instead of rock’s typical strummed chords. They do NOT sound even a little bit disco. Q: How did the band form? Ans: The keyboard player and drummer from the disco band Tavares were kicking around Boston and started writing poppy rock tunes. Q: Did they steal the idea for the title from Devo’s 1978 disc (Q: Are We Not Men A: We Are Devo) Ans: probably, maybe it’s an homage. Q: Is it worth our time to listen to it? Ans: There is great musicianship throughout, but the lyrics can be childish and the songs sound derivative. If you really love Devo or The Cars, you might love this. Q: Is there anything we DEFINITELY need to hear? Ans: Yes! Unless you are offended by the phrase “Big tits they make me giggle” you should listen to “Rear View Mirror”. I bought this album when I was 14 because I loved the song “Rear View Mirror”. It got heavy rotation on WBCN, and college radio. When I got software to transfer LPs to MP3s, “Rear View Mirror” was one of the first songs I copied. “Rear View Mirror” has a hit worthy chorus, a hit worthy guitar solo, a hit worthy bridge, a hit worthy coda and hit worthy verses. It also has one brief, hit-killing lyric: “Big tits they make me giggle.” Hip 80’s AOR stations played it, especially at night, but you couldn’t go national with “Big tits they make me giggle.” loudly proclaimed in the middle of your tune. Casey Kasem was not going to issue a long distance dedication featuring “Big tits they make me giggle” clearly enunciated for all of middle America to have a heart attack over. Q: Did any of the other tunes get any airplay? Ans: “7 Digits Away”, “Sensors” and “It's A Surprise” all did some time on college radio playlists. Q: How did you come up with a rating of 3.5? Ans: I took off 1 point because it’s an EP with only 8 tunes and I took off .5 because some of those 8 tunes don’t stand up to repeat listening.

The 1981 Listening Post - Neal Schon & Jan Hammer

 Reviewed by Rob Slater

Released: November 1981 Neal Schon & Jan Hammer Untold Passion Genre: Decent Keytar Music With Homages To A Lot Of Other Bands Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Mediumlights: I'm Talking To You I'm writing this after listening to it twice while working on wiring electrical outlets. So, all the skips are on the third listen. This album is much better as moderately loud background music. It would drive my partner, Elena, nuts! After about 30 seconds, she'd skip ahead and say something about wanking. Wasting Time - What you would expect, lots of wanking. Neil Schon's voice is better than one would expect. Lyrics/rhymes are on the mundane/obvious side. I'm Talking To You - This one’s a little more accessible, with the wanking a little more backgroundy. Some nice keyboards from Jan. The Ride - The opening is inauspicious. Then a little nice guitar. Then more goofy 80s synth. Then a little nice guitar. Finally, after about 3:00 annoying keyboard breaks, there's a nice one that sounds like Rhodes piano. The bass is nice, sounds like Geddy Lee's Rick. I made it 1:35 out of. 4:41 (instrumental) I'm Down - Nice vocals from Neil. Not sure how to define this, but I don't really appreciate it, other than the skill of the players. Some aspects of Alex [wife's and] Lifeson guitar that sounds like a RUSH song that I wouldn't actually like. Arc - The opening to this Jan Hammer instrumental is good; it sounds like Judas Priest, I made it 1:12 out of 3:58. (3rd time) It's Alright - some more Judas Priest-like guitar. The bass player has limited opportunities to show off. Repetitive and boring. 55 seconds. Hooked On Love - 33 seconds in and it gets decent, but I actually skipped forward and then went back a few seconds to nail this timing. More stupid, obvious rhymes. Skipped about halfway through. On The Beach - Nice opening. I could hear this as a live Journey song. Definitely. The keys are understated, and not too 80s. Still became a little repetitious, but at least we don't have any lyrics to make it worse. About halfway through a little annoying Hammer, not Max's Silver one, however, which might not be a bad idea. Just a little tap. All in all, a decent song. Hammers interludes that are annoying happen rarely enough to not ruin the song. Actually listen to it all the way through, all 5 minutes 27 seconds. Untold Passion - I actually like this Hammer instrumental, though clocking in at 7:02 tells me I probably will want to skip ahead to the bonus track. Nice guitar solo about halfway through. I believe there hasn't been much, if any guitar up to this point in the song. It's at least interesting. There's more guitar as it goes on and that's nice. But it's repetitious. It would be a quite nice song at about 4:44. Planet Empathy - It sounds like Styx, one of Dennis DeYoung's less interesting songs. Putting this on as a bonus track instead of on the original album was probably a good idea. Never mind, if they shortened the beginning, I would definitely keep it on the album. Some nice flamenco sounding guitar, though I think it's electric. And then some rather pleasant wanking. Overall, a decent album to listen to while you’re making pizza, building a house, or working on a story set in the '80s. It’s kinda like a Steven King novel that would be so much better if someone did some editing.

The 1981 Listening Post - Mike Batt - Six Days in berlin

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: September 1981 Mike Batt Six Days In Berlin Genre: Imaginary Soundtrack Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Part One Those of you who follow my work here (you both know who you are) will already be aware that Mike Batt was the driving force behind The Wombles, a British children’s show of some renown. I previously reviewed Mike’s 1980 release, Waves, which included some mildly interesting, vaguely soundtrackish tunes, as well as more basic post-Beatles pop songs. This is something else altogether. Six Days in Berlin has six tracks, which are titled Part One through Part Six. Part One opens with about 3 1/2 minutes of grand, sweeping instrumental bombast, which very suddenly becomes an ELO-like pop song, complete with vocoder and abrupt tempo shifts, punctuated by dramatic string section washes, polyrhythmic percussion, elaborate 15 second guitar interludes, and a story that begins, “She had built her hacienda / Far above the sweeping plain / Where she weathered the agenda / with the sweet diminuendo / of the rain,” and ends, “The milkman used to say / Tra la la la la / Bring out your dead.” This is one of those nine minute songs you’d swear was about 4:25. It rewards close listening (Is that really an accordion solo? Yes, yes it is), but even if you just put it on in the background, it never lets up. Part Two opens with the sound of walking feet and two voices speaking far off in the distance. The Berlin Opera Orchestra steps forward, presenting a clear piece of program music. Not sure what the program is, but that’s OK. Just before the 4 minute mark, the orchestra becomes the rock combo once again, and Part Three begins. Harmonized guitars dictate a melody, which is then echoed by a string section, which gives way to churning guitar bass and drums, quickly interrupted by strings, then back to rock, etc. There are occasional pauses for spoken lines, sound effects, race cars panning left to right, delicate flute solos, synth washes, Van Halen style guitar arpeggios, vocoder glissandos, drum whacks, and classical horn section blasts. All of this happens in less than six minutes. Sort of like Pink Floyd with a relentless beat but without a discernible message. I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow review of the second half. Suffice to say, there’s a lot going on here, and all of it is skillfully created and put together. At 11:28, Part Six feels like a symphony composed for orchestra and rock band, in that order. It’s the least interesting part of the album to me, but it’s still an intriguing effort. I would stop short of saying this record qualifies as a Listening Post Discovery, mostly because I wouldn’t really call it a Pop/Rock album, anymore than I would the soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera. Oh, by the way, Mike Batt co-wrote the title song from Phantom, which makes him either a very impressive fellow or one of history’s great villains (I lean toward the latter, but that’s just my opinion). It’s hard to believe this wasn’t created specifically as a soundtrack for something, but as far as I can tell, it was only the movie in Mike Batt’s mind. He wrote and arranged all the parts and even conducted the Staatskapelle Berlin. Whatever the story is, it’s mostly a fun ride. If you enjoy soundtracks and don’t mind making the movie up yourself, you might get a kick out of Six Days in Berlin.

The 1981 Listening Post - Mi-Sex - Shanghaied

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: October 1981 Mi-Sex Shanghaied Genre: New Wave Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Mystery Missing Person Caught In The Act Falling In And Out Shanghaied, the third album by New Zealanders Mi-Sex, came out on the CBS label and sold poorly. It was followed by a fourth and final album that sold even worse, and that was it. The band was made up of former prog musicians who switched to a more synth-based sound after hearing Ultravox’s debut album. I don’t hear much prog, if any, but it’s not hard to detect a superior level of musicianship compared to many of the Johnny-come-lately new wave bands of the day. The production also stands out: Wikipedia says the album was produced by the band themselves, so that’s impressive, I guess. I’m not completely sure how this ended up in the cutout bin. On the best songs (Mystery, Missing Person, Caught in the Act) the playing and singing are consistently first rate, and the songwriting holds up well: chord progressions change multiple times rather than there being one riff that lasts 4 minutes. Inventive synth melodies bubble up and drop out, elegant guitar solos sweep through, strong vocals keep their cool until the passion rises, and a bubbly nonstop beat moves under all of it. Maybe the lyrics verge on insipid (“And did you know / There’s no civilians in China / In China” “She had tears in her wine / Oh, she coulda been mine”), but these guys are more interested in being Midge Ure than Elvis Costello, so clever lyrics aren’t so important. There’s a bit of Duran Duran macho posturing, which may be off putting to some, but it obviously doesn’t compare to the rampant misogyny of metal. It’s geek music played by bros, I guess. It’s easy to imagine putting this album on at a party and letting it play almost all the way through. You get 8 tracks in a row that are uniformly listenable, all with a similar feel. The first departure from the nonstop party beat is the title tune, Shanghaied. It brings the piano, guitar and vocals up, and tells the “sad” tale of a man who’s been “framed” by a woman. Lyrically, it’s hopelessly dated, but the video is kind of cute. The tenth track also departs from the party formula, but much more successfully. Falling In and Out sounds like a college radio new wave hit, and maybe it was – it has 343,000 plays on Spotify. The video makes the band look a little creepy, but they are called “My Sex,” so what are ya gonna do? The last song is a bit more annoying than the party tracks, but it’s got some clever whistling and ends quickly, so that’s fine, I guess. A very competent outing from a competent band that probably had no idea they were on the road to oblivion. According to Whammo (aka “The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock”), this was “arguably the band’s best album,” but by 1981, “the likes of Split Enz, INXS and Men At Work had grabbed the public’s attention, and Mi-Sex barely got a look in.” So there you have it, I guess.

The 1981 Listening Post - Killer (BE) - Ready for Hell

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: 1981 Killer (BE) Ready for Hell Genre: Heavy Metal Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Ready For Hell I Know Summer, 1981. With the New Wave of Belgian Heavy Metal on the ascendancy, Shorty, Spooky and Fat Leo were sweating through the seventeenth take of “Crazy Circus” in Affligem’s Dig-It studio. The Belgian trio were aware that members of Switzerland’s Kaktus had reformed as Killer and were due to release their debut album by year’s end. There had been an escalating war of words between the two acts of the same name, peaking when partisans of the Belgian band jumped their Swiss rivals outside of a Lucerne metal bar, leaving the Swiss band’s guitarist with a fractured rib. The stakes couldn’t be higher, the album had to be a hit. Their current track wasn’t coming together – maybe it wasn’t their best number anyway – and would ultimately be left on the cutting room floor. They would just have to hope that the songs they already had in the can would be enough. Ok, that story is made up; only the names have been preserved to implicate the innocent. I’m not a metal guy, and the Wikipedia bio is pretty drab. But there were two heavy metal bands called Killer, one in Belgium and one in Switzerland, who released their debut albums in 1981. So tell me… how else would it have gone down? I was ‘ready for hell’ when I started listening, but was relieved to hear the Mötörhead-esque title track. I don’t expect these guys were doing anything especially unique, but they pulled it off pretty well. The best here is the chugging, galloping, speedy music just over the metal border from punk, boasting notes of Mötörhead (especially when the vocals are gruffer) and Priest. There’s plenty of energy throughout, and the first five tracks would probably make for a fine listen for fans of the genre. (Much of Side 2 was unmemorable.) As for themes, I have a hard time making a lot of the lyrics out, between the gravelly delivery and unrefined accent. The album cover depicts the typical “sexy women are turned on by being stabbed in the neck” kind of fare, while the track “Killer” exposes that vocalist Shorty’s “baby” is the real killer. Tasteless, but then there’s always someone pushing it further. Spies for the Swiss rivals got a glimpse of the Belgians’ promo cover, and knew they needed to react. In a bid to one-up the Belgians, Switzerland’s Killer was convinced to change their album title from “Get Up, Get Down” to “Ladykiller,” and replace their cover with an “after” version of the Belgian’s art. The Belgians had shied away from showing an actual killing, so the Swiss took it to the “next level,” with the model lying dead on a bed, blood streaming from her open mouth. When both albums finally saw the light of day, the Belgians were initially furious and figured they’d lost the round. But while record stores showed the good sense of censoring the Swiss album cover, the Belgians’ album was plastered across shop windows, making them the talk of the town from Brussels to Bern. Ok, that last story is made up too, but the description of the covers is real. So tell me… how else would it have gone down? (Swiss Killer notes courtesy of Rod Brogan's review.)

The 1981 Listening Post - Jr. Cadillac - In for Life

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: August 1 1981 Jr. Cadillac In For Life Genre: Party Rock & Roll Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Somethin' Strange Wailer's House Party Cop Your Spot Leavin' Here For more than 50 years, Jr. Cadillac has been the pre-eminent live party band of the Pacific Northwest. Sure, you could argue Too Slim and the Taildraggers deserve a mention for those who live east of the Cascades, but along the I-5 corridor, on any given Friday and/or Saturday night, during any year between say, 1971 and 2019, you could probably find these guys at a dive bar or dingy music venue, rockin’ the place while satisfied patrons drank Olympia and Rainier beer and partied till the cows came home. They’re still doing it today, maybe not every weekend, but every chance they get. This 1981 release is a party album for party people. Not fashionable party people either: this is music for 9 to 5 blue collar folk who want to forget their worries and rock out in the purest sense of the term. This is the band Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley called whenever they came through town. Their bass player at this point was Mr. Buck Ormsby, a founding member of the Fabulous Wailers. If you don’t know who they were, Tall Cool One might be a good place to start. Here we get a cover of Wailer’s House Party, a slinky, sizzling instrumental. The songs are a mix of covers, party anthems, and attempts at actual songwriting. But when you wear your influences on your sleeve, even the originals can be damned enjoyable. Cop Your Spot digs into that famous Bo Diddley beat and does not let up. Somethin’ Strange locks into a mid tempo rockabilly groove, complete with Crickets-style background vocals. Talk Jock Walks steals shamelessly from Chuck Berry, and why not? The very next tune is an extended, sax drenched cover of Chuck’s No Money Down. The closing number, Motown classic Leaving Here, very nearly captures the live vibe that has gotten JC through half a century. Don’t set your expectations high - the guy next to you with the rodeo belt buckle and flannel shirt sure as hell doesn’t have high expectations, so why should you? Just drink your beer and have a good time. That’s what Jr. Cadillac wants. That’s why we’re all here.

The 1981 Listening Post - Joe Ryder - Joe Ryder

 Reviewed by Jim Coursey

Released: 1981 Joy Ryder Joy Ryder Genre: New Wave / No Wave Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: We Do The Bop Suitcase New Place Wearing New Clothes If you only listen to the first track or two of Joy Ryder’s debut album, you’ll likely walk away with a certain impression of the music. It’s punky, sassy pop rock with a modern new wave sound, topped by strong vocals adorned with the sneers, squeals and hiccups that read “cute, cool, and a little bit naughty.” Put “We Do The Bop” on a mix tape next to “I Know What Boys Like”, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, “Hey Mickey”, “Kids in America” and we’re done. Maybe Ryder’s tracks aren’t quite as catchy as the others, but they nail the vibe. But the album quickly flies off the rails, in the best possible way, going spiky, nervy, dissonant, even downright angry. On the cover we have Ryder applying makeup on the street, awash in oversaturated neon colors, and while the album as a whole keeps to bright and striking hues, her teeth come out as it goes on. “Suitcase” starts to take the “bop bop shoo bop” vibe into a more discordant direction, and by track 4’s Devo-ish “New Place”, what seemed like a touch of pop-friendly zaniness at the album’s opening turns full bore dementia. “You Belong”, “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and “Oh, Yeah” are more No Wave than radio-friendly new wave, intermingling downtown jazz and anarchic punk. Only “Wearing New Clothes” returns Ryder to the wannabe pop starlet schtick of the opening, which intentionally or not lays bare the transactional nature of her persona and the male-gaze-dominated entertainment industry that demands it: I’m wearing new clothes I got a new dress I gotta look good I can’t look a mess I want to look pretty You said ought to I want to look good I want to impress you Yes I want to impress you Impress you, impress you, impress you, So I’m wearing new clothes The best bio I’ve found of Joy Ryder is a 2015 obituary [1], which places her in New York City’s counterculture from the late 60s until 1980 when she left for Berlin and presumably recorded this album. (She had enough visibility there [2] that I found at least one German language obituary too.) While her eponymous release isn’t an unmitigated success – it lacks the couple killer tracks to push it over the edge – it does a good job walking the fine line between mainstream appeal and boundary-pushing. ********** 1. https://evgrieve.com/2015/02/rip-joy-ryder.html 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=razXnYpZFYk

The 1981 Listening Post - Heads In The Sky - Heads In The Sky

 Reviewed by Sheffield Chastain

Released: 1981 Heads In The Sky Heads In The Sky Genre: Flog (Floyd Prog) Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Survive Three Isle My Land Full disclosure - I am just not that into Prog Rock. Though (as with Metal) there is some Prog I do like. Genesis comes to mind. I appreciate the excellence of Yes. And, of course, Floyd. But there are a marillion other Prog bands out there that I just can’t take. All that said, this journey into proggy progland isn’t half bad. It’s not half good, either. So. Where Heads In The Sky succeeds, with me, is when they cleave to the Floyd terrain. I mean, listen to Survive or Three Isle My Land (the best track, imho) and tell me that’s not Pink Floyd. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say, and I kinda dig it. But then you get the Atomic Energy Sweet (in 3 parts) and my eyes can’t roll back into my head far enough. Luckily, that didn't happen as much as it usually does when I listen to Prog. And I really dug the album cover. Alien space heads in the sky! I mean, that is some weird, weird shit. So, as far as Prog Rock albums go, I didn't hate it - which is saying A LOT. I wonder what real Prog aficionados will make of this?

The 1981 Listening Post - Flue - One and a Half

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Flue One And A Half Genre: Darkwave Post Punk Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Fancy Free Feminine One And A Half (Improvisation) One of the discoveries I’ve made as I’ve aged is that I actually enjoy dancing. I don’t think I’m particularly good at it, but I’m comfortable doing it, even in grocery stores or at class reunions. If music makes me feel like moving, I’m going to move. Unfortunately, very little of the music I’ve reviewed for this project falls into that category. In the post-disco, pre-EDM early ‘80’s, not much rock or pop qualified as particularly danceable, our generation’s Homecoming head banging to You Shook Me All Night Long notwithstanding. Fancy Free, the first song on One and a Half, Flue’s 1981 Post Punk album, had me on my feet and swaying. It may not have been written to get kids onto the dance floor, but the rhythms are infectious and pervasive, creating a delicious contrast with the dark vocals, sound effects, and overall themes of the album. Imagine if Ian Curtis had survived but Joy Division had morphed into New Order anyway, taking the darkness to the clubs and adding The Edge on guitar. Or maybe if The Church had a drummer who could play it funky. There’s a clear Bauhaus influence vocally, but it’s a much looser sound than that, at least until for most of the record. We’re not talking world music polyrhythms here – Flue weren’t Talking Heads. Think Euro-pop that’s relentlessly bleak instead of bubbly. It’s a very specific niche these Dutch wavers were trying to fill. I get the feeling that they succeeded only in retrospect. YouTube commenters mention the Cure, Numan’s Tubeway Army, the Chameleons, Fad Gadget, and more. I couldn’t find any info on what happened to Flue, but they didn’t seem to hit it big anywhere. So it goes. Side two drifts out of booty shaking mode and into more straightforward Darkwave, losing some of the momentum but holding onto the inventive playing and doom-laden singing. Feminine throws the full package at you: doubled octave vocals with attitude, reverb from floor to ceiling, scritch-scratchy guitars, wide open synths. It’s a tightly wound highlight, coming in just under 3 minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, the final track, listed as One And a Half (Improvisation), sounds like an in-studio jam, but a pretty impressive one. The band manages to vary tempo, dynamics, guitar, synth, and vocal effects enough to remain interesting for just over 10 minutes. It’s a suitable wrap up to a great effort by a band that had potential, even if not many outside the Netherlands noticed at the time.

The 1981 Listening Post - Faithful Breath - Rock Lions [1]

 Reviewed by Tom Mott

Released: 1981 Faithful Breath Rock Lions [1] Genre: Hard Rock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: [2] Hurricane Rock City No Time This starts really strong --- they're ready to rock! This is straight up hard rock, or hard bluesy rock, sorta pointing the way towards Guns'n'Roses but without that extra sprinkling of fairy dust and personalities that pushed Guns'n'Roses over the top. This isn't metal. It's definitely very good hard rock. Not great hard rock, but good. They don't "move the needle forward" ... but that's not what's asked of genre bands is it? I mean, I love garage bands, and 99% of them stay in their lane and just crank out the music they love. Speaking of genres and staying in your lane, I think it's of note that alongside the various styles of synth-pop, post-punk, new wave, and melodic rock that were percolating at the time, both NWOBHM and hip-hop were bubbling up in 1981. A chunk of rockers were moving into metal, and a chunk of funksters were moving into hip-hop. I think only two full rap albums came out in 1981, and they were both second albums: Kurtis Blow's "Deuce," and Sugarhill Gang's "8th Wonder." But by 1988 or '89, Headbangers Ball and Yo MTV Raps seemed to be pretty much all you could find on MTV, alongside 120 Minutes "college rock." Who knew? Sugarhill Gang's 1981 album has at least three really solid 7+ min funk-rap jams on it, including the bonafide dance classic "Apache" (even though my 2023 sensibilities cringe-laugh at "Tonto! Jump on it!" and the war cries). [3] Back to Faithful Breath, it's not bad, it's good, it's very good in places, it doesn't touch greatness, but it chugs along with shouted choruses and definitely has a solid fan base. No Time starts with a fun Trampled Underfoot riff but veers into more standard rock fare for the rest of the song. ********** 1. The BAND name is Faithful Breath. The ALBUM name is Rock Lions. It seems with 1981 heavy metal/hard rock bands, it's hard to know which is the band name and which is the album name. It makes me wish for the hat tricks of simpler times: Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath" on "Black Sabbath," and Bad Company³ (band, album, song). 2. My highlights are graded on a curve: the best songs on THIS album. 3. Those Apache bongos! Sampled from the 1973's Incredible Bongo Band album, which was a studio band put together for The Thing with Two Heads and featured various session players including Jim Gordon from Derek and the Dominoes. The Incredible Bongo Band's first single was a cover of Bongo Rock, co-written by legendary L.A. disc jockey Art Laboe. What a rabbit hole to go down!

The 1981 Listening Post - Edgar Winter - Standing On a Rock

 Reviewed by Geo Rule

Released: September 1981 Edgar Winter Standing On Rock Genre: Hook-A-Licious Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Rock And Roll Revival Everyday Man My wife and I were supposed to see Edgar Winter live for the first time last fall, with Ringo and his All-Starr Band. Damn you, Covid (not original, but heartfelt). 1973 was the year of Edgar Winter. “Frankenstein” (a rare instrumental-only #1). “Free Ride”. Good stuff. Now it’s 1981, and the “Edgar Winter Group” is no more. This is a solo effort. It’s pleasant, but not outstanding. The rocks rock. The ballads ballad, perhaps a little better than you’d expect from Winter. It’s all very good, but not very great. The thing about Winter is, he seems incapable of not creating a “hook” that’s going to get you seat dancing. Or at least a little shoulder shimmy. That is worth the price of admission. "Standing on Rock" is only eight songs, which is pretty light for the era. If you haven’t heard this album before (I hadn’t), and you’re reading this post on TLP, I think you won’t hate it.

The 1981 Listening Post - Crow - On the Run

 Reviewed by Rod Brogan

Released: 1981 Crow On The Run Genre: Blues Rock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: User Magic Boy Gone, Gone, Gone Many times, when you listen to a rock act from the '60s or '70s, you just know that these guys played a four hour long covers set several days a week for years before entering the studio. Those guys could play. The bass and drummer are in the pocket, the guitars swing, and the vocals are self assured and full of personality. A Minnesota Rock/Country Hall of Fame boogie band with gloriously fuzzy tube amp tones, Crow's earlier 1960s incarnation had a Top 20 hit with Evil Woman, which Black Sabbath and Ike and Tina Turner covered. This is the short lived 1981/82 version of the band, minus keyboards/organ and with only founding singer David Wagner returning. On The Run is music to sweat and drink to in a cramped smokey bar. Magic Boy is their radio-friendly stomper, kicking off Side 2 with a guitar riff and chorus that sound surgically lifted from a hundred 1970s classic rock singles. Someone sounds like a throwback 1960s R&B track with Motown horns. User is the stand out, a slow and steady confessional about a selfish lover, with blue note riffs and forceful drum fills. Gone, Gone, Gone is a bluesy 9 minute slide guitar wonder which allows Wagner to show off his soulful side, and John Richardson and Jeff Christenson to trade solos before a call and response chorus fade out. If these nice Midwestern boys perhaps had a little more swagger in the lyrics, Crow would be better known today.

The 1981 Listening Post - Cooper Brothers - Learning to Live With It

 Reviewed by Brian Kushnir

Released: 1981 Cooper Brothers Learning To Live With It Genre: Canadian Soft Southern Rock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Come Back Baby You Live Just A Little Learning To Live With It Rules Of The Road If you were having a 1973 themed party, serving things like three cheese fondue, Ritz mock apple pie, and spinach souffle, you could throw about half of this on in the background. The other half would work on the soundtrack of the next edition of the “Cars” franchise, or on “Yellowstone” during a honky tonk scene. Cooper Brothers are a unit from Ottawa, Canada that in the 70s were originally signed to Capricorn Records (home of the Allman Brothers). You had to have some chops to be on Capricorn, so it is no surprise that these are some finely crafted, well-played if innocuous little ditties. Les Emmerson (late of Five Man Electrical Band, “Signs,” etc.) joined the brothers Cooper for this album and handles most of the lead vocals. All the playing and singing is aces, the solos (on guitar, sax, and flute) are all tasteful, brief, and to the point. And there is lyrical craft on display, though the words often land like phrases swiped from the inside of Hallmark cards: “You live just a little but you’re dead for a long long time,” “If my heart only knew what I knew you’d be gone,” “the girl will break your heart in style,” “you’ve got trouble written all over you,” “learning to live with the heartache.” That said, the songs are neat and tidy and go down easy, so if this (mishmash of soft country fried rockers that would fit right in on a Stagecoach side-stage combined with easy listening just perfect for kicking back in a dentist chair) is your type of thing, you may have found yourself a new guilty pleasure. Pass the rumaki!

The 1981 Listening Post - Birth Control - Deal Done at Night

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: April 1981 Birth Control Deal Done At Night Genre: Krautrock Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Highlights: Talk To You Deal Done At Night Another Death [Warning: 1500 word review incoming...] I grew up thinking my heritage was simple: half German on my dad’s side, half Norwegian on my mom’s side. Then, around age 50, I discovered the family secret: my grandfather’s dad was actually a scoundrel of English heritage, who got my “great aunt” pregnant at 17 and fled. Grandpa was raised by his good German grandparents, and his actual mom pretended to be his sister. Suddenly my love of Monty Python, soccer, foggy days, and London town made sense, as did my lack of interest in all things Teutonic, other than sauerkraut, Oktoberfest and Wim Wenders movies. Needless to say, I never went in for Krautrock. So I don’t have much background experience to lend to this review of Birth Control’s 1981 release, Deal Done at Night. I did find the album cover delightfully daft, with its cut and paste lyrical snippets and sly, collage-style nudity. But the music is just going to have to stand on its own merits. With that in mind, let’s begin. Burnt Gas is the title of track one. I never would have guessed that’s what they were singing over and over. It sounds like “bad gals” or maybe “bird gams.” The song does seem to be literally about burnt gas, which smells bad, causing the lead singer to cough at one point, but maybe means you’re driving really fast on the Autobahn? There are a lot of guitar solos over what sounds like any of about 15 different bar band songs from my youth. He’s In The Right is played faster than Burnt Gas. I’d have to go back and check, but it almost sounds like the same chords, just played faster. Probably not. This one seems to be mostly about the bass line. It’s much easier to understand the title, but the rest of the chorus is unclear to me. There’s a snazzy guitar solo in the middle, and then one of those spoken parts through what sounds like a megaphone. “Don’t let him get away / Look out / Make way!” Then back to the chorus, “He’s in the right / He’s in the right baby / Yeah the rall blat fizzy now / He’s in the right / He’s in the right baby / Zuperan withal distawn / He’s in the right / He’s in the right baby / Now mashkin fawn dig paskin zoom this heel!” Or something like that. Track three, Talk to You, has an organ on it! I dig that fat organ sound. Very Steppenwolf. The singer sounds anguished this time. “Take it from me / Told a pretty little girl / I think she loves me.” There are lots of words, which seem to be English, just not necessarily in a making sense way. But he’s really feeling them. “Knowing real / that she knows / what she’s about / I see what they’re talking about / she keeps me waiting / yes I’m calling but / no one gets it but my mind.” Here’s another expressive guitar solo with lots of long, bent notes. The singer gets harder to fathom the more excited he gets. I think he just yelled, “I can’t fight it / I love Jesus!” Now it’s a spoken section, “Mary doesn’t know what happened to her / This girl is asking too much / You know I’m talking about vertebrae / Vertebrae cannot be worked / If it can be done at all / The chosen one would HATE you / So love me girl!” Organ solo! This is so exciting. Whatever can it mean? Does it matter? I have decided that no, it doesn’t matter. I like it. The title track, Deal Done at Night, starts out sounding like a ballad, just organ and vocals. I have the feeling it’s not going to continue as a ballad though. And there it is: bam bam drums! Distorted guitar riff! Fast Chuck Berry bass line! “I have a girl who walks raven on fame / Like so many young girls do / But her six it is all the same / Finger up for those of us who / She’s always lookin out for a chest / Wearing patent leather boots / she feels her makeup with the long eyelashes / Sparks for every show biz mood / Oh yeah.” It took 4 minutes to go back and figure out those lyrics. His girl eventually poses in the nude and then some other stuff I missed. It’s “A Deal done at Night / A question mark on you and your life / A deal done at night / Will get you nowhere only just a lie / Just a lie!” Guitar solo. The band is really rocking here, doing that whole retro ‘50’s with distortion thing, including a fake Jerry Lee piano solo. I’m digging it, daddy o. I won’t let my deal go down! Oh wait, that’s someone else. I need to preface track five by mentioning that, when I was in college, I knew a guy named Dave, who was a fantastic jazz saxophone player. I’m pretty sure he ended up becoming Entertainment Director for a major cruise line. But I digress. Anyway, Dave once told me, “Really great rock songs always start with just drums, playing a really cool beat, then the guitars come in. You hear that, and you know it’s going to be a great song. Why don’t they just start every song that way?” I didn’t have a good answer for him then, and I still don’t. Back to the Krautrock: track five starts with just the drums, playing a really cool beat, then the guitars come in. But they take it one step further because then the organ comes in. You just know it’s gonna be a great song, right? Hm, yeah, anytime now this will turn into a great song. Waiting. Still waiting. “Don’t call me up / Don’t call me up tonight babe / Don’t call me up / Cuz I just won’t be there.” OK, here’s the guitar solo, and it’s… all right I guess. Oh, that was a cool organ riff, but then it was over. OK, everything has faded down to just the drums and bass, and now the singer goes “Don’t call me up cuz I won’t be there,” and the background singers go, “Baby he just won’t be there.” It’s too cute! They are really trying to sound cool and sinister and all badass, and it just makes me want to give them a hug. And now the handclaps kick in! And the organ glissando into a long note! All the cool song stuff is here, and it should be making me go, “Wow! Cool song!” But I’m not in college, and it’s not 1981. Still, I think Dave would have liked that one. Uh oh, the last two tracks look like Serious Heavy Song Time. Song six is called Absolution, and it’s written in second person, always a dead giveaway that this is a Very Meaningful Song. “Struck by remorse / asking your conscience / Why it didn’t make no sense / while on the screen / the man in the sky says it’s you / and the hole on the show.” It’s one of those minor key, very few chords, thumpity thump songs. I don’t know enough about this genre to compare this to anything else, but I know this type of song. When it finally gets to the title word, it’s sung with big high harmonies, followed by some accusatory lyrics I didn’t quite catch. “ABSOLUTION! / Who gives absolution to the blat and bowl? / ABSOLUTION! / Your alibi could snap a flame with blah dee blah! / ABSOLUTION! / Who is willin’ to pick up / You and the cinema pop?!” Very Serious Guitar Solo. Repeat the whole thing, only more inscrutable. Even More Serious Guitar Solo. ABSOLUTION!! If that wasn’t heavy enough for you, brah, we present track seven, ANOTHER DEATH. “The fisher man / is out at sea / but there’s no patience for water / He always tried to find him a place / He knew the fish would be there.” Imagine all this with the most ominous, dramatic sounding accompaniment possible. Now maybe he’s dead, and they’re telling his wife about it. Chorus: “Another death / another life is gone / the ocean now is turning into an oil pit / another ship / another boat is gone / We only live as long as it takes us to spoil it.” OK, this is a massively epic environmental message song that will most assuredly save the world. Even as they were recording it, I’m sure Greenpeace was on the phone, begging them to play it through loudspeakers over every sea and ocean. Our only hope for the future is this song. And it still has over two minutes left. Oh. My. God. Open your Spotify RIGHT NOW, and go to the 4 minute mark of this song. I cannot possibly do justice to what is happening right now. My life has been permanently altered. There are no words in English for the joy those 36 seconds of music have brought me. I shall call it Dummemusikfreude. Danke, Birth Control, for the Dummemusikfreude. Maybe my German heritage is stronger than I thought it was.