Reviewed by Jim Coursey
Released: November 1 1980 Real To Real Tightrope Walkers Genre: White Man Reggae Rating: 2 out of 5 Highlights: Wind Up Man You wouldn’t know it from listening to this album, but Real to Real is one of Alan Wilder’s pre-Depeche Mode bands. I wonder what I’d have thought had I heard it at age 13-15, back in the midst of my peak DM fandom. Alan Wilder is an excellent synth programmer and arranger and was key to Depeche Mode’s post-Vince Clarke success, but his talents are mostly lost on this band. Based on the album cover, he looks like he doesn’t want to be there, though maybe I’m projecting. The style is more or less reggae rock, sounding kind of like early Police if it was made by refugees from a prog rock band. Maybe they sound a bit like Golden Earring doing reggae, though I really only know those two songs. They even serve up a song called “White Man Reggae” as if to justify their style, singing “music is music if you feel it / do you feel it?” In a word, no. The musicianship is good, the singing is less so, and to my ear the aesthetic is awful. Alan Wilder is a bit player here, but shows off his keyboard chops with a proggy flair that he thankfully erased later in his career. The nadir of this thing is “Don’t Let Go”, reminiscent of one of those songs that personify music as a woman, (Common’s “I Used To Love H.E.R.”, Cody Chestnutt / The Roots “The Seed”, etc), except with terrible music and lyrics. Case in point: “I hold my lady in my hand, she’s this microphone stand, her name is rock and roll.” What woman wouldn’t want to be compared to a microphone stand?
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