Thursday, September 12, 2019

The 1985 Listening Post - Dramarama - Cinema Verite

Dramarama - Cinema Verite


#477/1110 LISTENING POST ADMIN DISCOVERY
November 1985
Dramarama
Cinema Verite
Genre: Alternative
5 out of 5


Highlights:
Visiting the Zoo
Questions
Scenario
Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You)
Some Crazy Dame
Transformation
Etc

Is there any song that more represents Los Angeles in the mid-80s than “Anything, Anything”? To me that song is synonymous with KROQ and the LA scene. It was ubiquitous. And also it was good. It was a primal scream of beta-male rock. So desperate. So aggressively desperate. Easdale lays his emotions on his sleeve elsewhere as well, on “Questions” for instance, where he wails, “Does she talk about me???”
I want to give him a hug but I also want to sing along, live on the Sunset Strip. 
The album is more…power poppy than I expected. It’s gently rocking without giving in to softer impulses completely. 
I actually like their cover of “Femme Fatale” more than R.E.M.’s.
And then…Side Two continues the excellence. 
Why didn’t anyone tell me about this record!?
How was “Some Crazy Dame” not played exhaustively on Modern Rock Radio?? It’s steeped in latter day Beatles cum Cheap Trick and it manages to be better than a lot of both of those bands’ stuff. At the very least it’s as good as anything Trick was doing in their heyday. 
There
is
not
a
bad
song
on
this
record.


Like me, Dramarama was a New Jerseyan transplanted to LA, although I never knew that until today. And, aside from that single, I never gave them the time of day. What a fucking loss for me. 
Huge fucking discovery for Allen. 


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