The 1980 Listening Post - The Cry - The Cry

The Cry - The Cry

#115

1980 Housekeeping LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

The Cry

The Cry

Genre: New Wave/Rock and Roll

4.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Something Like That

Last Laugh

Can’t Get Close

You

Requisite 80s cover:

The Kinks’ “I’m Not Like Everybody Else”. Filled with remorse and desperation, Berly manages to infuse so much pathos into this song that it’s easy to forget the original. 

I had to hunt this one down. Sheffield found it on Willfully Obscure but the Zip link was dead. So, he put together a YouTube playlist as best he could but it was only a handful of videos. What I heard frustrated me. It was so good, so delicious, I had to hear the entire thing. 

I reached out to Spavid at Obscure but he didn’t respond. 

I even hunted down the main songwriter, Kim Bery (Nee Kimberly Meyer) who lives, I think in Kelowna, CA and emailed him on Facebook but he never got back to me. 

Then, Spavid, got back to me. He uploaded the album! It was a bear to download, since those zip sites has riddled with adware and, potentially malware, but I managed to get the VLC, download an Unarchiver, open it and get it on my iPhone.

Was it worth it?

Shit yes. 

Robo MacPherson’s organ often adds an interesting 60s twist to the New Wave. It’s unlike what Jools Holland was doing with Squeeze, which, to be honest, was making that sound contemporary. It doesn’t detract, though. And it could. It could shove this album into the corner of anachronism but it really doesn’t and that’s a testimony to the Blues-Rock rasp and howl of Berly and his earnest songwriting. 

“Guitar” could have been a roots revival Americana hit, it reminds me of The Long Ryders in a way and “Can’t Get Close” is the Elvis Costello/Eddie Money collaboration we never got and had no idea we needed. 

Here’s the YouTube link but I have put the album in a Box drive if anyone wants it.