The 1981 Listening Post - The Michael Schenker Group - MSG

 Reviewed by Chris Natale

Released: September 1981 The Michael Schenker Group MSG Genre: Metal Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Chris’ Rating: 1 out of 5 Highlights: Attack Of The Mad Axeman (...no, wait...was that “On and On”...nevermind) As for so many, music invokes a clear sense of time and place for me. Music like MSG from the Michael Schenker Group puts me back in upstate New York in the mid-1980s. Strangely enough, though, not actually the Michael Schenker Group. I remember his name and that of his brother Rudolph Schenker, but their music escaped my attention. Listening to this, it’s easy to see why. I don’t want to get into the debate of Schenker’s talent as a guitarist. I get it. He plays fast and loud. However, after listening to the album twice, I wouldn’t place any money on my ability to distinguish one song from the other. Nothing’s all that catchy or infectious. And when you are able to even faintly tell the difference, it’s either so damn gloomy...perfect for brooding 15 year old boys...or buried in overwrought lyrics. Compare them to Judas Priest, a contemporary but whose origin is just a few years older. With Priest, you get songs that really distinguish themselves from one another and build some energy throughout the song. MSG is full of songs that just kind of plod along with lots of distortion. Meh…

The 1981 Listening Post - Elvis Costello - Almost Blue

 

Elvis Costello - Almost Blue

#506

By Chris Natale

Elvis Costello

Almost Blue

Genre: Elvis Costello

Allen’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Chris’ Rating: 4 out of 5

When recording artists churn out records with the frequency of Stephen King novels, it’s not always a good thing.  It can certainly be that they’re experiencing a creative wellspring and simply need to express that firehose of creativity.  It can also, however, be an attempt to keep the cash flowing or satisfy a record contract in order to move on.  Almost Blue falls in the former category. 

In the first 10 years of Elvis’ recording career, he released 11 albums.  Almost Blue was released in the end of 1981, which opened with the album that grabbed my attention that year, Trust.  It wasn’t until later that I heard Almost Blue, Elvis’ tribute to some of American Country Music’s most accomplished songwriters.  

The first track, Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used To Do?” seemed to serve as the flushing of the New Wave/punk  sound that would then settle into a country groove for the rest of the album.  It may be the only track on the album that feels like it’s been put through the Elvis Costello machine.  The rest of the record sounds more like the songs inhabiting the singer rather than the other way around.    Covering songs from artists ranging from Hank & Merle Haggard (“Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down”) to George Jones “Color of the Blues” and “Brown to Blue”) & Gram Parsons (“I’m Your Toy” & “How Much I’ve Lied”), he certainly covered a range of the genre’s stars.  

Almost Blue was the album that marked the trailhead of the path for Elvis to depart from the New Wave sound that he was so strongly associated with.  It would be joined later in his career by songs including “All This Useless Beauty” and “Almost Blue” and collaborative albums including Painted from Memory with Burt Bacharach and For the Stars with Anne Sofie van Otter.  This kind of wandering in and out of genres has made Elvis Costello such an interesting and influential artist.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6Y234kkXewBp0CjanUQW3w?si=gP01aZ5MSwa0AvS8Hcwd0w

The 1981 Listening Post - Joan Armatrading - Walk Under Ladders

 Joan Armatrading - Walk Under Ladders

#452

By Chris Natale

September 1981

Joan Armatrading

 Walk Under Ladders

Genre: Rock of the times

Allen’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Chris’ Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Highlights: 

When I Get It Right

Walk Under Ladders

The Weakness In Me

Let’s get it out there...Joan Armatrading is the shit.  Songwriting, singing, composing…she’s brilliant.

Walk Under Ladders is Joan Armatrading’s seventh record.  If one way to determine the juice of a person is by the company they keep, then Armatrading is a full-on V-8.

Having recorded her previous album, Me, Myself, I with a backing band who would soon become the house band for Late Night with David Letterman, on Walk Under Ladders, Armatrading brings Andy Partridge from XTC and Thomas Dolby on board for turns on guitar and synthesizer. .

While Ladders and Me, Myself, I both clock in at 35 minutes, Me, Myself, I feels like a much fuller record...one that has more heft.  Ladders is not without it’s gems though.  “When I Get It Right” is a song from the perspective of the perpetually frustrated and criticized, who just can’t take it anymore.  Despite subject matter so bleak and desperate, it’s a catchy earworm that may provoke a little swagger in a homebound, sing-to-yourself moment.  

“I’m Lucky” flips the script, though, as Armatrading, introduced through some powerful Thomas Dolby 1980s synthesizer, gushes about her good fortune in life and love.  Good on you, Joan…

The other lyrical powder keg is “The Weakness In Me”.  Here, Armatrading lays it all out there, the good and the bad of loving someone deeply and all the vulnerability that it presents.  The pain of being both in the presence and the absence of someone…

Armatrading would go on to make a total of 19 albums.  And while Ladders isn’t her strongest as a whole, it has songs that really speak to the full range of human emotions and do so through some powerful musical arrangements and performances.  That’s a win in the record business...

https://open.spotify.com/album/1DC3bRduAQzGnktyGiEjiQ?si=W-wHw7ZLRXS8nVazEYHPlQ

The 1981 Listening Post - Chilliwack - Wanna Be a Star

 Chilliwack - Wanna Be a Star

#443

By Chris Natale

September 1981

Chilliwack

Wanna Be A Star

Genre: Rock & Roll

Allen’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Chris’ Rating: 3 out of 5

Highlights:

 Tell It to the Telephone

Live for a Living

My Girl

Chilliwack?  Yes, early MTV’ers...that Chilliwack.  The group of guys looking down into a 50-gallon drum, starting a fire in it, and doing a little harmonized do-woppy kind of thing.  Turns out it’s also the seventh largest city in the province of British Columbia.   Note to self: avoid “New Rochelle”, “New Bedford”,  or “Trenton” if I get a band together…

Wanna Be A Star was their ninth album, eleven years into their career.   The album appears to be a thematic one...focusing on the band’s quest for rock and roll famedom.  The first cut oddly starts with a Gregorian chant kind of intro.  Not my thing, but certainly original.  The album continues with several tracks very typical of that early 80’s anthemic sound.  Fast drums, heavy bass, and ever-present synthesizer accents frame the vocals.  Any producers who was in search for a track to accompany the montage in a movie that focuses on how the main character is preparing to take their big revenge missed a golden opportunity in “Too Many Enemies”.  You can just feel the angst.   Star is certainly not something I’d cue up for listening to now, but it was a solid performer for its time.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5wNswr8i8yHBRrijyMKADW?si=AojWPeRQS8KVkSH4h6FtbA

The 1981 Listening Post - The Michael Schenker Group - MSG

 The Michael Schenker Group - MSG

#439

By Chris Natale

September 1981

The Michael Schenker Group

MSG

Genre: Metal

Allen’s rating: 4 out fo 5

Chris’ Rating: 1 out of 5

Highlights: “Attack of the Mad Axeman”...no, wait...was that “On and On”...nevermind.

As for so many, music invokes a clear sense of time and place for me.  Music like MSG from the Michael Schenker Group puts me back in upstate New York in the mid-1980s.  Strangely enough, though, not actually the Michael Schenker Group.  I remember his name and that of his brother Rudolph Schenker, but their music escaped my attention.  Listening to this, it’s easy to see why.  

I don’t want to get into the debate of Schenker’s talent as a guitarist.  I get it.  He plays fast and loud.  However, after listening to the album twice, I wouldn’t place any money on my ability to distinguish one song from the other.  Nothing’s all that catchy or infectious.  And when you are able to even faintly tell the difference, it’s either so damn gloomy...perfect for brooding 15 year old boys...or buried in overwrought lyrics.

Compare them to Judas Priest, a contemporary but whose origin is just a few years older.  With Priest, you get songs that really distinguish themselves from one another and build some energy throughout the song.  MSG is full of songs that just kind of plod along with lots of distortion.  Meh…

https://open.spotify.com/album/2Dwi3B8Es5Sp3ne8ShnJvr?si=aMmj04Z5S7ix3SYfp-QMww