The 1982 Listening Post - Pink Flamingos (AKA Dave McArtney & The Pink Flamingos) - We Never Close

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

Released: 1982 Pink Flamingos (AKA Dave McArtney & The Pink Flamingos) We Never Close Genre: NZ Pop Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Paul’s Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Paul's Highlights: Just Like In The Movies We Never Close Proserpine Allen's Additional Highlights: Voodoo Another band with a ubiquitous name, this iteration of The Pink Flamingos were fronted by Dave McArtney, a Kiwi pop craftsman and soundtrack composer whose first band, Hello Sailor, were a beloved on-again/off-again act in New Zealand for three decades. Pink Flamingos appears to have been Dave’s shot at the big time, as they signed with Polygram Australia and relocated to Sydney. Alas, superstardom was not forthcoming, and after three records, McArtney went home to Auckland, eventually teaching at the Music & Audio Institute of New Zealand for the last 10 years of his life. There are echoes of familiar late 70s pop here, but I hesitate to use any names, since the associations most of the Listening Post fam would make might not be very positive. Besides, any music from down under is going to have its own spin on things. Let’s try this: imagine an affable, clever Michael McDonald or a sincere, non-boring Rupert Holmes. Now add a dash of Costello/Brothers Finn creativity, a dollop of Beatles influence and you’ve got a potentially potent mix. Unfortunately the production mostly buries the guitars behind a sterile rhythm section and only occasionally lets the chunky piano and tasteful synth melodies emerge to carry the day. These are finely written pop tunes with inventive turns of phrase, sung quite nicely for the most part. There’s some weird panting/growling in “Voodoo,” and the ballad “Girl” stretches McArtney’s vocal skills a bit with its emotive chorus and plaintive high notes, but for the most part he knows his strengths and plays to them. “Just Like in the Movies” is a gem and probably should have been a hit beyond the southern hemisphere. The lovely “Proserpine” dives deeply into McArtney’s near-namesake, opening with Ticket to Ride drums, throwing in staccato piano chords, and panning multiple sound effects behind an international tale of lost love. The title track, “We Never Close” really could have fit on a Squeeze album, albeit with a different arrangement. I should also point out that, if you’re going to call your band Pink Flamingos, you’d damn well better write a song named “Divine.” And they did. The only major misstep is an odd ode to Pompeii called “Believe in the Ruins,” which alternates falsetto with off kilter guitar bursts and a near-Day Tripper riff, ending with a bit of indecipherable spoken narration. Points for experimentation, I guess. The last track, “Too Shy” tries to throw a bit of ska/two-tone rhythm in, but these musicians simply do not have it, and the heavy handed production doesn’t help. Nor does the fake Jamaican accent of the bridge. Still, the failed attempts at stepping out of their lane only reinforce how solid they were staying in that lane. Ultimately, Dave McArtney could have fit in somewhere on that long continuum from Buddy Holly through Ray Davies to Andy Partridge and Chris Stamey. Maybe in New Zealand he did. I just wish we had a better produced sample of what he and his bandmates were able to do. (Allen’s note: I am in measured agreement on this. New Zealand has been a treasure trove of excellent rock & new wave on this project. This is no exception. I imagine it’s as difficult to get to the US from NZ in 1982 as it was from Australia. Perhaps more so because we were able to hear Midnight Oil and Rick Springfield and AC/DC and Split Enz. But if you want to hear good Indie Rock from New Zealand from today I direct you to the excellent band The Beths whose first two records I really enjoyed and are releasing their third in September.)

The 1982 Listening Post - Slow Children - Mad About Town

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

Released: 1982 Slow Children Mad About Town Genre: New Wave Rating: 4.1 out of 5 Highlights: One More Trauma (on the original album but super creepy) Unplugging The Vacuum Vanessa Vacillating She’s Like America (apparently not on the original album) Slow Children is a duo: Pal Shazar (the girl) and Andrew Chinich (the guy). She mostly sings, he mostly speaks. I feel like this is a direction new wave could have taken if, say, Romeo Void and the Waitresses had hit number one instead of Duran Duran and the Human League. Instead, it took about 20 years for their influence to really hit, as indie bands like Imperial Teen and Mates of State picked up the new wave bounce and spiky lyrical flow and ran with it. (If you didn’t have hipster kids in your home in the early ‘00’s, you might have missed it, but new wave had a major moment, and I for one was all over it.) Spotify’s album opener, “She’s Like America,” sneaks in slowly with some snakey, clean power chords. There’s some rumbling reverb, a bit of high organ, human vox synth, playful bass. Everything I’ve described so far could be a B-52’s song, but they sound almost nothing like the B-52’s. It’s 3 minutes 30, but you’d swear it’s over in less than 2 minutes. Sinister and wonderful. Further research reveals it wasn’t the album opener after all. The actual first track was “One More Trauma,” a song you will not find on Spotify. “Don’t try to make me laugh / Don’t try to make me cry / Seems an eternity / Since you last entered me / I don’t think anything can erase that / And so you’ll walk away / I won’t remember this.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is a band that led off their 2nd album with a catchy number about being raped and blacking out. Not exactly a recipe for success in 1982, but bold as hell. The first single was “Vanessa Vacillating'' – infectious vocals over relentless electronic thrum and echoey snare, with tasteful synth horn bleeps here and there, and a jagged rhythm that invites you to at least nod along. Even produced by Jules Shear, it wasn’t a hit. The second single, “President Am I” got some MTV play on the strength of a cute video heavily featuring cute Pal Shazar wearing a cute hat and RayBans. I don’t remember it, but we didn’t get MTV until ‘83, so maybe it was gone by then. The album is front loaded and begins to go downhill with the slow burning “Suspense.” Still, there’s an electric buzz that runs through tracks like “Skill of a Caveman” and “Missing Missiles” that compensates for the lack of strong hooks. The lyrics are suitably dark, which you’d never know unless you actually listen closely. I get the feeling that’s the effect they were going for here. The closing track is “East Berlin by Rail.” Unfortunately it’s no “Riding on the Metro,” although it’s not for lack of trying. The keening guitar solo is a 15 second highlight. Maybe they were one John Hughes soundtrack away from glory, maybe they were slightly ahead of their time, or maybe they just never quite found the hooks needed to get on the charts and stay there. For me, they’re good enough to be a Listening Post Discovery, but your mileage may vary.

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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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.

The 1981 Listening Post - Willie Alexander (AKA Willie Alexander)

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: October 1981 Willie Alexander (AKA Willie Loco Alexander) Solo Loco Genre: Sloppy Noise Rock Rating: 2 out of 5 Highlights: Gin Willie “Loco” Alexander was 38 years old in 1981 when this record came out. He played with a bunch of bands starting in the late ‘60’s, took Lou Reed’s spot in the Velvet Underground for a very brief spell in 1971, started a Boston version of the Ramones (Boom Boom Band) that toured the US as an opener for Elvis Costello, and, after all that crashed and burned, worked as a dishwasher. He got together with some musicians he knew and made this album, which did a little business in France. Later he started doing mostly spoken word pieces and playing avant garde jazz. He’s 80 and still rocking, at least according to his website. Whether you like Willie “Loco” Alexander or not kinda depends on how you feel about Lou Reed. There’s a lot of noise-for-noise-sake, quite a bit of macho-yet-sensitive posturing, some look-how-poetic-I-am lyrics, a bit of in-studio-off-the-cuff jamming, and precious few musically memorable moments. Willie plays piano, talks, recites, whistles, breathes, whines, sings, and generally makes a mess in what’s apparently supposed to be a charmingly tuff persona. It’s not really doing it for me. I fall into the meh camp when it comes to Lou Reed. I love some of his Velvets stuff and a few of his solo songs, but I don’t listen to much else, nor do I want to. If there were any real highlights here, I might be more inclined to like Willie Alexander, but this just feels like a bunch of tossed off half-ideas. Even the covers (Be-Bop-a-Lula, Tennessee Waltz) are terrible, although I will admit that when Willie stops singing and lets guitarist Ted St. Pierre start committing audio mayhem, things get more interesting. The lone highlight, Gin, uses wobbly pink noise and background synthesizer to fill in the gaps, giving Alexander a bigger base for his rambling vocals, creating something that feels like it was at least discussed for a few minutes before being recorded. It was released as a 7” single, so somebody else must have liked it. I think the B-side was So Tight, which has a similar feel, but overstays its welcome by several minutes of repetition and muttering. If you're a fan of demo-quality jam sessions by musicians you’ve never heard of, you might enjoy those last 17 times he goes “woo!” but I did not. Another potential highlight, if you like bands like The Fall, might be Take Me Away, a jerky, discordant mess of sound that ends with some moaning over stray piano chords and a drunken conversation. It’s the kind of thing I’d consider excusing as a lark if it was on the same album as Perfect Day or I Love You Suzanne, instead of Gin and So Tight. The only place the album exists online is in a YouTube playlist where the songs are completely out of order, and when you try to listen to them in the correct order, you have to skip two ads every time you switch songs. I hate YouTube ads more than almost anything I can think of, so that may have soured me on this album. Or maybe it’s just not very good.

The 1981 Listening Post - The Photos - Crystal Tips and Mighty Mice

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: March 1981 The Photos Crystal Tips And Mighty Mice Genre: New Wave / Post Punk Rating: 3.25 out of 5 Highlights: Life In A Day Let’s Pack Our Bags For Beauty’s Sake I enjoy researching the background info on these bands and albums, which I usually try to summarize, but the mystery of The Photos’ second album compels me to quote the actual sources themselves. “Formed in Evesham from the ashes of cult punk act Satan’s Rats, the Photos were often touted as the UK’s answer to Blondie. But there was much more to the Photos than that, with fiery, Buzzcocks–like guitars coiling round Wendy Wu’s distinctive vocals.” (Cherry Red Records website) “The band's debut album [was released] in June of 1980 and stormed to number four, which should have established the Photos among the era's most popular bands. Instead, they lurched into almost instant obscurity.” (AllMusic) “Their second album was produced in late 1980 by Tony ‘Bowie’ Visconti himself. Not surprisingly, their sound grew by leaps and bounds.” (Post Punk Monk blog) “‘Crystal Tips and Mighty Mice’ was released in promotional form in 1981, but withdrawn before it reached the shops, and reissued by Cherry Red Records in 2008. Wu left the band in 1981.” (Wikipedia) I have questions. How does a band release a debut album that goes to number 4 in the UK, only to have their second album go unreleased for 27 years? How does an album produced by Tony Visconti just disappear? And most importantly, is “this almost mythical record” (Themes From Great Cities blog) any good? It’s all right. It’s easy to see where the comparisons come in, but there is indeed more here than just “UK Blondie,” especially in more ambitious tracks like Time Of My Life, which reaches for a broad, almost majestic sound, and For Beauty’s Sake, reminiscent of a Pretenders ballad, only with more sweep and less grit. Let’s Pack Our Bags has the punky twitch of early Blondie, but adds eerie vocal effects and heavily echoed drums to the equation, taking things to a very different place. Tony Visconti’s production crackles and thwacks, not unlike where he was going with Scary Monsters and, later, Let’s Dance. Alas, there’s no Robert Fripp on hand to provide guitar histrionics, but the playing isn’t bad at all. Life In A Day was apparently slated to be the single. It’s a decent enough song, but the busy sophistication of the production is what held my interest. Similarly, Luke Come Back features an almost memorable hook, which is layered with studio tricks on each succeeding repetition before dropping out quickly to isolate the background vocals. A very similar process works a bit better on Wish You Well, another near earworm with a tight arrangement and some nifty guitar effects, which ends with several repeats of the title sung by two male voices, this time punctuated by a Wendy Wu giggle. I have a hard time imagining any of these songs breaking through in the US, but it does seem like they would’ve been possible Top Of The Pops candidates had the album been released. Why it all fell apart remains a mystery, but as usual, it was fun to dig up something completely new to me and give it a listen. I should also mention the cover, a primo example of New Wave Design with its parallel lines, fake sky through fake windows, and black clad, serious band members. Had it made it to the dollar-ninety-nine cutout bin at Sam Goody’s, I would’ve seriously considered buying a copy. (I added .25 to the score based on the cover alone)

The 1981 Listening Post - Rupert Holmes - Full Circle

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Rupert Holmes Full Circle Genre: Easy Listening Rating: 3.25 out of 5 Highlights: The End You Remind Me Of You Full Circle My goal: write a review of a Rupert Holmes album without mentioning THAT song. Here goes. It’s interesting how much AM pop / easy listening sounds like musical theatre. Indeed, Rupert Holmes eventually became a composer of musicals, most notably the Mystery of Edwin Drood. Full Circle opens with a song called The End (“we start at the end”), which is exactly the kind of thing you’d do if you were writing a romantic Off Broadway musical in the early ‘80’s. The songs are written in conversational first person with a narrative voice that could believably be the singer, or might be a character he’s putting on. There are setting changes: in the title track, he’s on a plane, somewhere west of Maine; and then he’s landing at JFK, seeing his lady again, “and it’s almost worth the leaving / to believe in love again / to be back home.” The lyrics strive for just enough creativity to distinguish them from every schmaltzy pop song you’ve ever heard. Sometimes they succeed: You Remind Me of You is a clever way to tell your lady she’s one of a kind. The One of Us is another neat lyric about being in a relationship: “I always knew of us / when we were two of us / we are the one of us / and you are my one.” Really, every song has its own little twist, even if it’s as dorky as Love at Second Sight. The music is exactly what you’re expecting. Smooth grooves, background harmonies, mellow guitar and/or sax solos, choruses that repeat 25 times (with minor variations), and that friendly voice up front. Basically a less brassy Barry Manilow. Throw in some fake world beats here and there. Key changes when necessary. Melodies that stick in your head with the occasional jump to a high note you weren’t quite expecting. More chords than rock, but fewer than jazz. Plaintive piano chords on the ballads. And oh yeah, synth strings. Lots of synth strings. The guitarist is Dean Bailin, not a name I’d expect anyone to recognize. But I just finished reading Paul Shaffer’s memoir, so it rang a bell. Dean was one of those NYC studio cats who gigged nonstop throughout the 80’s and 90’s. The Shaffer connection was Gilda Radner’s album, Live from New York, which was an Off-Broadway show she did. I don’t recognize any other names, but I’m pretty sure they’re all session pros with great chops put together at considerable expense to make what most of us would consider inoffensive wallpaper. Honestly though, if I wanted to write emotional pop songs for the musically unadventurous, there’s no way I could touch Rupert Holmes. He’s super good at what he does, and one suspects that, even if he’d never written THAT song, he’d have sustained a long career. Good for him. (OK, I didn’t mention it by name, but I guess referring to “THAT song” in the last paragraph was cheating. Sorry.)

The 1981 Listening Post - Joe Egan - Map (AKA Stay As You Are)

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Joe Egan Map (AKA Stay As You Are) Genre: Pop Rating: 3.25 out of 5 Highlights: Tell Me All About It Miss Match A Little Bit Of Magic Front Line You know what? Sometimes the music industry really sucks. Joe Egan and his school chum Gerry Rafferty co-founded a band called Stealers Wheel in 1972. They made one album, which included a catchy song that reminded everybody of Bob Dylan. Gerry left to go solo, but the following summer, Stuck in the Middle With You absolutely blew up, selling over a million copies. The label convinced Rafferty to come back, but literally everybody else in the band besides Joe couldn’t stand the guy and quit. Egan and Rafferty continued as Stealers Wheel until ‘75, but they couldn’t get along either and broke up, at which point A&M told them “you’re under contract to make more Stealers Wheel albums, so you can’t do anything solo for three years.” In ‘78, Rafferty released City to City, a platinum album with two top 10 singles, while Egan couldn’t get a record out until ‘79. It did OK, but the follow up was a flop, and Joe Egan left the music business forever. Map turned out to be Egan’s swan song. Thing is, it’s not a bad album at all. Granted, there’s no Baker Street here. There’s not even Right Down the Line. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to like. Egan mines the same easygoing, lite jazz inflected vein Rafferty does, featuring some kind of horn(s) on 6 of the 10 tracks. The great Nicky Hopkins (Stones’ touring keyboardist and backstage buddy for decades) tickles the ivories here and there. Egan’s voice is strikingly similar to Rafferty’s, although where Gerry sounds relaxed and effortless, Joe seems to be working pretty hard to get these songs across. Alas, despite collaborating with songwriters David Courtney and Ian Hunter, Joe just didn’t seem to have any great songs left in him. There are a few good ones: In Tell Me All About It, the hapless narrator finds a lot to dislike about his lover, but decides “I’m gonna take it from you” because she’s worth it. Miss Match utilizes Supertrampish keyboards and a brass section to reassure the titular lady that the breakup wasn’t her fault. A Little Bit of Magic retells the Egan family musical history with some sweet Steve Behrens harmonica. The piano ballad Front Line closes the album with what sounds like an explanation/apology for Egan’s imminent career change: “I don’t wanna be the hero / I don’t wanna save the show… I don’t want to feel the spaces / the empty spaces in their souls.” Although it’s an aching, emotional lyric, Egan sounds more relaxed and, maybe, resigned here than anywhere else on the record. “It’s the same old game / and you got played,” he sings at the end. Let us not mourn for Joe Egan. Perhaps he made the decision that was right for him. After all, the music biz kinda sucks sometimes.

THe 1981 Listening Post - Gary Holton And Casino Steel - Gary Holton And Casino Steel

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: September 25 1981 Gary Holton And Casino Steel Gary Holton And Casino Steel Genre: Aged English Country Cheese Rating: 3.25 out of 5 Highlights: Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love To Town) Goodnight Irene Good Ol’ Gary Jimmy Brown Sometimes it’s easy to judge an album by its cover. Gary Holton & Casino Steel features a couple of glammy boys in leather, denim and matching headbands cozying up to a bar, with a massively coiffed 80’s girl leaning provocatively over one of them. The back cover features credits for both “stylist” and “hair.” Cheesy, right? Or should we judge this one not by its cover, but by its covers? Six of the album’s ten songs were written by or for other artists: I’ll Find it Where I Can (Waylon Jennings), Runaway (Del Shannon), Thinking of You (Australian country singer Lee Conway), Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town (Kenny Rogers), Almost Persuaded (David Houston and every 60’s country singer), and Goodnight Irene (Lead Belly and every folk singer ever). That’s quite a list. What of the originals? Well, two of the titles include the lead singer’s name. Gary’s Song is a paean to days gone by: “There ain’t no superman / Just dirty films and disco dives / But no one seems to care anymore.” Good Ol’ Gary wonders what will happen when he’s gone: “An empty barroom, broken hearts and lonely women / Things won’t be the same without old me / An empty chair and table by the jukebox / And sad sad country songs by Jerry Lee.” I guess it’s important to actually listen to an album if you’re going to review it. What does this sound like? Imagine a snotty voiced English glam singer accompanied by Scandinavian country studio musicians AND a symphony orchestra. Yes, it’s just as messy and weird as that combination implies. The question I kept asking myself was “Is this cheesy and dumb in a fun way, or in an annoying way?” It’s such a fine line. Runaway definitely starts in annoying territory with its punky, recited vocals. But where the expected organ solo should be, the strings take over. Holton doubles down on the cheese by announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, the orchestra! Who needs a Moog?” By the end he’s yelling “Run run run away. Go on, just run away. See if I care. Stupid little strumpet.” I had to chuckle at that. So maybe more fun than annoying? Goodnight Irene opens with a rock riff, but quickly adds country steel guitar and folky harmony vocals. I don’t think this verse is in the original version: “Sometimes I drink in MIssissippi / Sometimes I drink in Tennessee / Sometimes I get drunk in Louisiana / Anywhere I go, the women sure make a fool out of me.” By the end, a honky tonk piano is blasting out some high pitched chords, and Gary is wailing “Sweet dreams, sweet dreams Irene!” I’m quickly being won over to the fun side. Almost Persuaded is the closest thing to a normal arrangement here, building from quiet bass and steel guitar to big orchestral and choral swells, then dropping to a whisper at the end. Unfortunately it’s marred by really bad drumming and Holton’s misguided attempt to imitate the song’s female character. Still, when all those guitars kick in and the bass rumbles under that huge final chorus, I’m almost persuaded to like the song. Almost, but not quite. And then there’s the Kenny Rogers cover. It opens with that trademark country drum pattern, followed by drunken-sounding vocals that stretch the opening line until it almost breaks. Holton changes “crazy Asian war” to “crazy Irish war,” giving the song an unexpected poignance. But then the coda is him yelling “For God’s sake, turn around! Ruby? Ruby? Come back.” Is that funny? Is it sad? Can it be both? Sometimes it helps to get some background info on the artist. Casino Steel was actually the nom de plume of keyboardist Stein Groven, a much traveled musical artist, recently inducted into the Norwegian Rock Hall of Fame. He put together the other musicians on the album, including the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, wrote or co-wrote the original songs, and did the arrangements. Gary Holton was a British singer/songwriter, front man for the Heavy Metal Kids, an early 70’s glam outfit named not after the nascent music genre, but a WIlliam S. Burroughs street gang. (Check out their song Chelsea Kids for a dangerously good time) He also toured with the British National company of Hair and played a lead role in a BBC sitcom. He died of an overdose of morphine combined with alcohol in 1985 at the tender age of 32. In doing this research, I came across the missing link that ties it all together, the video for Ruby. It’s worth watching, even if you don’t want to listen to the rest of this admittedly odd record. The album cover image is taken directly from the video, which also includes a remixed edit of the song that’s slightly less cheesy and more radio friendly. Knowing what I did about the ultimate fate of Mr. Holton, I found it quite compelling. It also changed how I felt about Good Ol’ Gary, with lines like “I’ll be rockin’ and rollin’ in heaven.” Sometimes looking a little deeper than just the cover pays off. https://youtu.be/WU01haMIf6g

The 1981 Listening Post - Diesel - Watts in a Tank

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Diesel Watts In A Tank Genre: Hard Rock Album, Pop Single Rating: 3.3 out of 5 Highlights: Sausalito Summernight All Because Of You Sausalito Summernight. You know this song! “Hot summer night in Sausalito / Can’t stand the heat another mile / Let’s drop a quarter in the meter / And hit the sidewalk for awhile… All aboard! / Sausalito Summernight.” Was this not a hit everywhere? I remember this song so well. It was all over the radio, with that earworm riff and groovy bass voice on the title line. It’s a terrific blast of pop joy, a top ten road trip song: “The engine’s thumpin’ like a disco / We oughta dump her in the bay… / Look out over here / Watch out over there / Can’t afford a blowout cuz we haven’t got a spare.” The album version stretches out for a full five minutes, including a wonderfully weedly guitar solo and extended fade out on the chorus. I even remember the album cover, which I probably looked at longingly at PayLess a few times, deciding whether it was worth buying or not. Surely the band that made such a killer song must have produced a terrific album to go with it, right? OK, first off, I had no idea these guys were Dutch. I really pictured some swell California dudes, riding down 101 in their overheated jalopy, long hair blowing in the warm coastal breeze. Apparently I should have been picturing clog-wearing, tulip waving fellows in a Saab instead. Turns out the lead singer, Mark Boon, who co-wrote it with guitarist Rob Vunderink, lived in California for 5 years as a kid before returning to the Netherlands at age 16. So I guess he had some good memories and just enough expertise to pull off the vibe. I also found out that this was the FOURTH single released from their album. They weren’t even sure they wanted to release it. This is because it sounds almost nothing like the rest of the record, which is mostly an attempt to “rock out” with varying levels of success. Clearly Diesel viewed themselves as rockers, and Sausalito Summernight didn’t really fit the image. Finally, it didn’t really occur to me as I thought about and listened to the song, but even the Wikipedia entry points out that it’s a straight up Steve Miller Band soundalike. That killer riff is basically a slightly longer version of the one from Keep On Rockin’ Me Baby. And then there's that "All aboard," which is pretty much a line from Marrakesh Express. It doesn’t diminish the quality of the song in my mind, but maybe the guys were a little embarrassed by how derivative it was? Anyway, it went to number 25 in the US and number 1 in Canada, which may be why I remember it so vividly, since I spent a lot of the summer of 1981 visiting my cousins in Vancouver. Unfortunately for Diesel, the Dutch didn’t get it. It was never a hit back home. And then there’s the rest of the album. If it didn’t include Sausalito Summertime, I would have approached this review totally differently. I’m going to listen to the other 10 songs and evaluate them on their own merit. Yes, I’m already 500 words in, but nobody’s going to read past the second paragraph anyway, so who cares? Here goes: Diesel were a Dutch hard rock group with a fairly mainstream pop edge. Front man Mark Boon could hit many of the requisite metal high notes, but often favored a less aggressive sound. Their two guitar attack was capably backed by drummer Pim Koopman, and lead guitarist Rob Vunderink doubled on piano and keyboard on the power ballads. Sure, they were never going to give the Scorpions a run for their money, but everybody in the band could sing the harmonies, the guitars could lock in, and the production here is pretty silky. I’m sure they rocked some concert halls in their day and gave the Nederlanders a head banging good time. Watts in a Tank wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1981, but three of the album’s songs were already hit singles in their homeland well before then. Alibi actually came out in 1979, followed by Goin’ Back to China. While neither of these make my highlight list, at least they’re sufficiently rocking tunes. The third single, Down in the Silvermine, is a puzzler. It’s kind of a slowed-down version of Slade’s Run Runaway, and lacks any kind of energy or drive, at least to my ears. Weirdly it was by far their biggest hit. Maybe silver mines were the happening thing that year? As alluded to above, Diesel lacked originality at times: the opening bars of Good Mornin’ Day are literally the opening bars of the Beatles’ Good Morning, with the word “day” replacing the “guh” sound. I mean, they added an extra beat or two at the end, but it’s blatant. The verse melody of Ready for Love is lifted from Led Zeppelin (who of course lifted it from a blues song). That being said, they did a pretty solid job of nailing that European metal-lite sound, particularly on bluesier, AC/DC style slow jams like All Because of You and Bite Back. Only slightly less successful are the mid-70’s sounding hard rock thumpers like Remember the Romans and Alibi. But nothing here is awful. Every song has a decent solo break and/or some soaring harmonies. Even the sappy ballad, My Kind of Woman, avoids total bathos. This ten song debut isn’t very memorable, but if I were a fan of the genre, I probably would’ve appreciated it. OK, so Sausalito gets 5 stars, and the rest of the album gets 3. Not sure how to do the math, but that’s my review.

The 1981 Listening Post - The Lookalikes - Daydreamin' at Night

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 The Lookalikes Daydreamin' At Night Genre: False New Wave Rating: 2 out of 5 Highlights: Die Laughing The Lookalikes, eh? Soundalikes is more like it. Tell me "Just What You Got" doesn’t sound just like the Cars. The title even sounds just like Just What I Needed. Same song structure too. Well, derivative new wave can be fun, right? Even messy or cheesy or dumb new wave. Is this any of that? We shall see. The next tune has more of a pop metal feel, with a thumping one-note bass line, but also some vocoder. During this guitar solo, I’m going to check where the band comes from. Ah, Ireland. I might have guessed somewhere in Scandinavia. OK, the guitar solo is over. How long is this song? Three twenty? Feels like it’s been going on for ten minutes. Whew, over. Here’s an even longer song that’s a heartfelt, searching ballad. It’s called Always Searching. The chorus goes “Always searching / What are we searching for?” There’s some almost interesting synth stuff and some syrupy guitar echo effects. I can hear the Irish influence here, if only because it’s a bit murky and there’s some emotion just below the surface. Lots of surface. A song about radio called Radio. It’s upbeat and repetitious. I had a hard time determining whether they were taking the “radio sucks” approach, a la Elvis Costello, or the “radio is great but the industry sucks” approach, a la Rush. “It seems that everywhere I go / I always hear the radio / I’m now receiving clear and loud / My brain is going round and round / Please turn off the radio.” The end of the song is the phrase “Turn it off” repeated 8 times. Radio = bad. I’ll Never Forget You lives in boring, straightforward pop ballad territory. I’m not going to waste words on this treacle. Next. I’d like to thank Sheffield for going to the trouble of creating a Spotify playlist consisting of the 11 songs originally on this album. Such dedication. The title track, Daydreamin' at Night, comes next. There’s a full minute of wind sound effects, wind chimes, and moody guitar before the song starts. Eventually the tempo picks up a bit, but not in an exciting, interesting way. The chorus is those three chords from All Along the Watchtower. You know the ones. There’s a key change for the guitar solo, so that’s something. Really though, this is a boring song. Why start an album with a Cars tribute and then turn into Starship? Feels like false advertising. Die Laughing has a mischievous synth/guitar figure that repeats until it loses its mischief. Some cute harmonies and stop-start rhythms make it less boring than the last two songs. They tried some stuff on this one, and I appreciate that. Is it a highlight? Relative to the rest of the album, I guess so. “Pretty boys like to dance all night / The pretty boys / Pretty girls stay home at night / Alone / But that’s all right” What’s your point, Lookalikes? “Pretty boys have to realize / There’s nobody gonna sympathize / Pretty boys have to make the choice / If they still wanna be / Pretty boys.” This is like a new wave song written by a band that wanted to be Aerosmith two years earlier. It’s kind of yucky. Bullet in His Back betrays the boring rock roots of this band even further. “I’m not afraid to fight / I’m not afraid to stand up / For what I think is right.” Except it’s painfully slow and dull. I felt like kicking the drummer and telling him to play faster. I guess they were going for Deeply Meaningful. Nope. Find Out opens with a dainty piano figure over a racing beat and feels promising. But there’s actually a lyric that goes, “I know you’re moving much too slow,” and then the chorus comes, and sure enough, they slow the tempo down. It’s one of those finger pointing songs: “Life’s too short / You better take that step outta life / You’ll never know what it’s all about” etc. And then comes the inevitable weedly weedly guitar solo. And now the singer is yelling at me. Ugh. The final song is actually a little power pop rocker. It uses the most basic 1-4-5 chord progression imaginable, at least until the chorus and guitar break. Still, I don’t hate it. But there’s no second verse. Right around 1:45 it just becomes the singer repeating “You gotta shout / Go ahead and shout / You shouldn’t be afraid to shout” for over a minute. It also begins and ends with the same silly “melting guitar” effect. Yet it’s the closest thing to an earworm the album offers. I don’t want to completely slag these guys. I think I was just expecting a very different album than what I got. However, I’m not going to relisten to all of it with different expectations. How’s this: If you like boring rock music, you might like The Lookalikes.

The 1981 Listening Post - The Kings - Amazon Beach

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 The Kings Amazon Beach Genre: Rock Rating: 2 out of 5 Highlights: All The Way Why Don’t Love Do The Kings are a rock band from Vancouver, BC who had a hit single in 1980, released their first album, signed with Elektra, and made a second LP, Amazon Beach, that was a huge disappointment. The entire story of this album and why it’s so bad (in the opinion of the band themselves) can be found here: https://thekingsarehere.com/amazon-beach/ The short version is they stuck with Bob Ezrin, the famous Canadian producer (Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd) who discovered them, and he ruined everything. Elektra heard the songs, realized they were terrible, and asked the members of The Kings to move down to L.A. and make the record over again. They chose to remain loyal to Bob, the album came out as-is, and no one liked it, including the band. It is indeed a bad record, but you can hear The Kings’ potential here and there. Opening track and single All The Way has some nice riffs and showcases lead singer David Diamond, kind of a rough-edged Kevin Cronin. Sonny Keyes’ organ and piano work often stands out, especially on the bluesy, Supertrampish ballad Why Don’t Love Do. Honestly that’s about it, to my ears. I have a hard time imagining that these songs were THAT much better before Ezrin “ruined” them. The lyrics are all pretty dopey, the riffs are unoriginal, and the guitar solos mostly go nowhere. I do kinda like the cover for its ridiculous adolescent cartoonishness, but the band apparently hated how one of the Amazon women’s heads covered part of their name. There’s just no pleasing some people.

The 1981 Listening Post - Experiments with Ice - Experiments with Ice

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Experiments With Ice Experiments With Ice Genre: Synthwave Rating: 2 out of 5 Experiments With Ice. The band name is kind of dumb, honestly. What experiments can you do with ice? Ooh, I heated it, and it melted! There’s not much information about this band, but I did find photos of the original album front and back cover, both sides of the record, and the lyric insert. The lyrics are kind of dumb. You want examples? “I, have slept with the end / It’s coming here my friend / There’s nothing there to lend.” “Phantom / theatre theatre, / Your eyes on me / Perform.” “I can’t sleep tell the boys / The boys play violin / Dark light transform to white.” This is the music of someone who bought an ARP synthesizer and knew some people who could play other instruments. The songs involve a lot of repetition, an attempt to create some kind of sonic mood, some synthy sounds, and the aforementioned dumb lyrics. Some of the songs are over 5 minutes long. Not much happens. The production buries the vocals. Dare I say the music is kind of dumb? Another important missing piece is a sense of humor. One possible exception is Toy Joy, a herky-jerky number from the Devo school, which is actually kind of fun for a minute or so until the repetition becomes too hard to take. Red Bible also reminds me of the Spudboys, but what to make of “The red bible soon come / And fill in the black squares?” The brothers Casale and Mothersbaugh made the meaning of their mischievous self-invented (and/or Subgenius) slang pretty obvious. This stuff sounds like plain gibberish to me. No real highlights, but if you want a lowlight, there’s Hollywood. Liner notes reveal that its lyrics were “by Don Blanding as recited by Leo Carillo in the 1935 MGM Colortone musical ‘Starlight at the Coconut Grove.’” For their sake, I hope Messrs Blanding and Carillo never heard this excruciatingly dumb reinterpretation of their cinematic creation. Listen if you dare.