Tekel Towers » 1001 albums you must hear before you die

arabchanter · 15/6/2019 11:21 am

Album 522.
Hanoi Rocks..........................................Back To The Mystery City (1983)

Axle Rose reportedly once said Hanoi Rocks should have been bigger than Guns N' Roses. Inspired by The New York Dolls and Alice Cooper, the band wore wildly theatrical garb, tons of make up, and played loud, abrasive, hook filled music that was impossible to classify. Their music connected the dots between glitter, punk and heavy metal and helped set the blueprint for eighties hair metal.

I'm intrigued, will do this and The Blue Nile tonight.................hopefully.

Tek · 16/6/2019 12:36 am

Have tried a few times to get into The Blue Nile, what with them being fellow Scots.

But i must confess, i've never quite gotten the hype.

Finn Seemann · 17/6/2019 9:13 pm

Tek wrote:
Have tried a few times to get into The Blue Nile, what with them being fellow Scots.

But i must confess, i've never quite gotten the hype.

With you on that - I've always thought the Blue Nile hype was more of a west coast thing, but could be mistaken.

arabchanter · 17/6/2019 10:57 pm

Finn Seemann wrote:
Tek wrote:
Have tried a few times to get into The Blue Nile, what with them being fellow Scots.

But i must confess, i've never quite gotten the hype.
With you on that - I've always thought the Blue Nile hype was more of a west coast thing, but could be mistaken.

Duly acknowledged

arabchanter · 18/6/2019 12:01 am

Album 521
The Blue Nile......................................A Walk Across The Rooftops (1983)

"A Walk Across the Rooftops" left me a bit high and dry, like Tek and Finn I had listened to all the hoo-hah about The Blue Nile and was expecting a shitload more from this album, I'd heard "Tinseltown in the Rain" which was decent enough, but wouldn't be in my top 1000 songs by a long stretch, but this was the first time I'd heard one of their albums.

I think The Blue Nile were a victim of pretentiousness, the "I'm into a band that you've never heard of, so my superior taste in music wins again" to be fair back in the 70s/80s I used to try and find bands and hopefully let people know " I liked them before they had a hit" a pretentious little prick that I was, hopefully I've grown out of that (the jury's still out)

Anyways found this album trying too hard to be arty-farty, with actually no sense of purpose or destination, wouldn't be bothered if I never heard it again, wouldn't be bothered if I did. This album wont be going into my collection, even the album cover was pretty meh.

Bits & Bobs;

People of a certain age and musical proclivity will remember the brilliant trio The Blue Nile. I am of a certain age and an unabashed fan of the band since their debut release. They were a critic favorite during the mid eighties and created some of the most sophisticated and sublime music in a rather lackluster musical era. They were like no other band and in a class all by themselves both in output and how they interacted with the music business of the day. I have long desired to review their luminous debut A Walk Across the Rooftops and convert other listeners to the cause.

Boyhood friends Paul Buchanan and Robert Bell grew up in Glasgow, Scotland and started The Blue Nile in 1981. The two had both attended the University of Glasgow where Buchanan earned a degree in Literature and Medieval History and Bell a degree in Mathematics. Buchanan’s father was a semi professional musician and Paul grew up surrounded by music but only thought of creating a band after finishing college. It was in college that Buchanan and Bell met and befriended the third member of their band, Paul Joseph Moore. Moore had a degree in electronics from The University of Glasgow and had been playing around with synthesizers throughout his college career. The trio formed McIntyre the first incarnation of their band shortly after graduation and had planned to recruit more members.

The recruiting effort proved a struggle so the three decided to remain a trio. None of them were musical virtuoso’s but it was that lack of musical expertise that opened them up for experimentation. They would utilize effect pedals and old drum machines to create desired effects in their music. The band changed their name to The Blue Nile in 1981; the name was adopted from the title of a 1962 book by Alan Moorehead. In that time period they would gig around Glasgow and produced their first self financed single, I Love This Life. Shortly after the release they were taken under wing of the record label RSO. Things looked promising until RSO went bankrupt and was absorbed by Polygram where the single succumb to the chaos of the situation. This event left a lasting bad taste in the mouth of the band members about record label machinations. The failure of the label and the undermining of the single informed the band’s attitude towards record executives ever after.

In 1983 the band began to work on what would become A Walk Across the Rooftops. Their limited musical ability and lack of a drummer in the line up forced the band to write and play their own songs live instead of popular cover tunes; an excellent case of liabilities turned into an asset. They would quickly adopt an atmospheric electronic approach out of pragmatic necessity. In their songwriting they would make the most of their imaginations, thrift and mechanical ingenuity. One example of this was P.J. Moore utilizing a zinc tray with a pad trigger which he bought for 3 quid to create percussion effects for the trio. It was primitive but effective and created a distinct sound the band loved.The Blue Nile would have an additional stroke of luck when they enlisted Calum Malcolm as their recording engineer. In Malcolm they would find a like minded, gifted individual who would end up providing the band with a leg up in getting signed to Linn Records. An enduring urban myth had been spun about the creation of Linn Records and the signing of The Blue Nile.
The myth goes like this, The Blue Nile was approached by Linn Products, a local hi fi manufacturer, to produce a song to showcase the company’s sound systems. The song the band created pleased Linn founder Ivor Tiefenbrun so much he decided to specifically create a record label for their release A Walk Across the Rooftops. The real truth was Tiefenbrun was a friend of Calum Malcolm and when he played a demo of Tinseltown In The Rain to Ivor he was extremely impressed; so much so that he offered the band a contract with the prospective record label. Linn Records was already in the process of being set up when the encounter in the studio took place and signing was not a slam dunk for the band. It would take the band 9 months to accept the offer, but it proved to be the best fit for the band. Linn upon signing the band left them alone allowing them tremendous artistic freedom in the studio. Tiefenbrun when asked about why the label did not inject themselves into the process with an untried band replied, “(The band) was so fervent about what they were doing that nothing would dissuade them from it and nothing would persuade them to do anything other than what they were doing.” In the run up to entering the recording studio Buchanan and Bell would write songs on an acoustic guitar or piano and later P.J. Moore and Calum Malcolm would have at the songs in the studio. The band would recruit drummer Nigel Thomas to assist with percussion. The album would take 5 months to record at Castlesound Studios in Pencaitland, Scotland.

As a side note, to keep things in context for younger listeners or for those of us who have forgotten, it must be remembered that in 1983 samplers as we know them did not exist. All of the sounds on the recording had to be physically played and recorded on snippets of tape and then edited and cut and finally taped together to create the masters. This endeavor was pain staking and slow. The exacting standards and obsession over every detail by the band also added to the time it took to record the album, but that commitment is what made it so good. Recording Engineer Malcolm recalls of the period of recording, “They were always particularly sensitive to not doing the wrong thing and making sure it had the absolutely right emotional impact.” Thankfully they had a record label that possessed the necessary patience to wait for the end result. The album would finally debut in May of 1984.

Critics took to “A Walk Across the Rooftops” almost immediately. The album gained moderate commercial success in the UK and US. Critics heralded the sparse detailed electronic sounds and Buchanan’s soulful vocals. Popular artists such as U2’s Edge, Peter Gabriel and Rickie Lee Jones championed the release. Blue Nile would eventually collaborate with these artists and many others further on in the band’s career. The album was like nothing anyone else had on offer at the time and was miles away from the pablum that was being served up on the top 40. The music was a fusion of chilly technology and romantic emotion. “A Walk Across the Rooftops” would produce two singles Stay and Tinseltown In The Rain and get to 80 on the UK album charts. The band favored a low profile. Leery of the excesses that been introduced in the first decade of MTV, counter intuitively the band did little high profile promotion for the release. Unfortunately there were drawbacks to the band being vehement in their avoidance of publicity. Their musical genius was evident, but their unwillingness to overtly market themselves led to cult band status at best rather than mega stardom. They became known for their perfectionism and idiosyncratic dealings with the record industry and their slow work pace. However for listeners lucky enough to encounter them, they were like a drug you could not shake.

What The Blue Niledid not attain in popular standing it did accomplish in generating admiration from sophisticated musicphiles of that time and since. One of the main keys to The Blue Nile’s allure was their use of minimalism. They excelled in the art of using silence as much as the musical notes in their compositions to convey feeling. The beauty of their entire discography is the unassuming and uncontrived intelligence of their work. It is complex technology moored to palpable emotional content. Like an Edward Hopper painting but in musical form, where isolation, dreams and sadness are a universal language. The band captured those truths and conveyed them in their music with sonics and imagery that harkened to wet streets, forlorn parades, disappointed lovers and rooftop musings.

“A Walk Across the Rooftops” is a relatively short recording with only seven songs. The album starts off with the title song. It begins with a shimmering intro that is haunting and enhances the power of the lyric. Special attention needs to be paid to the gaps of silence that are arranged as carefully as the instruments notes. The beauty of the synths and strings builds the emotion. The lyrics spoke to love gone astray, it also displayed a kaleidoscope of images. Presented are the small tokens and guideposts that make each life redolent with bittersweet evocative feeling. The different facets of life absorbed for better or worse with an introspective walk across the rooftops attempting to gain perspective and equilibrium. Buchanan’s vocal performance added the special ingredient of yearning and earnest that injected the drama into the track.

Tinseltown in the Rain is probably one of the better known songs the band released. It was the track most in keeping with a pop approach. There is a lovely amalgam of the schizo guitar with the lovingly layered synths and piano. Front and center is Buchanan’s amazingly evocative delivery. The lyrics spoke to the fleeting aspect of wonder at the new and falling head over heels in love with a person or a place. It also notes that the novelty that at first arrests us wears off far too soon. “Why did we ever come so far? I knew I’d seen it all before…Do I love you? Yes I love you. Will we always be happy go lucky?…but it is easy come, and it’s easy go.” The song in the outré breaks into a hint of R &B inspiration.

Rags to Riches is runs counter to “Tinseltown”. The song is a very minimalistic in aura. Mostly composed of percussion elements and vocals, it still has a full rich sound that makes it oh so special. The composition makes much of a little and does it so professionally that it does not sound or feel amateurish. Lyrically the song projects the idea of transformation and rebirth experienced in the rags to riches imagery. The transformation is not monetary but is a renewal of spirit and taking joy from the simple beauty of surroundings no matter how humble. The track also spoke to the leaving of childhood isolation for the wideness of the world, “I am in love, I am in love with a feeling, a wild wild sky… People are leaving the squalor, they’re leaving the house and fires and starting out we find the waiting country.” The imagery of the child leaving home going into an unknown world and testing the correctness of lessons learned at home is moving, “I leave the home of a lifetime like any son…I learn as I go… sticks and stones are your broken promises.” Buchanan delivers the song with just the right amount of emotion combining the triumphant with the bittersweet that is life.

Stay is the most overt love song on the release. This song has a lovely sophisticated sound channeling Joe Jackson at his best. The pace is insistent and urgent as a pleading lover begs for the object of his affection to remain. The track holds a lot of energy and evinces a wide ranging sound. The lyric itemizes all the things we distract ourselves with instead of prioritizing our love interest. Distractions come from a party, a guitar that is broken, and the book we intend to write. The song pleads for patience and promises understanding of the love interest’s frustration, “Stay and I will understand you.” The track is engaging and the piano lines are winning.

I have a confession to make Easter Parade is a song I can barely get through without weeping. This elegiac song is so haunting it brings up a well of emotions. It is a song I classify as one you must hear before you leave this Earth. The juxtaposing of poetic imagery is evocative. There is both isolation and comfort found in the song. It completely captures the ability to be alone in a crowd represented by the quiet of a busy place abandoned, “In the bureau typewriters quiet.” The track expresses universal emotions of grandeur in the emptiness of so much of life and our striving for so much better than what we get, “A city perfect in every detail”. It acknowledges the instinctual understanding that the everyday things of life we take for granted make us who we are, “I know you birthday cards and silent music, paperbacks and Sunday clothes.” Out of all the tracks this is the one that captures the essence of the painter Edward Hopper’s works perfectly in a musical manifestation. Buchanan’s vocal is totally heart rending as he makes his prescient observations. To back up and summons emotion the instrumental mood is set by a forlorn piano and the perfect placement of sound and stillness. The outré is like a delicate Vox Humana ushering in a vast feeling of infinity. Simply put avail yourself of this song, you won’t regret it.

Heatwave breaks the revelry of Easter Parade with a more earthbound song. The shimmering intro ushers in a morning with sprinklers and birdsong. The plodding percussion emanates the heat that oppresses all no matter their social standings. “Heatwave” takes up as its task with the eternal Ecclesiastes pondering of why the rain or in this case the heatwave falls on both the bad and the good. The track conveys all the uncomfortableness of a heatwave and its unrelenting presence. You can feel the beads of sweat developing and the desire for relief. The song is a pleasure to listen to and is gorgeously atmospheric. Buchanan conveys through his vocal all the lassitude and oppressiveness of the situation. Also to be relished is the idea how difficult this song must have been to capture considering the limitations of the studio at the time. There is an awful lot going on in the accompaniment and the mastering of the song must have been a mind numbing process. All of that effort was worth it for the result which is a stunning track that ends with the relief of the sun setting in the last minutes of the song.

The final selection Automobile Noise is truly another Hopper painting captured in a song. The images that are used are concrete but in isolation. The underlying theme again is loneliness in a crowd. The images presented never stop as they roam from cities to vast highways constantly in motion and solitary. The weariness of that constant action produces a kind of ennui that erodes the initiative to interact. The underlying question of the lyric is when can we stop the action and sit down to think, and what is it all for? The industrial sounds underline the isolation and cog in a wheel theme, while bringing about additional pondering over the possibility that we are all just factory punched out parts. What is not to be missed on the track is the perfection of each sound’s placement to convey the overall feeling of the song. Buchanan reflects the ennui of the futile situation and the endless desire of all human beings to escape the monotony and never quite getting there in the end. This would all be too depressing if not for the comfort of know that each individual’s malaise is recognized and shared. The song is a beautiful benediction to an extraordinary release.

The Blue Nile would follow A Walk Across the Rooftops with the stellar .Hats “Hats” would be just as brilliant as “A Walk Across the Rooftops” and mark the peak of the band’s popularity in the industry. The band would release two more albums after “Hats”; 1991’s Peace at Last and 1997’s High. Each would retain their edgy evocative sound and poetic lyrics throughout. In 2012 Paul Buchanan would go on to release a solo work, Mid Air. The band website has stated the band has not officially broken up but there has been no studio activity. It is sad to think that there will be no additional Blue Nile albums but what a brilliant discography they have to their credit. In so many ways they were before their time both in skills, composition and studio convictions. Each album but especially A Walk Across the Roortops is a gorgeous sublime journey filled with bittersweet emotions.

There is never a lack of feeling and a rich reward for those who familiarize themselves with the band’s works. But be warned these are armchair albums that hone your listening skills as each song becomes more infused with meaning upon repeated listening. Their works once encountered are difficult to forget and hopefully never will be.

"A Walk Across the Rooftops"

Glaswegian adult contemporary group The Blue Nile's debut album owes much to Scottish audio equipment company Linn Hi-Fi. Three years previously, The Blue Nile had recorded and independently released their first single, "I Love This Life," which charted at #126 before vanishing. Not long afterwards, their record company, RSO Records, was absorbed into Polygram, meaning the band had to finance themselves. The Blue Nile continued to record on a shoestring without success until Linn Hi-Fi came across a demo of "Tinseltown In The Rain". They surmised that the group's spacious, all-analogue recordings would showcase the quality of their new equipment.

For some reason, after their initial approach, The Blue Nile trio didn't get back to them for nine months. "Eventually the three of us squeezed into a phone box to ring them," frontman Paul Buchanan recalled to Mojo magazine. Linn gave them somewhere between £10,000 and £20,000 to record A Walk Across The Rooftops, with no stipulation about how the record should sound.

Speaking about the title track and the album to Mojo magazine January 2013, Buchanan said: "The title track was just me looking out of a tenement window and dreaming, as I still seem to be doing. It seems a bit creaky to say now, but I remember telling people the album was a kind of imagined documentary set in Glasgow - headlights reflected in a puddle, that kind of things."

"Tinseltown In The Rain"

The demo for this tribute to The Blue Nile's home city of Glasgow was recorded on a shoestring as the band were without a record company and struggling to finance their recordings. However, when their engineer and honorary fourth member Calum Malcolm played the tune to the Scottish audio equipment company Linn Hi-Fi, they surmised that the group's spacious, all-analogue recordings would be perfect for showcasing the quality of their new equipment. Linn gave the band approx. £15,000 to record their debut album, with no stipulation about how the record should sound. Result!!

Corrs lead singer Andrea Corr covered this for her 2011 record of cover versions Lifelines, and released it as the first single from that album.

Finn Seemann · 18/6/2019 7:38 am

arabchanter wrote:
Finn Seemann wrote:
Tek wrote:
Have tried a few times to get into The Blue Nile, what with them being fellow Scots.

But i must confess, i've never quite gotten the hype.
With you on that - I've always thought the Blue Nile hype was more of a west coast thing, but could be mistaken.

Duly acknowledged

PatReilly · 18/6/2019 7:56 am

Never got the hype with the Blue Nile either. That Paul Buchanan shops in Waitrose, Byers Road Glasgow.

It's dearer than the other supermarkets, and I always think it has a higher amount of pretentious cunts shop in it than other food stores. The Waitrose stores seem to be situated in locations with a large 'white settler' population, if you know what I'm getting at...........

Anyway, that tells me most of what I want to know about Paul Buchanan, shallow individual that I am.

arabchanter · 18/6/2019 9:34 am

PatReilly wrote:
Never got the hype with the Blue Nile either. That Paul Buchanan shops in Waitrose, Byers Road Glasgow.

It's dearer than the other supermarkets, and I always think it has a higher amount of pretentious cunts shop in it than other food stores. The Waitrose stores seem to be situated in locations with a large 'white settler' population, if you know what I'm getting at...........

Anyway, that tells me most of what I want to know about Paul Buchanan, shallow individual that I am.

Four people in agreement I hope this doesn't constitute a kleek

arabchanter · 18/6/2019 9:46 am

Album 523.
Cyndi Lauper.........................She's So Unusual (1983)

Betty Boop bombshell Cyndi Lauper would have been a breath of fresh air anytime. But in the dark ages of 1983, she was a helium-voiced hurricane.

The 30 year old Brooklynite had survived bankruptcy to emerge stronger than steel. On her debut, classics come tumbling one after another. For a time Lauper and Madonna were rivals. History decided the outcome, but She's So Unusual remains a terrific testament to a time when Lauper coulda been a contender.

Finn Seemann · 18/6/2019 12:31 pm

arabchanter wrote:
PatReilly wrote:
Never got the hype with the Blue Nile either. That Paul Buchanan shops in Waitrose, Byers Road Glasgow.

It's dearer than the other supermarkets, and I always think it has a higher amount of pretentious cunts shop in it than other food stores. The Waitrose stores seem to be situated in locations with a large 'white settler' population, if you know what I'm getting at...........

Anyway, that tells me most of what I want to know about Paul Buchanan, shallow individual that I am.
Four people in agreement I hope this doesn't constitute a kleek

Nah, I like Waitrose.

arabchanter · 18/6/2019 12:53 pm

Finn Seemann wrote:
arabchanter wrote:
PatReilly wrote:
Never got the hype with the Blue Nile either. That Paul Buchanan shops in Waitrose, Byers Road Glasgow.

It's dearer than the other supermarkets, and I always think it has a higher amount of pretentious cunts shop in it than other food stores. The Waitrose stores seem to be situated in locations with a large 'white settler' population, if you know what I'm getting at...........

Anyway, that tells me most of what I want to know about Paul Buchanan, shallow individual that I am.
Four people in agreement I hope this doesn't constitute a kleek

Nah, I like Waitrose.

Ah, the old smokescreen ploy, I like it. 🤫

Tek · 19/6/2019 11:46 pm

I kinda like Cyndi Lauper.

She had her own unique style. Couple of great tracks too.

arabchanter · 20/6/2019 11:26 pm

Album 522.
Hanoi Rocks..........................................Back To The Mystery City   (1983)

Hanoi Rocks, never heard of them so listened to this with a open mind with no preconceptions, which sometimes is hard to block out when listening to some albums on this journey. So we kicked off with "Strange Boys Play Weird Openings" which was for me a bit of an own goal, it was something I would expect from Mr Jimmy wanky Page or Led Zeppelin, 42 seconds of medieval fluteee claptrap, if VAR was to get involved that track would have been binned in record time, and for a lot of people myself included, album aff the turntable and never shall that vinyl and needle make music together.

Now as I have to listen to every track I plodded on and thank goodness I did, the next track was the exhilarating "Malibu Beach Nightmare" with it's futba clap type drumbeat (which o/t, for some reason reminded me of the zigga zagga chant/clap from back in the day, I don't know if anyone else can remember the throbbing hands after it?) which is also used to great effect on the next fine track "Mental Beat," I enjoyed the rest of the tracks but in varying degrees.

This album seemed like a mix of soft metal, definitely rock 'n' roll, wrapped in a large smattering of glam rock, which ticked quite a few boxes for me, my favourite tracks were, "Lick Summer Love," "Mental Beat," "Tooting Bec Wreck" but "Malibu Beach Nightmare" stood out most for this listener.

I really enjoyed this album, not a duff track in my humbles, but gonna cop out on this one, as I haven't used the subbies bench for a while, I'm gonna put it on the bench and just download for now, will decide after listening to it a bit more, but as it stands this album wont be going into my vinyl collection.

Bits & Bobs;

Back to Mystery City is the fourth studio album by the Finnish rock band Hanoi Rocks, released in 1983. It was produced by ex-Mott the Hoople members Dale Griffen and Pete "Overend" Watts, and was the first with Razzle on drums. Besides Hanoi Rocks, the album also features keyboardist Morgan Fisher, and Miriam Stockley on backing vocals, who had also sung with Pink Floyd.

Hanoi Rocks's fourth studio album finally earned the Finnish band some much needed worldwide recognition, thanks to not only a collection of powerful and memorable tracks, but also the production magic from the team of Mott The Hoople alumni Overend Watts and Dale "Buffin" Griffin, who aided the band in perfecting its rather unique mix of glammy, trashy, and punky styles.

Moreover, the album even included Hoople's Morgan Fisher as guest keyboardist, his piano tinkling away in the background on several tracks, which lent an almost Mott party atmosphere to the band's New York Dolls form of sassy rebelliousness, so things were looking and sounding quite impressive, a giant step forward from the band's previous albums where the production had often lacked and the tinsel had been missing.

As to the material, the songwriting had also taken a major uphill leap, with the band recording one of its most consistent sets and the musicians (vocalist Mike Monroe, guitarists Andy McCoy and Jan "Nasty Suicide" Stenfors, bassist Sam Yaffa, and drummer Razzle) performing their rockin' and rollin' hearts out. Indeed, Back to Mystery City includes some of the group's catchiest material (and some future concert favorites), including "Malibu Beach Nightmare," "Mental Beat," "Sailing Down the Tears," "Ice Cream Summer," "Tooting Bec Wreck," "Until I Get You," and the fantastic title track that closes out the collection.

Now, with the blueprint for world domination being set into motion with this splendid platter, it was only the group's following release, Two Steps From The Move, that would surpass the impact of this album and bring Hanoi Rocks to the very brink of hard-fought success and...

Damn it, senseless tragedy struck in the form of Mötley Crüe's Vince Neil, who completely destroyed the band's escalating momentum with his fatal drunk driving escapades.

So to those unfamiliar with this team of Finnish punky glamsters, Back to Mystery City would make a great starting point when delving into the band's catalogue of material.

"Strange Boys Play Weird Openings"

An acoustic intro that Andy McCoy came-up with in the studio.

"Malibu Beach Nightmare"

McCoy wrote song at home while smoking hashish. The song was originally recorded in 1981 as a calypso version titled "Malibu Nightmare". This version was just made as a joke but it was re-recorded for this album, as a more serious rock song. The song was also released as a single.

"Mental Beat"

The song is about speed, and was inspired by Michael Monroe's wild behavior as a child. This was also the only song that (according to Pete Watts) drummer Razzle had a hard time recording.

"Tooting Bec Wreck"

This song was inspired by a London flat full of rats, in Tooting Bec, where Hanoi Rocks lived.

"Until I Get You"

Andy McCoy wrote this song at the band's manager Seppo Vesterinen's house in Helsinki. McCoy hated the song but Razzle loved it, and wanted it on their next record. Ultimately, McCoy also fell in love with the song. The song is also a great example of Hanoi Rocks' melodic glam rock-style. Also, the arrangement for the song was inspired by Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen". LA Guns covered the song on their 2004 album Rips the Covers Off

"Sailing Down the Tears"

Written in 10 minutes, but the band still loved the song. The song was written as a mid-tempo, standard 70's rock-, pop-song.

"Lick Summer Love"

This song sparked some controversy when it was released. McCoy wrote the song when he was 17 years old. The song deals with making love and having oral sex with his girlfriend. Monroe has since said that he thinks the song is an "awful slime-ball", and that he hated the lyrics.

"Beating Gets Faster"

A love-song written by Monroe and McCoy.

"Ice Cream Summer"

A song dealing with a summer romance.

"Back to Mystery City"

At the time of its release, the song was very popular, but it has since been overshadowed by the many other Hanoi Rocks' hits. Andy McCoy wrote the song about Hanoi Rocks' adventures in the Far-East, the band's fans and the buzz that was also surrounding the band in 1983. The song is also composed in the same style as Tommy James and the Shondells' song "Mony Mony". The song's title was inspired by the London club Mystery City.

And to drummer Razzle...RIP.

The story of Vince Neil’s car crash that killed Hanoi Rocks drummer

Back in 1984, the Finnish hard rock band Hanoi Rocks was on their second American tour and their first to reach California. The two gigs meant to be held in Los Angeles sold out in twenty minutes. On the day they arrived in Los Angeles, December 8, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley and the other members of the band (with the exception of singer Michael Monroe, who was recovering from a fractured ankle) visited Neil’s home and spent the day at Redondo Beach.

After partying for hours, Neil and Razzle decided to take a trip to a local liquor store in Neil’s De Tomaso Pantera. Neil, who was drunk, lost control of the car and hit an oncoming vehicle. The two occupants of the other car were seriously injured and suffered brain damage, and Dingley was killed.

Neil was charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence of alcohol in connection with the crash. His blood alcohol level was 0.17, well above the California legal limit at that time of 0.10. In July 1986, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Edward Hinz, Jr. sentenced Neil to 30 days in jail, five years probation, $2.6 million in restitution to the victims of the crash and 200 hours of community service. Neil got out of jail in 15 days for good behavior; Mötley Crüe dedicated their third studio album, Theatre of Pain, to Razzle.

Michael Monroe pays tribute to Dale Griffin
Former Hanoi Rocks man pays tribute to Mott The Hoople drummer and record producer

Michael Monroe has paid tribute to Dale ‘Buffin’ Griffin, who died on Sunday at the age of 69. Speaking to Classic Rock, he revealed how Mott The Hoople were an inspiration to Hanoi Rocks, and how the two came to work together on the band’s classic Back To Mystery City album.

“Mott The Hoople were one of my favourite bands when I was a kid in my teens and one of Hanoi Rocks’ biggest influences,” says Monroe. “So when we were looking for a producer for our Back To Mystery City album, we asked for Ian Hunter, but he was unavailable so we asked for Pete - Overend Watts - and Dale Griffin, who was always Buffin, and they were happy to oblige.

“We made the album down in Hastings and I really enjoyed working with both Buffin and Pete, it was a really pleasant experience and probably the some of the most fun I’ve had making a record. They got Morgan Fisher in to play piano on a couple of songs, they had the Fairlight, which we were playing around with, and they got us making farm animal noises on Tooting Bec Wreck. They were really good producers, a great choice.

“Buffin was really easy going, kind and a really calming influence, very peaceful. It was a really special time. As well as having great fun in the studio, I remember we all went and visited the field where the battle of Hastings had happened.

“Later, around the time of Two Steps From The Move, Buffin produced a BBC Friday Rock Show session for us, we did three or four tracks from the album and they came out real good, so we were planning to maybe work with him in the future as well, but then Razzle died. He was a friend and a hell of a nice guy. Sweet, easy-going and a pleasure to work with. I haven’t seen or spoken with him in a while, but it still came as a shock. I’m really sorry about his passing and send my condolences to his loved ones, his near and dear ones, Pete and everyone who knew him closely.

“The best way to celebrate his life is to listen to Mott The Hoople, bands like that just don’t happen anymore, great songs, classic stuff. There’s some exceptional music there. And Buffin was the kind of drummer who would never try to be flashy, he would always respect the song, keep his ego in check and play exactly what the song required, that’s the best kind of drummer and, in that way, Buffin was probably one of the very best there’s ever been.”

On his stage costumes:

With Hanoi Rocks I was doing the more glittery kind of thing, but for now I've kind of toned down. It's more simple. I think of what's more easy to move in; I try not to wear stuff that gets in the way too much. I got to be able to do the splits without splitting the pants!

On splitting his pants on stage from the splits:

That happened once with Hanoi Rocks at The Marquee in London in the '80s. I remember I had these silver-colored pants and they were PVC or vinyl — almost the same color as graphic tape. I was graphic-taping them and the more I taped them the more they split. It became part of the show, me taping my crotch on stage. At first I was distressed, but then I thought, "Well, that's something different for this show." I went to the roadies and said, "Help! Get me some graphic tape now!" I would have been screwed without graphic tape.

On the long hair:

I've always had long hair. It feels like part of rock 'n' roll. When I was really young my mom wouldn't allow me to grow my hair as long as I wanted, so one summer I cut it real short, like almost a crew-cut. Then I said, "Okay, now after this I can grow it as long as I want, right?" But she said no deal. I had to leave home [to grow it out].

On the big-name collaborations:

Slash is one of my favorite guitar players. He's a great guitar player, and he plays the right kind of guitar. He was a great pleasure to work with. The Guns 'N Roses sessions were great fun. With Axl we had some magical moments, doing that cover of the Dead Boys song "Ain't It Fun," and Little Steven. I think the best songs I've written for my solo stuff have been with [him], like "Dead, Jail or Rock 'n' Roll" [featuring Axl Rose]. He's a true rocker.

On glam rock and hair metal:

Somebody said I'm the guy who brought the punk into glam. To me, a lot of the hair-metal bands that came after [Hanoi Rocks]. People say [we] inspired a lot of that stuff, but I think we were more into the music. To us, the music and the songs and the attitude were more important than the big hair and the posing. ... A lot of the bands in L.A. and the hair-metal scene seemed to play their hair dryers better than they played their instruments. So I didn't really feel like I was any big part of that.

On the crazy days of Hanoi Rocks:

There was one incident in Israel where we almost got arrested. [Instead] we got deported because the guys threw a table out the window, and it landed on a taxicab and almost killed the driver. It could have hit [him], but luckily it didn't. The hotel manager came into the room — he opened the door with his own key — and there was broken glass all over the floor. He stepped on the glass and was jumping on one foot, [and] Nasty [the guitarist] hit the hotel manager over the head with his crutch. ... He had broken his leg in London falling down stairs at some club. There was a steep staircase at the club and they decided to see what happens when you jump headfirst with your hands behind your back — that's the kind of madness...

On sleeping with groupies:

We were never into groupies or stuff like that. I had never been with a groupie in my life. It's inconceivable to spend the night with a total stranger and then never see them again; I could never imagine doing something like that. I guess that separates me from the stereotype.

On bringing rock 'n' roll to Finland:

In Finland back [in the Hanoi Rocks days], even if you had long hair they would kill you. Us wearing makeup and jewelry, the way we looked, it was like, 'Forget it.' When we started there were some fights with audiences, like groups of rednecks coming after us. They demolished a bus once with crowbars and baseball bats. There were like 10 guys and I woke up — I was taking a nap in the back of the bus — with the window just falling on top of me. ... We got out of there just in the nick of time. ... I think Hanoi had a lot to do with the attitude changing. In the later years we became the biggest band in Finland, and that forced the people to be more open-minded about looks and stuff. We opened a lot of doors even for bands that are coming out of there now.

On Michael Monroe's sound:

Good rock 'n' roll from the heart with good attitude and high energy you can't really ignore. With this band, I don't think many people will be walking to the bar and wandering off. I think it's going to grab your attention.

A tenuous link from Retro Dundee;

   The Marryat Hall.

The Caird Hall's wee sister next door. Room for around 400/500.In the mid 70's this place was bustling with Soul crews who organised Northern Soul All-nighters. The Marryat then gained quite a reputation for being one of the better venues on the Soul circuit and was visited by enthusiasts from all over the UK.Moving into the late 70's - early 80's, the Marryat hosted a spate of indie and rock gigs. Some of the acts that performed live were - Theatre of Hate - Echo & the Bunnymen - Girlschool - Rezillos - Hanoi Rocks, to name just a few.

Many a good/mad time had in there, anyone else have memories flooding back when they see this photie?

PatReilly · 21/6/2019 12:39 pm

Never really had listened to Hanoi Rocks before, didn't know they were mostly Finns, and that album had been produced by the Mott the Hoople lads.

Nonetheless, although I quite enjoyed it on one listen, it sounded like a good tribute act for the New York Dolls: not really much like MtH to me. I'll check them out a wee bit more now, thanks.

Last edited by PatReilly (21/6/2019 12:43 pm)

arabchanter · 22/6/2019 9:52 am

Album 524.
Paul Simon.............................Hearts And Bones (1983)

Simon’s first album after the soundtrack to his film One Trick Pony, Hearts and Bones began as a project intended as a Simon and Garfunkek album called Think Too Much and meant to coincide with a reunion tour following their 1981 concert in Central Park.

Just prior to the album’s release, Simon removed Garfunkel's vocals from the tracks and prepared to release the retitled Hearts and Bones as a solo album.

Much of the album deals with the nuances of relationships using what he called a combination of everyday vernacular and enriched language

.Hearts and Bones underperformed commercially, though songs like “Allergies” and “Think Too Much (B)” represent a musical shift away from his folk-pop background and toward the sound that would become the foundation of his next album, 1986’s Graceland.

arabchanter · 24/6/2019 1:45 pm

Album 523.
Cyndi Lauper.........................She's So Unusual (1983)

Found this one surprisingly ok, I wasn't looking forward to it but found after the initial whole album listen, if I played it in chunks with a break in between it kinda of limited the rather high pitched vocals that played havoc with my old lugs on the first 49 minute listen, and made the album much easier to listen to.

Very much of it's time, but still enjoyed it, evoking memories from that time but always bringing Madonna to mind, they say Madge got her wardrobe ideas of the time from Lauper and I can see that. Side 1 is in my humbles the best side, with "Money Changes Everything," the infectious "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," "When You Were Mine," written by Prince, and "Time After Time," I read somewhere that Lauper wrote this song and wanted it to be remembered and special, mission accomplished.

Side 2 was alright but nothing spectacular for this listener, as buying an album for one side seems to be a waste of money this album wont be getting added to my collection, I'm pretty sure I have all of side 1 on various CDs if feeling the urge to listen anyways.

Just a side note, I know Tek's doing emotional tracks comp at the minute, but Cyndi Laupers "True Colors" really gets me everytime, I've made sure my kids listen to this as often as possible to try and get it's message across, I think all parents should share this with they're kids, when you put your child in the mix the lyrics and delivery are breathtaking.

Please indulge me ;

https://youtu.be/LPn0KFlbqX8
You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged, oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
The darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

Show me a smile then
Don't be unhappy
Can't remember when
I last saw you laughing
This world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
Just call me up
'Cause I will always be there

And I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful
I see your true colors
Shining through (true colors)
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful (they're beautiful)
Like a rainbow
Oh oh…

Bits & Bobs;

Her birth name is Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper. She is known for her powerful voice and her outrageous fashion sense, both of which helped define '80s style. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, New York, she became interested in music at a young age and taught herself to play guitar.

She sang in dance cover bands in the '70s until she lost her voice in 1977. Doctors told her she'd never sing again.

Before achieving fame as a solo artist, Lauper was lead singer in the band Blue Angel in the early 1980s. Offered a solo deal by Polydor Records, refused to sign without her bandmates, and Blue Angel released a self-titled album on the label in 1980, which was produced by Roy Halee, famous for his work with Simon & Garfunkel. The album sold poorly and Lauper went solo, releasing her debut album She's So Unusual in 1983.

In the mid-'80s, she was part of the "Rock And Wrestling Connection" in the WWF (now the WWE). She managed ladies champion Wendy Richter and wrestling personality Captain Lou Albano appeared in her videos for "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" and "Time After Time."

She sang the theme song to Pee Wee's Playhouse, uncredited.

She married actor David Thornton in 1991 in Manhattan. Thornton's credits include the movies High Art, Swept Away and The Last Days of Disco. He's also appeared on several episodes of Law & Order. The couple had a son, Declyn Wallace Thornton Lauper, born in 1997.

Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman of The Hooters played on her album She's So Unusual and produced it with Rick Chertoff. Hyman wrote Time After Time with Lauper, working with her on a piano after hours.

On the strength of her breakout solo album She's So Unusual, Lauper won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1984. She won four more Grammy Awards in 1986, including one for her work on the collaboration fundraiser song "We Are The World " In total, her recordings have garnered six wins and 13 nominations at the Grammy Awards.

Lauper's 1986 album True Colors was certified Platinum and, like She's So Unusual, reached #4 on the US Billboard Charts. Her next albums did not sell as well but her reputation was already established. She began to explore more genres of music beyond Pop, releasing albums that featured R&B, Soul, and Electronica. Her 2011 album Memphis Blues reached #26 on the US Billboard 200 and #1 on the Billboard Blues Albums charts.

Lauper's trademarks are her wild hair colors, unusual outfits, and her thick New Yawk accent. When asked about it, she said, "You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all. It's over the 59th Street Bridge. It's not over the Atlantic Ocean."

Cyndi Lauper penned the 15-song soundtrack of the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, which won six Tonys including the one for Best Musical. Lauper received her first-ever Tony when she took home the award for best original score.

Lauper is very good in meet-and-greets and fan interactions, which endeared her to her label, Portrait Records. Dan Beck, who did marketing for her at the label, told us: "Cyndi you could put in a lot of situations. I took her to the National Record Mart sales convention and she jumps on stage with k.d. lang. Cyndi didn't know kd - they met for like two seconds, and they jumped on stage and sang 'I Fall To Pieces' together. They just tore the house down."

Cyndi Lauper told the Big Issue about her quirky fashion sense: "Before I was a pop star people threw rocks at me because I was wearing vintage clothing that didn't fit very well. And I'd say oh, really? Where did you get your clothes from? A rack alongside 10 others exactly the same? Then when I became famous everyone started dressing like me. I didn't expect that. I guess they just wanted to have fun."

RollingStone. January 19, 1984 5:00AM ET #

By Kurt Loder.

She’s So Unusual.
Brooklyn-bred Cyndi Lauper sounds like no other singer on the current scene. She may be the finest female junk-rock vocalist since the heyday of the great Maureen Gray, more than twenty years ago. Like Gray, a black Philadelphian who had a string of local hits in the Sixties, Lauper has a wild and wonderful skyrocket of a voice — the epitome of pre-Beatles girl-group pop — and at her best, as she often is on this smartly produced solo debut, she sounds like a missing musical link with that long-gone golden age.

But She’s So Unusual is no mere oldies pastiche. Lauper’s already been that route with her former band, Blue Angel (on whose 1981 album she came as close to the girl-group grail as is probably possible with the breathtaking “Maybe He’ll Know”). Here, boosted by a powerful, synth-based band, Lauper turns away from nouveau trash and trains her talent on some really first-rate material. In the process, she comes up with two instant hits: a thundering “Money Changes Everything” (in its original version, by the Brains, one of the great lost anthems of the Seventies) and a breathy, beautiful cover of Prince’s “When You Were Mine.” She also has a good, goofy time with Robert Hazard’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” does an almost tasteful reading of Jules Shear’s attractive “All through the Night” and makes like Cars-meet-Eurythmics on the riff-stoked “She Bop.” There are some problems: “Witness” founders in its own aimlessness, and “He’s So Unusual,” a brief, cutesy antique from the Twenties, has no business being on the record. But when Lauper’s extraordinary pipes connect with the right material, the results sound like the beginning of a whole new golden age.

She's So Unusual was an appropriate title for Cyndi Lauper's 1983 debut record: From her electric-orange hair and colorful flea-market wardrobe to her squeaky, giddy voice, Lauper hardly appeared an odds-on bet to become one of pop's premier vocalists.

Nor are many of the songs selected for She's So Unusual conventional. "She Bop," a seductive account of female masturbation, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," an uncut statement about sexual freedom, and "He's So Unusual," a short but sweet taste of a 1929 tune that recalls comedienne Gracie Allen, weren't the kinds of songs that typically add up to a hit album. But that's precisely what She's So Unusual became. The multiplatinum disc and its four Top Five singles made Lauper an instant star.

Before embarking on a solo career, Lauper sang with Blue Angel, a group she cofounded in 1978. The band's debut album, released in 1980, bombed, and Blue Angel broke up.

Lauper signed a record deal with Portrait, and with producer Rick Chertoff at the controls she began work on She's So Unusual. Chertoff brought in Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian of the then-unknown Philadelphia band the Hooters to play on the record. Together they opted for a synth-heavy sound that evoked the girl-group era of the early-Sixties and deftly played Lauper's vocals against thick arrangements.

Not yet an accomplished songwriter (although she co-wrote "She Bop" and the touching ballad "Time After Time"), Lauper looked outside for material. She interpreted the Brains' "Money Changes Everything," Prince's "When You Were Mine" and Robert Hazard's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" with wit and conviction.

That she was able to integrate her zaniness into She's So Unusual without sacrificing the underlying seriousness of the songs or her vocal delivery also meant something to Lauper's career. Few solo artists have been able to balance such a delicate dichotomy the first time around. Fewer still have made it seem so easy — and so much fun.

"Money Changes Everything"

A track from Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual, "Money Changes Everything" was written by Tom Gray, who first recorded it with his Atlanta Rock band The Brains. The song got a great audience reaction when The Brains performed it at live shows in 1979, and when they earned some cash opening shows for The B-52s, they recorded the song and pressed 1,000 copies on their own label. Progressive FM stations in Boston, San Francisco and a few places in between started playing the song, which earned the band a record deal with Mercury Records.

But then money changed everything: Mercury cleaned house and the executives that were behind the band were replaced with folks who knew nothing about them. The song was released on The Brains 1980 self-titled debut album, but without record company support, it got little attention despite being produced by Steve Lillywhite, who would later have enormous success working with U2.

Soon after, Tom Gray got a publishing deal with ATV, which pitched "Money Changes Everything" to the producer Rick Chertoff, hoping he would record it with a teenage singer he worked with named Rachel Sweet. Chertoff declined, but a few months later he included the song on a demo reel for a new artist he was working with: a brash young singer named Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi loved the song and recorded it for her album, turning it into a hit and improving Gray's financial fortunes considerably.

The song is about a girl who leaves her man for someone with a more robust bank account. Many songs have been written about how money can't buy love, but this one takes the opposite tack, explaining that sometimes money trumps love.

Lauper didn't change the gender of the song - the original version sung by a man places him in the lead role, but with Lauper singing, she is recounting a story.

Tom Gray wasn't going for social commentary when he wrote this song; he got the idea after having a conversation with his landlady. Gray explained:

"We were just sort of gossiping about this couple we knew, and she said, 'She's going to leave him as soon as she finds somebody with money.' And I said, 'Wait a minute, excuse me.' The idea of the song just appeared in my head right there. The keyboard part was something I'd been banging on the piano for a week or so. But I wrote the chorus very quickly and then the verses followed. The song was finished within a day or two."

A lot happened between this song's conception and its appearance on the chart. Written in 1979 and first recorded by The Brains in 1980, Lauper put it on her She's So Unusual album, which came out in October 1983. The first single was "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," which peaked in March 1984. The album was a runaway hit, and three more singles were issued before "Money Changes Everything" finally got its turn, peaking at #27 in February 1985.

The song provided a welcome infusion of cash to its writer Tom Gray. It didn't change everything, but he did go from hand-to-mouth, mowing lawns for extra funds, to buying a house and enjoying a higher status in the songwriter community, which led to a collaboration with Carlene Carter. He also became friends with Lauper, who met him when she came to Atlanta on her first tour. They wrote a song together for her next album called "The Faraway Nearby." They collaborated again on Lauper's song "A Part Hate," which appeared on her 1993 album Hat Full of Stars.

Most Cyndi Lauper fans owned the album by the time this song was released as a single, so it was issued with a different version, labeled "recorded live" as the A-side, and the album version on the B-side. The "live" version was recorded live, but in a studio. Most radio stations played the album version.

Lauper released an acoustic version of this song with Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday on her 2005 album The Body Acoustic. This was a moment of serendipity for the song's writer Tom Gray, who had formed a band called Delta Moon and was working on a similar arrangement. Gray told us: "I'd always wanted to do it with a fiddle, so I played Appalachian dulcimer on it. And then after we already had it in the can, Cyndi came out with her all-acoustic CD - and what instrument did she play on it but Appalachian dulcimer! We hadn't talked or communicated about this at all. But she came out doing it with a fiddle and an Appalachian dulcimer and I was just like, 'Whoa.'"

"Girls Just Want To Have Fun"

This was Lauper's first single as a solo artist. She released an album in 1981 as a member of the group Blue Angel, but "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" made her famous. The song was a huge part of '80s culture. It became an anthem for female attitude, and set fashion trends as the video showed Lauper wearing bright, outrageous clothes that looked like they came from a thrift store (they often did). It set the stage for artists like Madonna: independent women wearing cheap, yet fashionable clothes with a taste for garish accessories.

Ellie Greenwich sang backup vocals on this song and helped come up with the distinctive counterpoint. Greenwich was a legendary songwriter who worked with Phil Spector on many classic songs of the '60s, including Be My Baby and Leader Of The Pack. Other songs she sang on include "Evil Woman" by Electric Light Orchestra and "Dreamin'" by Blondie.

The video, which ran constantly on MTV, featured the wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Lauper's father, and also Lauper's real-life mother, who had no acting experience but did just fine. It won the first ever award for Best Female Video at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. Albano was also in her next video, "Time After Time."

Both videos were directed by Edd Griles, who produced the first two MTV Video Music Awards.

Lauper co-wrote many of her own songs, but not this one. Like "I Will Survive," it's a girl power song written by a man. A Philadelphia singer/songwriter named Robert Hazard, who had a band called Robert Hazard and the Heroes, wrote it. Hazard recorded his demo of the song in 1979. Speaking with Rolling Stone, Lauper said that she had to alter the lyrics from Hazard's original. "It was originally about how fortunate he was 'cause he was a guy around these girls that wanted to have 'fun' - with him - down there, which we do not speak lest we go blind," she said.

A year before this song hit for Lauper, it was Hazard who was on the charts with his song "Escalator Of Life," which made #58 in the US. Yes, the video is on youtube.

A theme in Lauper's work, as evidenced in her song "True Colors," is acceptance. Most of the women seen on MTV were the kind of beautiful people rarely seen in the real world, but Lauper made sure that her video was populated with regular folks doing their thing. In the book I Want My MTV, she explained: "I wanted 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun' to be an anthem for women around the world - and I mean all women - and a sustaining message that we are powerful human beings. I made sure that when a woman saw the video, she would see herself represented, whether she was thin or heavy, glamorous or not, and whatever race she was."

This song has been used in numerous TV shows and commercials. One of the more successful uses was in the 1995 movie Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone. It was Silverstone's first big role after playing a vixen in some Aerosmith videos, and helped establish her as a legitimate actress. Other movie uses include
To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), and Baby Mama (2008). TV shows include The Simpsons, Friends, Bones, Gilmore Girls and Miami Vice, where it was used in the first episode.

It didn't take long for the title of this song to get its own movie. In 1985, the unknown actresses Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt and Shannen Doherty starred in the film Girls Just Want To Have Fun, where the song was also used.

When all of the party guests in the video are shown falling out of the bedroom in a pile when the door is opened, it was a tribute to a similar scene from the classic Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera.
Weird Al Yankovic wrote a parody of this for his 1985 album Dare To Be Stupid called "Girls Just Want To Have Lunch." He wasn't keen on doing that would make fun of women, but his label insisted on having him do a Cyndi Lauper send-up as this song was very popular.

Lauper thought Yankovic's parody was funny. She said during a Reddit AMA: "I like Weird Al. I LOVED 'Like a Surgeon.' I thought he was going to make MORE fun of Girls just wanna have lunch. But it wasn't hard. Because everybody thought I was an alien, I spoke funny and I dressed funny... Not hard to make fun of."

Based on the success of this song, Lauper became part of "The Rock and Wrestling Connection." She appeared at matches for the World Wrestling Federation and managed the women's champion, Wendi Richter.

The song has charted on the Hot 100 on three other occasions following its initial entry in 1983. Cyndi Lauper remade it as "Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)," peaking at #87 in 1995. Sixteen years later, the cast of Glee took its version to #59. Finally, in 2015 The Voice contestant Madi Davis reached #98 with her ethereal cover after she performed it on the TV show.

"Time After Time"

Lauper wrote this song with Rob Hyman, who also sang backup. Hyman was in a Philadelphia band with Eric Bazilian and Rick Chertoff. When Rick took a job as a staff producer at Columbia Records, he kept in touch with Rob and Eric, who formed The Hooters. Chertoff was assigned to produce Lauper, a then-unknown artist. Lauper's band, Blue Angel, had broken up, so she needed musicians. Rick suggested Rob and Eric, then brought her to see The Hooters at a club called The Bottom Line.

Hyman told Songfacts: "It was the first time we met her. We talked and right from the jump she was so unusual. She was definitely different and striking and creative. One thing led to another - she saw our band, we got a chance to hear one of her demos. She came down to Philadelphia and was staying with a friend. She worked with us in our rehearsal studio and did a bunch of demos, so it was really a tryout period - we also tried out some drummers and bass players, but it ended up being Eric and myself doing most of the guitars and keyboards, and Rick producing. We became her band for that album."

In our interview with Rob Hyman, he explained: "With 'Time After Time,' we wrote that very quickly. We were recording Cyndi's debut album. We had all the songs chosen, and quite simply the producer, Rick Chertoff, suggested to all of us that the album could use 'One more song.' We had 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun,' we had 'She Bop,' we had 'All Through THe Night,' we had what would end up being really strong songs.

It felt good to us, but for Rick, he's been known to say that on every album - you could always have 'One more song,' but in this case, he absolutely was right and in this case we delivered. We had most of the album recorded and we were close to mixing the record when he suggested this fateful 'One more song.' Cyndi and I sat at the piano one night and after the sessions we would just stay in the studio. It was over several days. We would start after the session, we would just stay. This was at the Record Plant studios in New York, and we would just sit at the piano and throw these ideas around into a cassette machine."

Lauper came up with the title when she saw it in the magazine TV Guide. Time After Time was the name of a 1979 science fiction movie starring Malcolm McDowell as a man who invents a time machine. Rob Hyman said: "When she saw Time After Time, something clicked - she said, 'I think I have a title.'

I was sitting at the piano and just started banging out what would eventually be the chorus, hook, and the way we sing it. It almost had like a reggae feel, it was a little bouncier and a little more upbeat. We started getting off on that chorus, then the verse melodies started to appear.

It's a deceptively simple song. The verses are just a little repeating three-note motif - almost like a nursery rhyme, a very simple song. Then we started to realize we were on to something. The mood of the lyrics came from both of us. I think Cyndi came in and really started the lyric flow, then all of the sudden we realized it wasn't such a bouncy song, but it was a little more bittersweet and a little deeper in its feeling and a little more poignant, so the music started to change. We wrote a little bridge section and I think the last thing we really wrote was the chorus. We had 'Time After Time,' we just had to get the words that would surround it."

"A lot of things happened in that song," Rob Hyman said. "It was the first song we ever wrote together. We had just finished recording her first album together - this was going to be a big debut for her. We all felt there was something special in the works, but it was still very fresh to us. We were really just getting to know each other in a way. At this point, we were both going through some personal relationships and some personal things that were both meaningful and deep for us, and somehow the lyrics just started to come out.

It's almost one of those things where you can open up to a stranger or a more casual acquaintance than a deep friend or family member. Sometimes you meet someone at a party and you start saying things about yourself that you might not say to your closest friend. I think with the things we were both going through - for me it was a relationship that was just breaking up and for Cyndi with her manager, which was also a personal relationship - I think the song reflected that mood."

Explaining how they brought the song to the finish line, Hyman said: "We never did a demo of the song. We just kind of bashed it out on the piano over a couple of days, maybe a week or two period. It really did happen pretty quickly, and we needed to because the album was being finished. I'd say in two or three sessions the song was pretty much done. Didn't do a demo, we went right to the 24-track machine. The demo was what you hear. That was literally the first real recording besides some little cassette ideas.

We were in the studio, we figured, 'All right, we have no time to waste, let's just put it down.' The process with all the other songs was, we spent months and months in our rehearsal studio doing various arrangements and demos before we went in the studio. In this case, there was no pre-production. We went right to the tape, and what you hear is our first take on it, which I think added so much to the overall feel of that song, not just the impact as a composition, but the idea that we were capturing that spontaneous feel. That's always a great thing to do. In the studio you're always chasing that magic that you caught on your first demo. Her vocal was incredible. I think she was singing it and we were playing it for the first time. That's such a rare thing to happen, and I know that communicates to people."

Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian had several hits with The Hooters, including "And We Danced" and "Day By Day" They went on to write and produce for many artists, including Joan Osborne, Amanda Marshall, Ricky Martin and Jon Bon Jovi. At the time, they did not have a record deal. Rob explained how it came together: "We had an independent label that would put out 45s. When we finished Cyndi, and I think prior to when the album was released or around the same time, we put out an independent album called Amore. We were playing a lot in the Philly area, we were selling our records ourselves at shows. We got a local distributor eventually, but it was really a homemade project. It was a combination of constant playing in the Northeast area and also getting some airplay on radio stations that were bold enough to play us in those days. It's a lot harder now for local bands to get that, but we actually had some great radio support even from the bigger commercial stations, as well as college stations. We were creating a buzz, and by the time Cyndi hit, that independent buzz got big enough and it got to Columbia Records. The band was really ready to pop, and I think Cyndi was what really put it over the top."

This was Lauper's first #1 hit. She had another US #1 in 1986 with "True Colors."

Wrestler Captain Lou Albano, who appeared in the "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" video, played a cook at a diner in this one. Lauper's mom and boyfriend were also in the video, portraying her mom and boyfriend. The video was directed by Edd Griles, who had worked with Lauper since her days in the band Blue Angel. He also did her videos for "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" and "She Bop."

At the beginning of the video, Lauper is watching the 1936 film Garden of Allah.

The tear that Lauper sheds at the end of the video is authentic. She rejected the director's suggestion to manually induce a tear because she was confident in her ability to cry when she wanted to.

Jazz great Miles Davis recorded an instrumental cover of this song in 1985. George Cole, author of The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis 1980-1991, explains: "Miles had always played popular tunes - in the past, tunes such as 'My Funny Valentine' and 'If I Were A Bell' were part of his repertoire - and when Miles heard the Cyndi Lauper track, he just fell in love with the melody. In fact, Miles played this tune in almost all of his concerts from 1984 until just before his death in 1991. If you get a chance, try and hear a live version of it, which is superior to the album version."

Lauper told The Sun July 25, 2008 that this is her favorite of all the many cover versions of this track. She added: "I mean it's Miles. Wow. Mindblowing!"

This was used in the 1997 movie Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, where it plays in two scenes, the first when Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino's characters are at their prom and dance to it, the second toward the end when Kudrow and Sorvino are doing some odd dance with Scottish actor Alan Cumming.

Last edited by arabchanter (24/6/2019 2:10 pm)

Finn Seemann · 24/6/2019 2:52 pm

PatReilly wrote:
Never really had listened to Hanoi Rocks before, didn't know they were mostly Finns, and that album had been produced by the Mott the Hoople lads.

Nonetheless, although I quite enjoyed it on one listen, it sounded like a good tribute act for the New York Dolls: not really much like MtH to me. I'll check them out a wee bit more now, thanks.

Not for me - awful. I couldn't get passed the old football clapping! Listened to three tracks then switched to Violent Femmes as previously recommended. They sound worth another listen - kids hijacked the Sonos at that point...

Last edited by Finn Seemann (24/6/2019 2:53 pm)

PatReilly · 25/6/2019 8:18 am

Finn Seemann wrote:
PatReilly wrote:
Never really had listened to Hanoi Rocks before, didn't know they were mostly Finns, and that album had been produced by the Mott the Hoople lads.

Nonetheless, although I quite enjoyed it on one listen, it sounded like a good tribute act for the New York Dolls: not really much like MtH to me. I'll check them out a wee bit more now, thanks.
Not for me - awful. I couldn't get passed the old football clapping! Listened to three tracks then switched to Violent Femmes as previously recommended. They sound worth another listen - kids hijacked the Sonos at that point...

It's a good thing that we all have different tastes and opinions, Finn.

arabchanter · 25/6/2019 9:51 am

PatReilly wrote:
Finn Seemann wrote:
PatReilly wrote:
Never really had listened to Hanoi Rocks before, didn't know they were mostly Finns, and that album had been produced by the Mott the Hoople lads.

Nonetheless, although I quite enjoyed it on one listen, it sounded like a good tribute act for the New York Dolls: not really much like MtH to me. I'll check them out a wee bit more now, thanks.
Not for me - awful. I couldn't get passed the old football clapping! Listened to three tracks then switched to Violent Femmes as previously recommended. They sound worth another listen - kids hijacked the Sonos at that point...
It's a good thing that we all have different tastes and opinions, Finn.

"Different strokes, for different folks."

arabchanter · 25/6/2019 10:23 am

Album 524.
Paul Simon.............................Hearts And Bones   (1983)

This will be short, I didn't particularly like this or the last solo album by Simon, I find most of his songs on these offerings have the what I like to call the mashed tatties feel to them, no substance, wishy washy and extremely bland and with the label "No work required with this product." As I said with the last album, polished and refined, but absolutely sterile in my humbles, I listened to it twice and can't even pick a favourite, all the tracks suffered from a complete nothingness for this listener.

This album wont be going into my vinyl collection.

Bits & Bobs;

Have posted already about Paul Simon in post #1026 (if interested)

Rolling Stone             November 24, 1983 5:00AM ET

By Don Shewey

Paul Simon’s new album is all about heart versus mind, thinking versus feeling, and how these dichotomies get in the way of making music or love. He addresses the issue directly in “Think Too Much” (which was once to have been the title of this album), goes at it metaphorically in “Train in the Distance,” resolves it temporarily in “Hearts and Bones” and fashions a sort of fable about it in “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War.” The latter song ranks among the best Simon has written. There they are, a Belgian surrealist painter, his old lady and their pooch, dancing naked in a hotel room, window-shopping on Christopher Street and getting dolled up to dine with “the power elite.” Wherever they go, though, they are haunted by the likes of the Penguins, the Moonglows, the Orioles and the Five Satins.  It’s a hilarious and magical juxtaposition of images that’s also touching, because Paul Simon obviously identifies with the figure of the grown-up, respectable artist irrevocably smitten with those doo-wop groups, “the deep forbidden music” that originally made him fall in love with rock & roll.

In an earlier era, Paul Simon would have written for Broadway, a craft that demands that a song tell a story or define a character. But like any youngster in the Fifties, he got hooked on the sheer sexual energy of rock & roll — not so much the guitar-based electricity of Chuck Berry, Elvis and the Beatles, but the dreamy soulfulness of groups that euphemized their teenage romantic longings in nonsense lyrics. The trouble was that Simon was too clever for either kind of rock & roll. The words always came first for him, the music was secondary, and the rock & roll he loved — the delicate Spanish guitar, the hushed doo-wop harmonies — lingered faintly in the distance like a disembodied ideal.

The same conflict between the ideal and the actual threads through his songs about relationships. “Train in the Distance” and “Think Too Much” recall such classic postmortems as “Overs” and “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Simon’s always been good at writing about ending love affairs, perhaps because he thinks too much about his mate’s faults and how perfect she should be. But the song that really goes the distance is “Hearts and Bones,” which Simon gave Carrie Fisher as a present. “One and one-half wandering Jews” go mountain climbing in New Mexico, witness some exotic marriage ritual, discuss “the arc of a love affair” (as if it were a mathematical problem!) and toy with the idea of a quickie wedding south of the border. But as usual, they think too much about it, retire to separate coasts, do that mature but stupid thing of seeing other people to test the strength of their bond and nearly throw away the entire relationship before coming to their senses in a triumphant epiphany: “You take two bodies and you twirl them into one/Their hearts and their bones/And they won’t come undone.”  The tunes on Hearts and Bones are subtle, not immediately singable and certainly less startling than the lyrics, but the music has a certain playfulness that matches the album’s cerebral self-consciousness. “Cars Are Cars” stops and starts like a traffic jam; “Think Too Much” appears in two very different versions, a folk-jazzy rendition and a snappy rock version featuring Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. And Simon’s superb eulogy for John Lennon, “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” manages to place four decades of rock & roll history on a continuum from Fifties R&B balladeer Johnny Ace to new-music maestro Philip Glass, whose poignant coda to the song ends with terrifying abruptness. The only real dud is “Allergies,” which, unfortunately, opens the album—it’s sort of like “Kodachrome” with Vocoder, and it could have stayed in the drawer.

Hearts and Bones was meant, for a while, to be a Simon and Garfunkel album. It’s just as well that it isn’t. A reunion package would have made the album a different event than what it really is: a thinking man’s homage to the Penguins, the Moonglows, the Orioles and the Five Satins. Not so crazy after all these years, the artist gets to be alone with his earth angel, sincerely, in the still of the night.

The title song Hearts and Bones is an autobiographical journey through real events that took place during his on-again off-again affair with Carrie Fisher. Enough has been written about the turmoils of that relationship so in my tendency to avoid dramas of the soapy type I will not expand on that either. Suffice it to say that at least a great song emerged from that affaire de coeur. Years later Fisher said in Rolling Stone magazine: “I like the songs he wrote about our relationship. Even when he’s insulting me, I like it very much.” Summing it up well in her memoir she wrote: “If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, do it, because he is so brilliant at it.”

Hearts And Bones started its life on a yellow notepad as “Into the Liquid Unknown”. Simon toyed with different variations of the opening line, including Two Wanderings Jews and Almost Two Wanderings Jews, until he reached just the right amount of One and One Half. Simon found it humorous, but it is also true, Fisher being half Jewish. In the Cinemax TV special Album Flash on Hearts and Bones that aired on January 10th 1984, Simon said: “I try in the first line of a song to say something that is true. Not an emotional truth but a fact. You are less likely to get mired in cliches if you start off with some statement of truth.” The song is a great marriage of words and music with beautiful passages such as “the arc of a love affair”, which Simon saw as the essence of the song. There is something about the lyrics and the mood in which they are sang that put you in an imaginary place that you can visualize. Simon practiced new writing techniques here: “That device in lyrics writing, repeating a line that is not the title. I learned that lyric trick writing Hearts and Bones.”

Hearts and Bones hand-written early lyrics

The polarity between great songs such as Hearts and Bones and the lesser songs on the album did not escape Simon. In an interview with Paul Zollo, Simon said: “Thats one of my best songs. It took a long time to write it and its very true. It was about things that happened. And I like it, I like the record. I should have put it as the first track. I should never have put ‘Allergies’ as the first track. I was beginning to understand about writing on that album. How to do it, when to use ordinary language and when to use enriched language.

Paul Simon loves going back to his childhood to find material for his songs. Kodachrome, Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard, My Little Town all invoke memories from days past. The Late Great Johnny Ace goes back to 1954 and moves forward in time to 1980, recalling the tragic deaths of three Johns: Johnny Ace, John Kennedy and John Lennon. Interestingly they all died from gun shot wounds. Johnny Ace, a successful rhythm n’ blues singer in the early 50s died on December 25th 1954 from an accidental self-inflicted gun shot to his head, playing Russian roulette. His biggest hit Pledging My Love was released posthumously and went to number 1 on the R&B charts, where it stayed for ten weeks. Paul Simon covered the song on his tour of Europe and North America in 2000 right before singing The Late Great Johnny Ace.

Simon, who first performed the song at the Concert in Central Park in 1981, said of the song: “I had the idea to do a song called The Late Great Johnny Ace for a long time, and I wrote part of it revolving around those two open chords, which I liked. And I had that fragment of a song for a long time when John Lennon was killed. I connected the final verse about Lennon with the beginning section by writing the bridge. And the bridge was about the time in my life before Simon and Garfunkel, in 1964. The bridge was really about JFK, the other late great Johnny Ace.”

With Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After The War. Simon is at the top of his game here with lyrics as surrealistic as Magritte’s paintings. When asked if his lyrics can stand alone, Simon told Playboy in 1984: “Maybe on this new album, where the lyrics are my best.” In the Cinemax 1984 TV special Simon talked about the song: “That was unusual for me in the way the song was formed. I was at a friend’s house, actually it was Joan Baez. We were rehearsing at her house and she had to take a phone call, and while she was on the phone I was leafing through this book on Magritte. There was a photo of Magritte and his wife Georgette and the caption of the photo said Georgette and Rene Magritte With Their Dog During The War. And I thought that is a very interesting title for a song. A few days later I was driving along in Montana and I was singing the title except I remembered it as Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War. I began to sing a melody that fit the syllabification.” A similar story in which a song title jumped at him is famously recalled in a Rolling Stone interview, where he sat in a Chinese restaurant and a menu item titled a chicken-and-egg dish as “Mother and Child Reunion”.

Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After The War may be the best example of the new quality and direction Simon took with his lyrics around that time. In a 1990 interview with SongTalk magazine he said: “The language starts to get more interesting in Hearts and Bones. The imagery started to get a little interesting. What I was trying to learn to do was to be able to write vernacular speech and then intersperse it with enriched language. And then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly and then some image would come out that was interesting and then it would go back to this very smooth, conversational thing. By the time I got to Graceland, I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally, so that you wouldn’t really notice it as much. I think in Hearts and Bones you could feel it, that it was coming.” In the booklet that accompanies the box set 1964/1993 Simon mentions some of the lines from the song: “I consciously came up with the part about “all their personal belongings” becoming intertwined. But the line in the bridge, “decades gliding by like Indians,” just emerged from nowhere while I was running in Central Park.”

Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War is an endearing song, recalling the music Paul Simon loved to listen to as a teenager: “My first introduction to Rock n Roll was vocal groups in the mid fifties. I’ve always considered that to be the essential vocabulary of my songwriting. Even though I used more sophisticated forms, I always go back to that sound.” Doo wop bands ruled the airwaves and Paul Simon, like many young adults at the time, was captivated by the melodies and the vocal harmonies. The song is at its core a tribute to these bands, but the specific bands mentioned in the song were selected for a reason: “The groups like the Penguins and the Moonglows, the Five Satins and the Orioles, they were very popular at the time. They were not necessarily my favorites. I used them because the sound of the names. The Penguins, The Moonglows, the Orioles. The Five Satins – until I put it in that context you really don’t know if I’m talking about birds or rhythm and blues groups of the fifties.”

"Hearts And Bones"

Simon wrote this about his relationship with the actress Carrie Fisher, whom he married a few months before the album was released. The nuptials were clearly on his mind:

Two people were married
The act was outrageous
The bride was contagious

Simon and Fisher each became wildly famous in their early 20s, he in the mid-'60s with Simon & Garfunkel, and she in the late '70s as Princess Leia (Fisher was born into stardom: she was but the daughter of Hollywood stars Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher). Their union was passionate and tumultuous, as both were very strong-willed creative types. "Hearts And Bones" finds Simon putting this crazy love affair into song:

Their hearts and their bones
And they won't come undone

The couple did come undone in 1984, but they later reconciled even after their divorce, and spent a few more years together. Other songs Simon wrote dealing with his relationship with Fisher include "Allergies" and "She Moves On."

Paul Simon is Jewish, Carrie is half Jewish, hence the line, "One and a half wandering Jews." When asked if he made a conscious effort to put religious overtones in the song, Simon replied: "No, it wasn't conscious. In fact, I thought it was actually funny. One and one-half anything is funny."

Simon holds this song in high esteem. Speaking in 1986, he compared it to one of his more famous compositions. "I wrote The Sound Of Silence when I was 21 and 'Hearts and Bones' is, I think, a better song. But 'Sounds of Silence' was a big hit and it's in the culture. When you talk about a popular art, as the writing gets more complex and more layered, it's harder to have a lot of people who really like it. It is easier to have a smaller group of people who are more intensely devoted to you. It's natural that this should happen in my development. I was a rock star at one point. I had many years of being a rock star. I don't want to be a rock star anymore."

For the Hearts And Bones album, Simon took a different approach to his songwriting. He explained in a 1990 interview with SongTalk magazine: "The language starts to get more interesting in Hearts and Bones. The imagery started to get a little interesting. What I was trying to learn to do was to be able to write vernacular speech and then intersperse it with enriched language. And then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly and then some image would come out that was interesting and then it would go back to this very smooth, conversational thing. By the time I got to Graceland, I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally, so that you wouldn't really notice it as much. I think in Hearts and Bones you could feel it, that it was coming."

When Simon sings about how they "returned to their natural coasts," it's a reference to how he is from New York and Fisher from California.

Art Garfunkel sings on this track - you can hear him backing Simon in the middle of the song.The Hearts And Bones album started out as a Simon & Garfunkel project called Think Too Much, marking a reunion for the duo, who hadn't recorded an album since the immensely successful Bridge over Troubled Water in 1970. It ended up being a Simon solo album, and it was a disappointment, reaching just #35 in the US. Simon changed course for his next album, traveling to South Africa to gather material for Graceland (1986), which became one of the top albums of the decade. Simon & Garfunkel never did make another album.

The musicians on this track are:

Simon - acoustic guitar
Anthony Jackson - bass
Steve Gadd - drums
Richard Tee - Fender Rhodes piano
Dean Parks - guitar
Airto Moreira - percussion
Michael Mainieri - vibraphone, marimba

Not long before her death in 2016, Carrie Fisher said of Simon in Rolling Stone, "I do like the songs he wrote about our relationship. Even when he's insulting me, I like it very much."

arabchanter · 25/6/2019 10:34 am

Album 525.
Echo & The Bunnymen..........................Porcupine (1983)

Had this back in the day, will add blurb later as have to go out now

Just catching up.

Porcupine split critical and fan opinion, Perhaps given the troubled birth of the album and the spiky thinking behind it, this was always to be it's fate. The Bunnymen had found 1981s Heaven Up Here a breeze to write. Their third full-length album , preceded by a period of creative block, was anything but.

The band had to go back for a second recording sesssion as their label WEA deemed the first offering as insufficiently commercial.

This turmoil goes someway to explaining the power of Porcupine, it's first single "The Back Of Love," alternatively breakneck and dreamy distilled perfectly the feelings of awe and otherness that only Echo & The Bunnymen seemed able to conjure: who else could break the back of love in so celebratory a fashion

Indian violinist Shankar recorded a sitar-led intro and chorus to the second single "The Cutter" much to the chagrin of the entire band, Despite their anger, it improved the song, it reached No.8 in the January 1983, with the album peaking at No.2.

Thereafter there was no easy listening on the album, McCulloch's isolationism and increasingly operatic delivery tended to make it less accessible and more troubled certainly, but repeated listening rewards tenfold.

Last edited by arabchanter (26/6/2019 10:15 pm)

arabchanter · 26/6/2019 11:22 pm

Album 525.
Echo & The Bunnymen..........................Porcupine (1983)

To be honest when I bought this album it was because of the excellent singles, but over the years I've come to love all the other tracks as much, if not more. If I had to have a grump, he does go a bit too Associate-esque with his vocals , nae need really in meh humbles.

I could see how some folk may think it's darkness can be a tad overwhelming, much like Joy Division's 'Closer', and it takes a certain mood in order to be enjoyed. But there aren't really any weak tracks on this platter, obviously the singles which are also the opening two tracks stand out, but try listening to the other tracks and the album as a whole a few times and I'm sure like me you'll find it will become one of your go-to albums when in that particular moment (you'll know it) just slap this album on and get an immediate antidote.

This album will be going into my collection.

Bits & Bobs;

Have posted already about Echo & The Bunnymen in post #1743 (if interested)

"Porcupine is Echo & The Bunnymen's most profound and personal album from their early period. Weathering band turmoil, rejections from their record company and spans of songwriting drought, the group emerged with a passionate and compelling set of songs described by vocalist Ian McCulloch as 'coming to terms with the opposites in me.' Following their fourth Peel session in early 1982, the band chose Ian Broudie, leader of The Lightning Seeds and co-producer of Echo's 1980 album Crocodiles, to produce Porcupine. While the album includes both 'The Back of Love' and 'The Cutter' (two of their most upbeat and successful singles), most of the material was fairly introverted and autobiographical. Unfortunately suffering negative reviews upon release (including a misguided hate-piece in the NME), Porcupine has since become a gold standard for both the band and British underground rock from the '80s. It's also simultaneously their most retro album and their most forward-looking. The production is full of guitar effects that must have set the mind of Kevin Shields onto the path to My Bloody Valentine's own masterpiece, Loveless. In addition to the 'The Cutter' and 'The Back of Love', Porcupine includes songs such as 'My White Devil,' 'Heads Will Roll,' and 'Porcupine' that transcend and enlighten to this day. It's an essential album from one of the most influential bands of the post-punk movement."

The misguided hate-piece in the NME;

Echo & The Bunnymen: Porcupine (Korova) Barney Hoskyns, NME, 22 January 1983

PERHAPS IT WAS inevitable, even decreed in some heaven up "there". Maybe it’s just the third time unlucky. But if Porcupine isn’t good it isn’t because it lets you down. It fails, aggressively and bitterly it fails.

Porcupine is the distressing occasion of an important and exciting rock group becoming ensnared by its own strongest points, a dynamic force striving fruitlessly to escape the brilliant track that trails behind it.

Out of confusion or compulsion, the Bunnymen in Porcupine are turning on their own greatest "hits" and savaging them. In the name of what – pain? doubt? – Heaven Up Here said Yes We Have No Dark Things; now every former whisper of sickness returns in full volume. What one hears is a group which cannot flee its own echo. Porcupine is obviously deficient in vital unquantifiables but it’s just as obviously obsessive in its refusal of them. One feels it is the painful struggle to begin anew – and not from ashes either – that has determined the profound stasis, the agonising frustration of this record.

From the very beginning, the single ‘The Cutter’, Porcupine uses all the group’s key hooks, all the inimitable beats and bridges of ‘Crocodiles’ and ‘Heaven’, but ruthlessly strips them of the fervour that has so often bristled this reviewer’s quills. For starters, commercially ‘The Cutter’ isn’t so much as lined up for the TOTP race. Apart from an exaggeratedly Bowiesque bridge passage – a pastiche of ‘Heroes’ – the song (which may or may not be concerned with death’s scythe) is hopelessly lacking in the poppy intensity of ‘The Back Of Love’. And aside from the sitar introduction (which like the Bowie interlude crops up again in ‘Heads Will Roll’) the sound is striking only in its ordinariness.

Most people would have taken the chords of ‘The Black Of Love’ at half the speed the Bunnymen do. I thought it one of 1982’s best crude blowouts but it has little to do with Porcupine and sticks out almost obtrusively as an isolated moment of affirmation. From thereon in the album is non-stop anxiety. The remaining eight songs are really one long staggered obsequy to Heaven Up Here.

To begin with, Ian McCulloch’s poetry has grown oppressively more vague and difficult, although (again) you wonder whether simpler musical frameworks might not have inspired simpler, more direct lyrics. I’d like to think ‘My White Devil’ was a song of obsession and cruelty, but its opening lines rather dampen one’s enthusiasm: "John Webster was one of the best there was/He was the author of two major tragedies..." Very succinctly put, but what the intention behind this bald statement is I haven’t the faintest clue. One great moment rears up out of the "mist of error" when the song’s sense of panic rises to a claustrophobic climax of overlapping voices only to fall back into the lifeless refrain it escaped, but this is not enough to salvage the song in one’s memory. If I could make out more of what McCulloch was singing I’d probably unearth a few extra burial metaphors from ‘The Duchess Of Malfior’ (sic).

‘Clay’ continues in the same vein, with another torture-chamber opening and a discordant clash between Mac’s diffident vocal and Sargeant’s guitar twisting below like a knife in the stomach. But as we hit lines like "When I fell apart, I wasn’t made of sand/When you came apart, clay crumbled in my hand", or "oh isn’t it nice, when your heart is made out of ice?", the Jacobean psychedelia gets a little heavy-handed.

It’s as though the group had denied itself the luxury of simplicity, of what they perhaps take to be some too transparent "power" of rock. The firmly grounded structures of ‘Show Of Strength’ and ‘With A Hip’ are subverted, undermined by melodies that, like Webster’s "ship in a black storm", know not whither they go. This Echo is less upfront, shorn of its poise and confidence. Ian Broudie’s production introduces more background activity – more keyboard, more percussive embellishment; in place of synthesisers, warped, sliding strings recall The White Album or Their Satanic Majesties Request; grating, ghostly effects hearken back to Walter Carlos’s ‘Clockwork Orange’; guitars backfire as though in a fit. Yet while all these random contingencies are part of the same drive to transcend, they succeed only in calling attention to that drive’s failure: the songs themselves remain fundamentally dead.

Only on ‘Porcupine’ itself do the various strains of despair coalesce. A kind of ‘All My Colours’ on a bad trip, its final exhausted throes are as draining (and as moving) as the bleakest moments of ‘Hex Enduction Hour’ but devoid of The Fall’s humour: just a voice crying against nothing, a beat banging on into the void. As the sound fades into darkness, a slight voice claims to have "seen the light".

"Missing the point of our mission" , sings McCulloch dolefully, "will we become misshapen?" – the somewhat forced alliteration aside, that is probably the most candidly revealing line on the record. But if the song ‘Porcupine’ is the most shockingly dispirited thing Echo And The Bunnymen have ever done, Side Two horrifies the more for its uniform lack of inspiration, for the fact that every number cops direct from earlier songs without preserving anything of their energy or invention. Traits such as Mac’s trick of singing a line in one octave and then repeating it in a higher one have become stale and predictable trademarks.

Webster’s worms may wriggle in the intestines of these songs but to the ear it is music which sounds destitute of first-hand feeling. ‘Heads Will Roll’ commences like a Mamas And Papas drug song before plunging like ‘The Cutter’ into an enervated echo of Bowie. "If we ever met in a private place" , sings Mac, referring perhaps to Andrew Marvell’s "fine and private place" (i.e. the grave), "I would stare you into the ground/That’s how I articulate..." So now you know. Another very probable lit. ref. lies in ‘Ripeness’ (Porcupine’s bloodletting of ‘A Promise’), this time to Keats and King Lear, as in the bursting of Joy’s grape, men enduring their going hence as their coming hither, etc. "How will we recall the ripeness when it’s over?" Is McCulloch’s plaintive phrasing of the theme, but since this song has already burst its skin one might almost read it as a lament for the loss of the group’s own ripeness.

‘Higher Hell’, ‘Gods Will Be Gods’, and ‘In Bluer Skies’ drift yet further into a subliminal state of suspension whose every measure has already been worn to the bone ("bones will be bones" , goes ‘Gods’). "Just like my lower heaven, you know so well my higher hell" . Here it’s all but confessed that what was once their heaven has turned into a hellish mire of their own making, the damnation of a style from which they cannot break free. They can only struggle from side to side, wearing away what was once a perfectly fit abode for their sound.

Porcupine takes the Bunnymen as far as beyond the Doors-meet-Television happy death pop of ‘Crocodiles’ as is either conceivable or desirable. It makes ‘All That Jazz’ and ‘Villiers Terrace’ look like nursery rhymes. I wonder if they’ll ever again write such a formidable youth song as ‘Pride’: that marvellous probing of the rock quartet’s limits, that rich, vigorous economy, all that may have gone for good.

Did they perhaps always mistake their hell for a heaven, or is this album, originally titled "Higher Hell", the conscious obverse of Heaven Up Here? Are their deaths too high or did they aim too low?

Porcupine groans behind bars, an animal trapped by its own defences. Where the Banshees, always in danger of the same stagnation, can still amaze with a ‘Cocoon’ or a ‘Slowdive’, Echo And The Bunnymen are stuck in their grooves, polarised between ‘Pornography’ and ‘Movement’. They must haul themselves out. Instead of panicking at the approach of doubt they must celebrate it. To Mac must I say, as was said to the Duchess herself, "End your groan and come away."

Do you think somebody in the band fingered his burd, a bit OTT if you ask me.

It seems like the bulk of the acclaim given to Echo & The Bunnymen comes from their epic 1984 album Ocean Rain. As great as that record is, its predecessor Porcupine is equally as great. Released in 1983, Porcupine was Echo & The Bunnymen’s third LP and displayed the band building their sound into the cinematic rock they became famous for. “The Cutter” and “The Back of Love” charted in the UK but the best song from the record has long gone overlooked for its brilliance. “Porcupine” is arguably Echo & The Bunnymen’s greatest triumph. It’s the same sort of epic cinematic rock that Arcade Fire have become so popular for.

"The Cutter"

Like many Echo & the Bunnymen lyrics, "The Cutter" is hard to decipher. Ian McCulloch did offer some hints in a 1983 interview with the New Musical Express: "'The Cutter' is about three different aspects of this man, The Cutter. I'm six-foot tall, so that's a clue."

The lyric could be influenced by the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, which Stanley Kubrick turned into a famous film in 1971. In the first scene, a vagrant asks, "Can you spare some cutter, me brothers," before being beaten senseless. "Cutter" is British slang for spare change.

The band's record label, an imprint of Sire, was named Korova, a reference to the Korova Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange.

One of the biggest hits for the band, "The Cutter" was the second single from their album Porcupine. Like most of their early hits, it was quite popular in England (especially in their home turf of Liverpool), but largely ignored in America when it was released. The song did get some attention in the US in 1984 when it when it was included on the EP The Sound of Echo. In an interview with guitarist Will Sergeant, he said: "We did a few tours of America where we just playing clubs - the Paradise, and places like that. The channel in Boston. We'd do these clubs and we were kind of like another band. It might have been when the movie Urgh! A Music War came out and that put us on another level. We had been playing to a few hundred people and then we started selling out."

The video was shot in Iceland along with the album art.

The band recorded a new version of this song when they performed it on the British TV show Top Of The Pops. Per Musicians' Union rules, they had to re-record the song for the show, which they then lip-synched to on stage. The band did the show between tour stops and were exhausted, which is why the performance is rather lethargic. Ian McCulloch did provide a memorable moment when near the end of the song, he pulled his shirt down past his chest

The song features an Indian raga violin being played by L. Shankar the famed ethnic musician who’s worked with Peter Gabriel, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads and Lou Reed. He was allegedly brought in by the record company without the band’s knowledge.

Lead singer Ian McCulloch has been known to introduce “The Cutter” in concerts as “the second-greatest song ever written.”

It’s since been covered by artists such as Arcade Fire, Solex and Lagartija Nick.
Writer and guitarist Will Sergeant spoke about “The Cutter” and gaining popularity in the U.S. in a 2017 interview:

It was a funny time, you know. A funny period. It was all that British Invasion thing. We did a few tours of America where we just played clubs – the Paradise, and places like that. The Channel in Boston. We’d do these clubs and we were kind of like another band. It might have been when the movie Urgh! A Music War came out and that put us on another level. We had been playing to a few hundred people and then we started selling out. And then they put a six-track vinyl sampler out and that did really well. I can’t remember what was on that. It was "The Back Of Love or something like that.

“It just started started building. It was building naturally, and then we ended up doing the Greek Theater in Hollywood and the sheds and places like that. All of the sudden the crowd started changing – they’d become, like really young kids. You’re thinking, Why? It was just weird. I’d be walking around with Les [Pattinson, bass] and Pete [de Freitas, drums] in the crowd and no one knew who were were. It all changed. It was just odd. Right around "Lips Like Sugar it really changed.

arabchanter · 27/6/2019 10:12 am

Album 526.
ZZ Top.............................Eliminator (1983)

The Texan Trio toyed with new-fangled noise-making on 1981's El Loco. Then ,on Eliminator, they plunged in with such aplomb that drummer Frank Beard was suspected of having been drum-machined off the tracks. In truth, his crisp beats and Dusty Hill's chugging bass are merely supports for the star: guitarist Billy Gibbons, forever wrapping furry licks around the wry lyrics, but never overindulging like lesser soloists (that's deffo music to meh lugs)

And so it was the little band from Texas became superstars, and Eliminator became a classic

Finn Seemann · 27/6/2019 11:51 am

PatReilly wrote:
Finn Seemann wrote:
PatReilly wrote:
Never really had listened to Hanoi Rocks before, didn't know they were mostly Finns, and that album had been produced by the Mott the Hoople lads.

Nonetheless, although I quite enjoyed it on one listen, it sounded like a good tribute act for the New York Dolls: not really much like MtH to me. I'll check them out a wee bit more now, thanks.
Not for me - awful. I couldn't get passed the old football clapping! Listened to three tracks then switched to Violent Femmes as previously recommended. They sound worth another listen - kids hijacked the Sonos at that point...
It's a good thing that we all have different tastes and opinions, Finn.

Indeed. Without this thread I never would have tried half these albums though. I've found and refound a couple of classics though. To be fair 'awful' was probably going a bit far. Just not my cup of tea.

PatReilly · 27/6/2019 1:27 pm

Didn't pay too much attention to Porcupine when it came out: for some odd reason, this was to do with travelling up and down on the train with groups of 'casuals' from other clubs (Motherwell and Hibs mostly) to matches, not actually sitting beside them please note: I was turned off from EatB for a number of years. This because they seemed one of the 'in' bands with these fancy Dan golfing clad types.

Aware of the singles of course, but on listening to the album properly it is a mini classic of the time, and the songs have aged quite well.

Reading that NME review by Barney Hoskyns (published the same day John Clark made his starting debut for United as a superfluous fact), he criticises excessive overproduction while being blissfully lacking in self awareness of his own flowery literary style.

Overall, I enjoyed EatB's later stuff, when I had become less of a musical snob in dismissing certain bands and artists by association.