After Supertamp's Famous Last Words, which turned out to be neither famous nor last, Hodgson recorded his first solo record. The casual listener might be convinced that this is a Supertramp record. It has a familiar voice and sounds like later Supertramp. It's just lacking the counterpoint provided by Rick Davies. Still, for a Supertramp fan (and that was me, for a while), this record is a must have. It's certainly a progressive record, and it's as good as anything Supertramp did in its later career.
"The lush production, intelligent lyrics, and precise songcrafting qualities of Hine still make it an enjoyable record, but the weird sounds, bleak atmospheres, and daring artistic choices found on the 1981 Immunity are now history." [Allmusic]
The above is probably an accurate description, especially if you are listening to the original pressing and not the bastardized pressing that was released in Canada. The Canadian pressing (and others) was mangled, with a different track listing, and it includes I Hang On To My Vertigo from Immunity. I hate it when the record company people mess around with records. Someday, I shall have to locate an original first pressing as it was intended. On this topic, Allmusic, again, notes:
"The album's release history is confusing and deserves to be straightened
out. It first appeared worldwide, excluding North America, in May 1983.
A different version, with one extra song ("Blue Flame") and two missing
("Victim of Wanderlust" and "The Saturation of the Video Rat") replaced
by tracks from Immunity,
was released in the U.S. and Canada in March 1984. A third version was
released in the U.K. in February 1985 with "Blue Flame" taking the place
of "Living in Sin." Other tracks had also been remixed, re-edited, and
even partly re-recorded."
This is insane. In any case, I like this record, but I wish the record company had adhered to the original track listing.
Waving Not Drowning was the first Rupert Hine record I ever heard from end-to-end. I have to thank Pete, my residence-mate, who always supplied me with a constant stream of interesting music. It's a really fabulous record, and I recall being immediately captivated by track one on side one. Hine's music is filled with all sorts of bizarre moments and odd production, topped with what I can only describe as an enigmatic voice.
Sadly, I cannot find a youtube video of Eleven Faces, the track that I like best from this record.
Hine's three records from the 1980s are easy to find and bizarrely cheap. I routinely see them in bins for $2 or $3. It pains me to see them languishing in bins while so many people flip past them. I have never understood why they have no value and why Hine doesn't have more fans. It's perplexing, especially considering his success as a producer.
This record was released after Quantum Jump, Hine's previous band, disbanded. Immunity is a great record, commencing with the fabulous I Hang on to My Vertigo. If you see this record, you should buy it.
This is a great record. It's a little strange, like most of Hine's music, but there is something very captivating about it. The best thing is that I paid absolutely nothing or this record, and it is not an LP one sees very often. In fact, I have never seen it in the wilds. The LP was released in Germany (where my copy comes from), France, and the UK. It was also released on CD in Germany and Japan.
I have never seen the film High School High. The soundtrack contains R&B and hip hop tunes from a mix of artists like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One, The Braxtons, Lil' Kim, RZA, etc. Apparently, five singles from this record charted. Allmusic says this: "Though its momentum sags in a couple of places, High School High
remains a thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly eclectic listen, and is
easily one of the finest soundtracks of 1996. It's certainly more fun
than the film it supports" [source] Since I have not seen the film, I am forced to accept this conclusion.
This album is not really my scene, though I certainly do like parts of it. Perhaps I need to see the film for it to coalesce.
Four singles were released from this record. Sadly, none were anywhere near as good as the tracks Heyward wrote with Haircut 100, although Whistle Down the Wind comes close. I wanted another record like Pelican West, and this isn't it. There are some great moments and good songwriting, but it can't escape the shadow of Haircut 100's pop masterpiece. I paid $1 for this record.
Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
A little voice inside my head said:
"Don't look back, you can never look back."
I thought I knew what love was.
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever.
I should just let 'em go, but
- Boys of Summer, Don Henley
This is a strange record for me to own, since I was never a big Eagles fan. For some reason, I acquired a copy of this record, and then I lost it and a bunch of other records in a vinyl loaning experience in residence. I don't like to think about that. Years later, I found a free copy, with a cover that is a bit rough.
I think that Boys of Summer is a good track, and I think it holds up today. I think the video is pretty good too. Unfortunately, UMG has blocked youtube access to that video, so screw them.
The remainder of the album is uninteresting, if you ask me.
This limited edition 2 LP set contains tracks Hendrix recorded for a double album right before his death. According to Wikipedia, many of the tracks appeared an other compilations, but in 1997, all of the tracks were assembled as Hendrix had originally conceived them. I wish I had more Hendrix on vinyl. I have many CDs. I have yet to hear a Hendrix tune that I do not like.
This is a good record. I don't have much to say about it. It's probably a tad less interesting than the previous efforts, but Heaven 17 fans probably like this LP just as well as the early stuff.
I guess you could say that this is more of the same synthy goodness from Heaven 17. They were never my fav 80s band, but some tracks bring back memories.
I have a first UK pressing, which is the very first pressing of the second LP from Heaven 17. There was an embellishment of sound with this record. If you lived through the 80s, you know the track Let Me Go and some others.
"Where the Heaven Seventeen are at number 4 in the charts with Inside."
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
After Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware departed from The Human League in 1980, they formed Heaven 17 with Glenn Gregory. The first album gets off to a fantastic start with (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, a really fantastic electro-pop tune. This record is nowhere near as good as the first two Human League records, but there are moments that I like.
I suppose I should dedicate this track to Donald Trump
I was lucky enough to see Jeff Healey in concert three times. On two occasions, the concerts were in a large venue, but the last time I saw him was at Grossman's Tavern at 379 Spadina Ave. in Toronto. Jeff was just a few feet away from me. It was an intimate and interesting evening and there was no cover charge. Sadly, Jeff is another musician who died way too soon at age 41.
Many people will know Angel Eyes, a cover song, and See the Light, which might have one of the best opening riffs in the history of rock music. Confidence Man is also a great tune. I'll include a live clip (with Dr, John), because it is really interesting to see hm play the guitar. Make sure you watch the solo midway through the track.
This is a disappointing record. One would have thought that an ex-Clash member would have produced a real rocking record. However, this is not the case. Instead, Headon put out a boring record and called it quits, at least on releasing records. Maybe I am being too harsh, but I wasn't expecting this soul/jazz/R&B thing. The record sounds great (polished, professional, slick) but the style didn't do anything for me at all.
Ronnie Hawkins is best known for having formed the group that would become known as The Band. The Band were, at one time, Bob Dylan's back-up band and then they had a excellent career of their own. Nevertheless this record does nothing for me. I should expunge it from my collection.
The Hawaiian Pups were a kind of unknown band, unless you listened to college radio or the good old CFNY, when it was a truly great and ground-breaking radio station. The band was best known for the track Baby Judy. Others will remember Spook Opera from the year before. Split Second Precision is an EP that contains only 6 tracks, with Baby Judy appearing twice, once in extended form. The extended mix of Baby Judy was collected on volume three of Hardest Hits, which I have on CD (I have all of the Hardest Hits CDs). By the way, I was stunned to see the prices of the Hardest Hits CD compilations. Volume One is listed on Discogs for $45 to $145. That's amazing and rather perplexing.
Anyway, I really liked this band, but they only released one single and then this EP. That's too bad. This fan video is pretty good!
I'll just include two things. The first is printed on the back album jacket:
"MAGIC REALISM • Like the video technique of "keying in" where any background may be electronically inserted or deleted independently of foreground, the ability to bring the actual sound of musics of various epochs and geographical origins all together in the same compositional frame marks a unique point in history. • A trumpet, branched into a chorus of trumpets by computer, traces the motifs of the Indian raga DARBARI over Senegalese drumming recorded in Paris and a background mosaic of frozen moments from an exotic Hollywood orchestration of the 1950's [a sonic texture like a "Mona Lisa" which, in close up, reveals itself to be made up of tiny reproductions of the Taj Mahal], while the ancient call of an AKA pygmy voice in the Central African Rainforest — transposed to move in sequences of chords unheard of until the 20th century — rises and falls among gamelan-like cascades, multiplications of a single "digital snapshot" of a traditional instrument played on the Indonesian island of JAVA, on the other side of the world. • Music which is to this degree self-referential, in which larger parts are related to and/or generated from smaller parts, shares certain qualities with "white" classical music of the past. AKA/DARBARI/JAVA is a proposal for a "coffee-colored" classical music of the future — both in terms of the adoption of entirely new modes of structural organisation [as might be suggested by the computer ability to re-arrange, dot-by-dot, a sound or video image] and in terms of the expansion of the "allowable" musical vocabulary in which one may speak this structure — leaving behind the ascetic face which Eurocentric tradition has come to associate with serious expression. • JON HASSELL"
The other is from Allmusic:
The beautiful cover painting by Mati Klarwein serves as an appropriate visual analogy for the music contained herein: an abutting of two worlds, an insinuating blend of early-'80s high tech with ancient Southeast Asia. Over varying, non-specific rhythms supplied by Abdou Mboup, Jon Hassell weaves a music both evocative and plaintive, his modified trumpet sighing like an old Javanese horn pulled into the digital age on its way to what he calls a "coffee-colored" future where all ethnic traditions become one. The astonishingly vocal sound he gets from that treated trumpet is certainly one of the signatures of this album and one of the more lovely sounds heard anywhere. His compositions have a bit too much direction and drive to comfortably settle into the term ambient, but they remain as relaxed and gently meandering as a jungle stream. One especially nice feature is the subtle electronic burblings that whisper in the background, creating an enticingly busy sense of space. Aka/Darbari/Java is an early high-water mark at the juncture between world and ambient musics.[source]
I bought this CD when it came out, not the LP, since I had forsaken records at the time. That LP is now pricy, but the first vinyl repress since then is pretty darned good.
Imagine, a PJ Harvey record that includes Gillian Anderson! This is from a stage production of All About Eve, from 2019. This is pretty interesting music and not what you might expect from PJ.
This record was supposed to ship with a MP3 download code and a poster. Mine only has the poster. Other people have reported receiving only either the poster or the code. Some lucky people got both. Or, as Discogs reports:
"Comes with A1 fold-out poster and 320kbps MP3 download code. Some copies come without the poster, or without the download code, or with neither of these items at all."
I haven't had much time to soak in this record, but I like it, of course. I think PJ is really great. I have read about the complaints people have made regarding some of her perceptions about Washington DC, but I can't really comment on that.
Bad photo. This album won the 2011 Mercury Music Prize. I'd say that award was justified. By the way, this is the first European pressing. The only other pressing, to date, is the US pressing. I have the CD, which is worth less than $10. The vinyl, on the other hand, is probably worth $35 - $40 US.
Despite PJ's name being listed second, I have filed this under Harvey, not Parish. Oddly, I just noticed that my CD copy is under P, for Parish. I will have to change that. Once gain, I have a reissue, since the original 1996 pressing is expensive, plus I have never seen one anywhere.
The original 1995 pressing of this LP sells for more than I would consider paying. On the other hand, this 2001 pressing was far more reasonable. I found a sealed copy for $15 (no tax). I also have the CD. Sometime after this record came out, I saw PJ play a show in Toronto.
On this record, she moved departed from punk to something more sophisticated.
4-Track Demos is an album of demos by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released in October 1993 by Island Records. It consists of eight demos of songs from her previous album, Rid of Me, along with six demos of some unreleased tracks which never made it to release with the three-piece PJ Harvey line-up. According to interviews with Harvey, all fourteen of these songs were written and demoed at her home between mid-1991 and autumn 1992. 4-Track Demos was Harvey's first entirely self-produced album; there would not be another such until 2004's Uh Huh Her.
I one saw a pressing of the original release in a record store bin, but passed it by when I noted the price tag. The 2020 remaster will do just fine.
The PJ Harvey reissues continue to flood in, and this is as great as the rest. The original year 2000 pressing of the record goes for stupid money. In 2000, I bought the CD. I am not even sure if there was anyone selling vinyl around these parts back then. This is the first official vinyl release since that time. I think it sounds great.
The 1993 pressing of this LP is now worth a small fortune, meaning that the 2020 version is the one to get for a reasonable price, and for me that was abut $25 CDN. The reissues is very well done. I say that, of course, having only ever heard he CD version.
There's simply no reason to own this record. The first two records are sort of interesting, but this is uninspired and flat. Why was this record even released?
Hart scored another big hit with the track Never Surrender, which appeared on Boy in the Box, his second offense. This album is similar to the first, but I don't think any of the tracks are as catchy as Sunglasses at Night. Still, it's a competent follow-up, but not one that I love. I paid nothing for this record. Once again, he couldn't resist the sappy element. Just try to make it through Everything in My Heart, a truly awful stinking pile of crap.
The title track makes me think of Duran Duran, but maybe that's just because of the video.
