Here was chugging along into August, and I have to admit that my self imposed schedule of cranking out two of these a month may have been a tad ambitious. It's likely I'll take a step back and go to once a month. I mean, I'm spending a lot of time jotting down my meandering thoughts that frankly for the most part are just on this side of being coherent ... I'll let you pick a side.
Still, I've been grinding my way through my pile of records. Up for grabs this time out are another gaggle of odds and sods and repeat offenders.
Let's get right to it ... are you seated comfortably?
- Chilliwack – Look In, Look Out (1984)
- Neil Diamond - Love At The Greek: Recorded Live At The Greek Theatre (1977)
- Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982)
- Loverboy - Wildside (1987)
- T Bone Burnett - The Talking Animals (1988)
This was a departure from the band's previous release, and Bill was going for a clean pop sound and put out a collection of nicely polished songs that seemed calculated to get on the radio. Except they didn't. The first side kind of meh, and not how I remembered it. The highlight was "Who's Winnin'" and it's still an excellent song. Side two was a lot stronger. The two songs from Segue "Gettin' Better" and "Don't Stop" were very good. However, the gem on the album is the mid temp "Are You Really Gonna Walk Out" a song that is nearly perfect. It's frankly up there with the best songs the band ever put out.
Like I said this felt like the start of a new era. Instead it was the end of the line. I still find it strange that this was it. I suspect Solid Gold collapsing put and end to the band. The album may have been on it's way to going gold, we'll never know. Considering the number of gold and platinum albums they'd put out it's weird no one stepped up to give them another kick at the can. I still think of this as one of the high watermarks for the band. Odd that it also served as it's obituary.
Whereas Hot August Night felt like a sonic gut punch, Love At The Greek seemed to want to emphasize the live elements and the vocals and acoustic guitar are at times thin and sound like they were recorded through the audience mics rather than from the board feed. I'm not saying it doesn't work at times, it makes the recording feel more like a bootleg. However if the goal was to make you feel like you were there it does that. Many of the big hits are here, it's sort of a given that he had to included them, but there are some deeper cuts too and frankly I really liked hearing almost an entire side dedicated to selections from Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
The album while in my opinion is a far lesser collection than Hot August Night and showcased a more lounge singer / showman than the engaging front man from a few years earlier. It didn't seem to matter to those who like Neil. The album would go double platinum in the States, and platinum in Canada and for all that Neil did manage to catch lightning in a bottle.
I have to admit that I was probably a little ambitious when I decided to crank out two of these a month. With everyone home, or the kids parking themselves in the basement I had to sneak my record playing in when I could. Not that I'm complaining, really if this is all I have to bitch and moan about things are pretty good.
It's too easy to shit on this and call it a collection of pretentious self indulgent musical wanking fodder. The nature of solo releases for an artist who is best known for his work within a band setting is to have to freedom to colour with a different palette. To throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Not everything will work, but it's often an expression of what the artist is trying to express. Knowing this doesn't necessarily make it more enjoyable to listen to, but I will admit that subsequent plays became more enjoyable, if not more memorable. There are some pretty decent song buried in here, you just have to dig 'em out.
It's not like the band didn't deliver the give it a good try. The album opens with "Notorious" a song is still a barn burner, and Darrell Mansfield, who was better known in Christian music circles, absolutely killed it on the harmonica. It's too bad the rest of the album was so hit and miss. There's really nothing truly bad here, other than the clunky "That's Where My Money Goes" the songs are passable, but almost feel as if they were assembled by committee.
The band did try to work in more elements to their formula, and the album does seem to be trying be relevant, but honestly the bits and pieces that made their first albums so enjoyable, particularly Doug Johnson's keyboard parts were largely missing or subdued here. The tension between Reno and Dean that balanced rock with a pop sheen seemed to be lost in a no man's land of derivative rock that didn't seem to know what it wanted to be.
Produced by the ever reliable Bruce Fairbairn and engineered by Bob Rock and Mike Fraser at Little Mountain Sound the album sounded good and had a nice bite while still sounding slick. While it's not the strongest album in the band's discography it's still a Loverboy album, and when they were good they were really good and "Notorious" was really good. There were other bright spots, like "Hometown Hero" that sounded like vintage Loverboy but you had to work to get to them.
Still, this is an album I bought when it came out on CD, and oddly enough bought it again when I found the record ... except they only got paid once.
For those looking for pretty radio singles, this isn't going to be your cup of tea. In some ways this is an extension of Proof Through the Night's more eclectic tracks. From the opening track "The Wild Truth" there's an interesting melding of T Bone's early America mixed with alternative rock and roll. The songs don't really follow a pattern as is evidenced by the perplexing "Image" that sounds like something you'd hear in a French cafe.
This isn't exactly an easy listen, and the songs are musically dense and deliberately layered with various textures all centred on T Bone's near spoken word delivery. The most effective of the lot is the wonderful story told on the album's closing track, "The Strange Case of Frank Cash and the Morning Paper" that was co-written by Tonio K. It's an odd song amidst a series of odd songs, and the breaking of the fourth wall is sort of par for the course.
I'd not listened to the album in many years, and it remains as enthralling and inaccessible as ever. I'm still not sure if I like this or not, but I've been wrestling with it for decades and for all that it's an essential part of T Bone's catalogue. You either like him or you don't.
I like him. It's just hard to get sometimes.
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