ITT: /mu/ in 1986
SHE SEEMS TO HAVE AN INVISIBLE TOUCH YEAH
"What do you know about apartheid, Paul Simon?""I know enough to be able to exploit it."
Can't believe that corny fuck is now fronting Van Halen. That was a killer band once.
>>130222304Fuck all you gay little glam metal fags.
I is born.
>>130222406the other night some guy came to the Slayer gig in Oakland wearing a Ratt T-shirt. boy he got some looks.
time for Ron Nevison to turn Ozzy into glam metal slop
Sure, seven million teenagers could be wrong but their success does carry with it a documentary certainty. What it does prove is that youth rebellion has become so toothless that it can be simulated and marketed. But then who the hell thought youth was dangerous in the current climate, anyway? Would you prefer the band market patriotism instead? And are you really immune to "Livin' on a Prayer"? B-
>>130222520oh...fuck this band and album. just...just fuck them.
>>130222406hey hey just because Crueheads get laid more than whatever underground punk whatever you're into doesn't mean you gotta be sore about it
Iommi thinks he may have cut an album this year but the whole thing is a drug-fueled haze and he's not really sure.
>>130222416>Dwake>Kendwick>Gaga>JPEGMafiaSome year to produce a lot of talent? Well, maybe not.
These guys have been moved to create this awful racket by the pain of the world, which they've learned about from reading fan mail and bondage magazines. This is the brutal guitar machine thousands of lonely adolescent cowards have heard in their heads. Its creators deserve credit for finding each other and making their obsession a reality. But not for anything else. B
>>130222562Sabbath's absolute nadir. this album also sounds like fucking Cutting Crew.
>>130222304Saw Kissinger on David Brinkley the other night. He said don't trust this Gorbachev guy, he's no different than all the other Soviet leaders and don't think the USSR is going anywhere any time soon.
Goo goo ga ga.
>>130222721Hi, Drake.
Opposed though I am to universalist humanism, this is a pretty damn universal record. Within the democratic bounds of pop accessibility, its biculturalism is striking, engaging, unprecedented--sprightly yet spunky, fresh yet friendly, so strange, so sweet, so willful, so radically incongruous and plainly beautiful. For Simon, the r&b-derived mbaqanga he and his South African sidemen--guitarist Ray Phiri, fretless bassist Baghiti Kumalo, and drummer Isaac Mtshali, all players of conspicuous responsiveness and imagination--put through their Tin Pan Alley paces seems to represent a renewed sense of faith and connectedness after the finely wrought dead end of Hearts and Bones. The singing has lost none of its studied wimpiness, and he still writes like an English major, but this is the first album he's ever recorded rhythm tracks first, and it gives up a groove so buoyant you could float a loan to Zimbabwe on it. Despite the personalized cameo for Sun City scab Linda Ronstadt (a slap in the face to the ANC whether he admits it or not) and the avoidance of political lyrics elsewhere, he's found his "shot of redemption," escaping alienation without denying its continuing truth. It's the rare English major who can make such a claim. A
>>130222817why was he so obsessed with trying to cancel Linda Ronstadt back then?
I find myself at a generational disadvantage with this music, not because my weary bones can't take its power and speed, but because I was born too early to have had my dendrites rewired by progressive radio. The momentum of this band can be impressive, and as with a lot of fast metal (as well as some sludge metal) they seem to have acceptable political views--antiwar, anticonformity, even anticoke--fine. Problem is, the revolutionary heroes I envisage aren't male chauvinists too naive to know better, they're not Arnold Schwarzeneggar as Conan the Barbarian, all flowing hair and giant pecs. That's the image Metallica calls up, and I feel no more obliged to summon their strength of my own free will than I would the 1812 Overture's. B-
>>130222574that's a good list of anti-talent
>>130222876This is Varg's favorite album of all time. I fucking hate Varg, though.
>>130222834She was one of a few western artists who performed at the whites only Sun City resort in South Africa. Paul tapping Linda for a feature on the album was seen as hypocritical and just adding insult to the injury of Paul breaking the boycott himself to record in SA. He had also earlier used his clout to get Linda a place on an anti-apartheid charity song about Sun City itself, which was naturally controversial.
>>130222844>the music is p. good but they look like my old high school bullies so meh
FUCK PHIL COLLINS
Priest sold out hard with this one. there are even girls at their concerts now. can you believe that?
>>130222675Peace sells > MoP
Just when you thought it was safe to discard the barf bag, he decides he has a right to be doing this, thereby surrendering the aura of vulnerability that was Valotte's one redeeming quality. Surefire follow-up--a song about "people who criticize." C-
>>130222520>And are you really immune to "Livin' on a Prayer"?Yes.
>>130223009t. Dave
>>130223006So you prefer the company of men?
Goodnight sweet racist fat lady.
>>130223025Nobody cares about the son of 60s Nick Carter.
>>130223072>So you prefer the company of men?the band members probably do, anyway
Wonder what all the guitar mavens who thought Eddie's balls-to-the-wall hooks and stomach-churning chops equaled Van Halen will think now that video star David Lee Roth has given way to one of the biggest schmucks in the known business? No musician with something to say could stomach Sammy Hagar's call and this album proves it. C
Maybe I should get Chuck Berry on the phone and ask him for tips about surviving the big house.
>>130223006looked in and turbo lover are great, man
(also it was annoying as shit to find a pic of DC that was not a fucking WebP. i hate that so much)
>>130223260don't bend over in the shower might be a good idea, Dave. also here's to hoping that after you get out you don't record an album about how you dindonuffin and the Man unjustly locked your ass up.
I will beat you yet, Ultima IV.
I admire metal's integrity, brutality, and obsessiveness, but I can't stand its delusions of grandeur--the way it apes and misapprehends reactionary notions of nobility. One thing I like about Lemmy is that he's proud to be a clod, common as muck and dogged in his will to make himself felt as just that. Add that rarest of metal virtues, a sense of humor, which definitely extends to the music's own conventions, as on the lead cut of his first album in three litigation-packed years: yclept "Deaf Forever," a good enough joke right there (especially for Sabbaf fans), it turns out to be a battlefield anthem--about a corpse. And then add Bill Laswell, who was born to make megalomania signify: where most metal production gravitates toward a dull thud that highlights the shriek of the singer and the comforting reverberation of the signature guitar, Laswell's fierce clarity cracks like a whip, inspiring Lemmy, never a slowpoke in this league, to bellow one called "Built for Speed." Result: work of art. A-
>>130223260also ha ha lol
>>130222817>>130222844>>130223025>>130223139>>130223318you can really see the decline setting in
Joe Jackson > Elvis Costello bet
>>130223329>Richards made it a condition for the performance with Berry that the latter's #1 1972 hit "My Ding A Ling" not be part of the setlist.[3]Smart move there, Keef.
>>130223318>where most metal production gravitates toward a dull thud that highlights the shriek of the singer and the comforting reverberation of the signature guitarhas this guy ever even listened to metal except "You've Got Another Thing Coming" once on the radio?
The wisecracking arrogance of this record is the only rock and roll attitude that means diddley right now. With the mainstream claimed by sincere craftspeople and the great tradition of Elvis Presley, Esquerita, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Sex Pistols, and Madonna sucked into a cultural vacuum by nitwit anarchists and bohemian sourpusses, three white jerkoffs and their crazed producer are set to go platinum-plus with "black" music that's radically original, childishly simple, hard to play, and accessible to anybody with two ears and an ass. Drinking, robbing, rhyming, and pillaging, busting open your locker and breaking your glasses, the Beasites don't just thumb their noses at redeeming social importance--they pull out their jammies and shoot it in the cookie puss. If you don't like the joke, you might as well put your money where your funnybone is and send a check to the PMRC. A+
>>130223457This is one of the worst things ever written.
>>130223307fuck off, nerd
Belinda Carlisle is hot.
>>130223487Nobody cares about 60s Zayn and his over the hill mom music.
Elton's absolute nadir and he's almost dead from extreme coke abuse.
>>130223607>>130223487so in the 80s the radio stations would spam the latest McCartney/Elton/Clapton/Beach Boys whatever single for a few weeks and all the boomers were like hell yes, after which the song would be quickly forgotten by all concerned and nobody anywhere thought it was as good as their 60s-70s stuff
Q: What did Christa McAuliffe say to her husband before going into space?A: You feed the dog and I'll feed the fishes.
At least Jane Wiedlin's solo was a well-meaning failure. This one's pure El Lay, vacuous would-be CHR with chief songwriter Charlotte Caffey spelled by numerous ringers. The best you can say about the best of these songs--namely, "Band of Gold"--is that you've heard it before; the best you can say about the rest is that once in a while you think you have. C
Critics flock to her uneven product the way liberal arts magnas flock to investment banking--so desperate are they to connect to a zeitgeist that has nothing to do with them that they decide a little glamour and the right numbers add up to meaningful work, or at least "fun." I'm not saying her flair is pleasureless--the generosity she demands in the inexhaustible "Open Your Heart" is a two-way street and then some. But she doesn't speak for the ordinary teenaged stiff any more than Reagan speaks for union members (that's called "selling to," folks). And while the antiabortion content of "Papa Don't Preach" isn't unequivocal, and wouldn't make the song bad by definition if it were, the ambiguity is a cop-out rather than an open door (or heart), which is bad. In a time of collective self-deception, we don't need another snow job. B
Goodnight sweet prince.
>>130222675These guys are gonna be bigger than Metallica soon enough, mark my fucking words man
I generally ignore charges that political content is commercially-motivated, but with James I buy 'em. The real Rick was the moist, romantic fop of Glow and when his self-expression didn't get off he honed his craft at the Rock, churning out some lines by the by. C
great i'm in the cheesiest decade of all time
Ella, dear, let's talk retirement. Your voice sounds like it's ready for the rest home.
Come to think of it, Steve Perry's voice also needs to go to the rest home and he's not almost 70 years old either.
>>130223983lol is that a left-wing Rick James album?
Anyone wondering what gets Washington ladies up these days is advised to beg, borrow, buy, or steal this piece of, quite, speed satanism, un quote. Rick Rubin focused, CBS passed, guitar's quicker than a Theremin on reverb. And to top it off, "Jesus Saves" mauls the enemy, which as we all know isn't Jesus, or Satan for that matter. B+
>>130224108Rick actually thought people wanted his 90 IQ political hot takes instead of love man slop.
Aunt Rosie keeping the spirit of jazz alive.
Annie Lennox's rich, lustrous range and diction threaten to overwhelm these stripped-down arrangements, bringing such odious Annies as Haslam and Wilson to mind. But while you'd never call her enthusiasm natural, it's not forced or foolish either--this is rock and roll as sheer performance, its basics paraded with pride and a glint of humor. If only it was all side-openers like "Missionary Man," recommended to Pat Robertson, and the V-8 airmobile "Let's Go." B+
>>130224256why did Ann Wilson live rent free in his head?
Oh look, Queen is doing another tour after taking over Wembley on Live Aid.I hope this isn’t his last concert.
You could point out that The Idiot and Lust for Life were cut with the Bowie of Low and "Heroes" while Blah-Blah-Blah was cut with the Bowie of Let's Dance and "Dancing in the Streets." Or you could surmise that copping to conscience did even less for Ig than finding true love did for Chrissie Hynde. C+
>>130224256Annie turned 30 between the last album and this one and is sounding distinctly mompop here. Figures.
>>130224304And this guy...maturity does not suit him for as hard as he tries here.
>>130223826Madonna is a businesswoman not an artist.
Sometimes selling out takes courage, and it's heartening in a way that Raitt, who's hardly immune to moldy fig, is willing to adapt her blues-rock to hookarama convention. But her laidback grit doesn't quite mesh with the style, which likes its singers shiny and up-up-up. Either that or she couldn't put her heart into a depressingly conventional set of theoretical singles. C+
>>130224121absolute meme album
>>130224304Iggy as some kind of adult 80s dance pop doesn't work.
What the fuck Ralph Siegel?You kicked out half of the group and replaced them with some random German fucks and Louis, the awesome dancer is now being forced to play KEYTAR.Explain yourself
>>130224435Bonnie is not the first nor the last 70s artist who gets tripped up by 80s pop production.
>>130223025Back when we put nepo babies in their place
>>130224461How did these guys last into 86?
Just listening to her you'd think she never went anywhere and she remains as brash and flippant and insouciant as ever. But with the charts now crawling with cartoon sexpots performing in the DOR style she perfected, she finds it a lot harder to stand out from the pack. But also because her heyday was the late '70s. Not too many icons get more than one of those. B
>>130224487I dunno, the Beach Boys are also still a thing for some reason.
>>130224435it's not...bad, just generic.
>>130224487They actually lasted into 89 because of a 10 year record deal.The reason everyone’s unaware though is because they never made any new songs, they just performed.It consisted of either original DK members, DK Family members or both. Apparently, German audiences were confused as fuck by the circus they were witnessing, which is why no performances from that timeframe were filmed.
Dreaming of solo glory, Mick doesn't have much time for his band these days--just plugged into his Stones mode and spewed whatever he had to spew, adding lyrics and a few key musical ideas to tracks Ron and Keith completed before the star sullied his consciousness with them. And I say let him express himself elsewhere. For once his lyrics are impulsive and confused, two-faced by habit rather than design, the straightest reports he can offer from the top he's so lonely at, about oppressing and being oppressed rather than geopolitical contradiction. In the three that lead side two, always playing dirty is getting to him, as is his misuse of the jerks and greaseballs and fuckers and dumb-asses who clean up after him, yet for all his privilege he's another nuclear subject who's got no say over whether he rots or pops even though he'd much prefer the former. Especially together with the hard advice of "Hold Back," these are songs of conscience well-known sons of bitches can get away with. Coproducer Steve Lillywhite combines high-detail arena-rock with back-to-basics commitment and limits the melismatic affectations that have turned so much of Mick's late work in on itself. Let him have his own life and career, I don't care. What I want is the Stones as an idea that belongs to history, that's mine as much as theirs. This is it. A
Ha ha whoops.
>>130224466Album is one of those things where it does nothing really wrong but it also doesn't grab you in any way.
Roxette. There's this new Scandinavian pop band, really cool I dig the chick singer
Cheap sentiment plus star-budget video make the first side so disheartening that the second isn't much more than a relief. Just as the sensitive relationship songs retreat from the perils of triads and the pleasures of jerking off, "What's Going On" is a nostalgic generalization after the first album's confrontation with capital. Girls just want to have money--and no fun changes everything. B-
>>130224608this was one of his worst ever tf are you thinking? reviews. piece of crap contractual obligation album from a band that had self-destructed.
>>130224682talk about a one-and-done artist if ever there was one. lemme guess. all the songs from the debut were the ones she wrote back in high school and now had nothing left except to be fed generic 80s A/C slop.
>>130224639F
I had hopes for this record, honest. I certainly prefer the show tunes of her flowering to the "rock" (and schlock) of her Hollywood phase, and I enjoy discovering musical-comedy gems my normal interests would never steer me to. But unearthing gems is not Barbra's purpose. There are only three lyricists here--Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, and the album's real reason for being, Stephen Sondheim, who sums up his aesthetic philosophy by rewriting a song about Seurat so it applies instead to that other great artiste, la Streisand. I've enjoyed all the non-Sondheim songs in less precisely wrought versions and am also familiar with a little something called "Send in the Clowns." I admire the cattiness of "The Ladies Who Lunch." The others I'll live the rest of my life without. C
As a struggling front man he had a weakness for bathos; as a disappointed Nobel laureate he makes me miss Harry Chapin. On and on he blathers, a Bowie clone with glossomania, rolling out additional songs and verses for cassette and CD because they can't be squeezed onto twelve inches of vinyl. Though he knows far more about world suffering than you or I, he's almost incapable of writing about it. All he proves is that when you dwell on suffering you get pompous, something all too many rock-and-rollers have already noticed. C
>>130224819i'm sure my mom will love this album
>>130224491cover art looks surprisingly modern
For a while I was tempted to buzz Phil Collins over his former fearless leader. He's a warmer singer, God help them both, and the formerly useless Tony Banks proves adept with the keyb hooks. But in the end I couldn't tolerate the generalization density--not just of the lyrics (where Peter Gabriel's personal and geopolitical details offer some evidence that he's been there) but of the hooks, which end up feeling coercive, an effect unmitigated by Collins's whomping instrumental technique. And just to prove they're still Genesis, we get solos. C+
>>130224851With Band Aid under his belt you think he could've poached some better talent to help him out here.
>>130224907Wait a minute, Phil Collins sucks ass!Yeah, what were we thinking?
A year and a half in the making, and don't think he didn't pour heart and soul into it. It's just that he's . . . well, I hate to put it this way, but the guy is cursed: emoting love poetry from under enough Keith Forsey echo to fill Carlsbad Caverns, he still can't sing without sneering. That he gets off the occasional good one even so only reveals his essence d'Elvis for the plastic pop franchise it is, and don't blame him for the bullwhip on the sleeve--the devil made him do it. C+
>>130224985look out Billy, Jon Bon Jovi is here and he might just steal all your groupies right out from under you
The title signifies something cruder than coverees Hendrix, Richman, and Beach Boys, who aren't likely to show up on WNCN or WPAT themselves, and its moral certitude is what you have to love about her. She's a bit simple, our Joan, but so undoubting she can get away with transporting Route 128 to the West Side Highway. And even though only three or so of these selections--"Good Music," "Black Leather," maybe "Just Lust" or "This Means War," none of the covers--will be on her song list in 1990, it's heartening to know she'll be there in 1990, and that she'll sound like she did in 1982. B+
>>130225095Poor Joan. Always good, but never quite good enough.
>>130223744not funny, dude
After disliking their other albums instantly, I was confused enough by my instant attraction to table this one, especially since I had no stomach for the comparisons I knew an investigation would entail. And indeed, I still can't stand the others. But here Morrissey wears his wit on his sleeve, dishing the queen like Johnny Rotten never did and kissing off a day-job boss who's no Mr. Sellack. This makes it easier to go along on his moonier escapades, like when he reveals that looks and fame don't guarantee a good social life. Which gives you time to notice the tunes, the guitars, the backup munchkins. B+
Musically, this talented minor band's fastest-breaking album represents no significant departure from the past, though just how many recapitulations of their lyricism one needs is clearly beginning to trouble those who took it too seriously in the first place. The players still make them and the singer-lyricist still refuses to define them, and while his projection has improved, it's hardly crystalline and wouldn't tell you anything you didn't know if it was. I mean, this is music for mushheads, and that it retains an undeniable if rather abstract charm only proves that there's a little mushhead in all of us. I give album four the nod over number three for its compelling snare sound and dynamic cover version. And insist that any normal person can make do with number one, when all this was a tad more spontaneous. B+
>>130225225Reddit: The Band
>>130222817what a total grift job on Simon's part, yet it worked and suckers fell for it
John Lydon's name on the sticker, combined with his sudden eagerness to shoot the shit with representatives of the press, has everybody confused. This isn't a Lydon record that (the conveniently uncredited) Bill Laswell happened to produce, it's a Laswell record custom-designed for Lydon, with whom the auteur shares a disappointed revolutionary's professional interest in power. Just abstract the production style Laswell's adapted to artists as diverse as Mick Jagger and Herbie Hancock, think Sex Pistols, and you'll get something like this, as clinical as brain surgery and as impersonal as a battering ram, with unlikely virtuosos playing the Cook and Jones parts. It kicks in because they're both cold bastards; it feels out of whack anyway because Lydon can't match Laswell's commitment and still has too much integrity to fake it (and maybe also because he has never been in the same room with most of the musicians in this "band"). B+
Automatic horns and Dylanettes echoing every chorus, covers and collaborations--sounds like something he threw together in a week and away forever. But throwing it away is how he gets that off-the-cuff feel, and side two is great fun. Tough rocker with Tom Petty, lissome popper with Carole Bayer Sager, and with Sam Shepard one of the greatest and most ridiculous of his great ridiculous epics. Doesn't matter who came up with such lines as "She said even the swap meets around here are getting corrupt" and "I didn't know whether to duck or run, so I ran"--they're classic Dylan. And on side one we have automatic horns and Dylanettes echoing every chorus, covers and songs he wrote all by himself. B
>>130225516Another turd of an album by a washed-up bum that got a much higher rating than it deserved.
Right, they're maturing into a less derivative pop synthesis, as if that means shit these days. Like the Raspberries before them, they're brilliant when they emulate the Beatles and mature popsters when they don't. And for what it's worth, the four most striking tunes here are the four nonoriginals--every one, for what it's worth, written by a guy. B
>>130225555I hate Manic Monday and not even Susanna Hoffs being a 9/10 can make me not hate that song.
it's only 13 years until Sabrina Carpenter is born. enjoy it while it lasts.
>>130223774Belinda is hot but yeah this album sucks.
I scoffed at Janet's claims of autonomy--figured Jam & Lewis wrote her in as collaborator for a price she could afford. But she must have had some input--otherwise what would be not to like? Great beats here, their deepest ever. If her voice ever changes, she may even live up to them--and convince the world she's her own woman. Till then she's just playing, which does have its entertainment value. B
>>130226345I WANNA SEE JANET'S JACKSON
>>130226345i def. prefer 80s teenybopper Janet to the adult 90s sex machine version. more winsome and innocent.
>>130224608One cheap girl group cover doesn't make this thing deserving of an A.
Hidden away on this rock bellyflop (which must be scandalizing 'em in Nashville) are hints that he may still be a crazed genius--the hook on the otherwise more-than-predictable "Drifter," the urban neurosis of "Pressure," and especially the broken yet still encouraging "Hippie Dream." But from straightforward confessional to brand-new drummer, it's the dullest record he's ever made. C+
Bloated by endless codas, superfluous instrumentation, hall upon hall of vocal mirrors, and the artist's unshakable confidence that his talent makes him significant, these ten songs average almost five minutes apiece. Cut down to the trifles they are by a lightweight collaborator, they might qualify as likable pap. We'll never know. C
>>130226542Really, did anyone actually care enough about Daryl Hall as a solo act to need this much of him or have him pretend he was Bob Dylan?
Sorry, but my fond belief in Kate & Cindy as postmodern girl duo has just gone the way of my fond hopes for Joan and Chrissie as rock and roll future. Except for the postfeminist "Housework," they contribute watercolors posing as Kenny Scharfs--not only don't "Summer of Love" and "She Brakes for Rainbows" redeem anybody's '60s retro, they don't even take off on it. So Fred's abrasive camp saves the day, and talk about satiric justice--he gets off a credible nudist anthem, a credible psychedelic fantasy, and (get this) a credible ecology song in the process. B+
>>130222357Saw them at the Whiskey two months ago. Opening act was these Gunz'n'Roses dudes. Meh, pretty generic glam metal slop.
>>130226631that cover looks more 1993 than '86 tbqh
Like the Rolling Stones twenty years ago, they're middle-class lads who are into music that's hard above all--they're street because they want to be. Granted, the analogy is less than exact. Where the Stones dramatized their streetness by becoming bohemians, Run-D.M.C. remain defiantly and even paradigmatically middle-class, a much tougher trick. Run-D.M.C. project less respect for women than the Stones, and less interest in them, too. They commit more lyrical gaffes. And their music is a lot further out. Without benefit of a "Rock Box" or "King of Rock," this is their most uncompromising and compelling album, all hard beats and declaiming voices. They're proud to be black all right, but I don't think it has much to do with George Washington Carver. They're proud to be black because it means they can do this. A-
Maybe his youthful lyricism, meaning his knack for the tearjerker, is abandoning him. On Greatest Hits "Just the Way You Are" and "She's Always a Woman" are every bit as alive as "Movin' Out" and "Allentown," but here he's best when he's brassy and literal: failed wise guy in "Big Man on Mulberry Street," Ray Charles's coequal on "Baby Grand." And even at his most rockin' he's seventy-five years retro whether he likes it or not--whenever he doesn't hit it just right you want to quarantine him for life in Atlantic City. B
>>130226810yeah this album was kind of flat. weak melodies and the band seems tired and disinterested. the sound of a pushing middle aged dad who no longer has any hunger. the feminist put-down on track 4 is kind of kino though.
>>130224461It baffles me that Leslie Mándoki somehow agreed to be in this offshoot, despite admitting to hating the original band and even hiding it from his kids.
Cockburn's a very smart guy with as tough and articulate a line on imperialism as any white person with a label deal. Few singer-songwriters play meaner guitar, and as befits an anti-imperialist he knows the international sonic palette. Unfortunately, his records never project musical necessity. The melodies and/or lyrics carry the first side anyway, but though I'm sure Cockburn has some idea what the synthesized pans are doing on the cry of politico-romantic angst and the vaguely Andean fretboards on the Wasp dub poem, what the world will hear is the oppressive boom-boom of four-four drums. B
How many years has it been since any good music was released? 10? More? I've given up hope.
>>130226908Woodstock is over and it's not coming back, unc.
>>130224300I went there.It was pretty much the same experience as The Nuremberg Rally, except it’s a faggot instead of a dictator.
>>130226892why are Canadians like this?
Even if "Animal Boy" and "Ape Man Hop" were code for B-boy, which they're not, this wouldn't keep the promise of the remixed and retitled "My Head Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)," because these days code is too fucking subtle. And what we get instead is jungle bunnies, two (pretty good) songs about Joey's drinking, another (not so good) one about his misery, Dee Dee one-for-three, the defensive-sounding "She Belongs to Me," the defensive-sounding "Crummy Stuff," and an anthem I believe called "Something to Believe In." If only they could stop squandering their compassion on cartoons and believe in something. B+
>>130227120the Ramones are still around?
Though it's customary to situate Richie square in the middle of the pop mainstream, in fact he's more austere than that, and more distinctive--his placidity and simplicity yield a lulling, almost mantralike entertainment that recalls Sade or J.J. Cale. Granted, his clichéd verse isn't always as transparent as he hopes--mawk like "Ballerina Girl" is all too noticeable. And sometimes he doesn't put his heart into the semi-fast ones. But he compensates with a knack for tune that puts him over the fine line between lulling and boring--a knack that Sade or Cale would go metal for. B+
If in 1973 I'd been told that thirteen years hence Casey Kasem would name a then ghettoized funk group as the top singles act of the '80s, my heart would have swelled until my head interjected that the top singles act of the '70s was the Osmond family. In this I would have been wise, and if I'd then been told that the secret of Kool's success would be a bland black singer named James Taylor, I would have observed that he couldn't possibly be worse than our white one. In this I could have been unduly optimistic. C-
Not a James Brown album--a James Brown-influenced Dan Hartman record, with James Brown on vocals. Unlike Brad Shapiro, who manufactured good music this way in 1979, Hartman takes his humdrum copyrights and urges the great one to go for the expressiveness he hasn't commanded in over a decade rather than the rhythm he'll take to his grave. Don't believe me--just compare any of Polydor's most recent compilations: James Brown's Funky People (featuring Lyn Collins, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, and James Brown), Dead on the Heavy Funk 74-76 (salvaging a total of zero good LPs), or In the Jungle Groove (long-promised, worth-waiting for, full-length, '69-'71 dance classics). Hartman would love every one. C+
>>130227308not only is he 53, washed up, and on the world's greatest coke binge (although Elton and Stevie are giving him a run for his money) things are going to go even further south for him in a little while
>>130227148No one has given a thought about them in six years, but apparently yes.
>>130223260What are your pals doing these days? Yes, lame 80s A/C slop who'da guessed?
>>130227334and they'll go south for Elton and Stevie too very shortly
>>130222304wtf why are the Joy Division guys making gay disco music?
>>130227423you're in for a treat with this one since it was rushed out the door and they didn't have time to apply the usual 80s production sheen so it so the album is all raw unprocessed garage rock
Winning though her directness may be, McEntire is neither as clear as George Strait nor as lavish as John Anderson. In fact, the basics she gets back to recall Rosanne Cash more than anyone else, and no matter how she tries, she just can't rock out (or sing) like Nashville's crossover queen. Most convincing are the jauntily defiant cheating-on song "Little Rock," where she plays a rich man's wife, and the dolefully forgiving cheated-on song "Whoever's in New England," where she plays a young executive's wife. Elsewhere she's mostly just direct. B
>>130222338"Well, ain't no good ol' boy ever sung in Swahili. I think I'm outta here" - Waylon Jenningswait... thats the other group...
Gabriel's so smart he knows rhythm is what makes music go, which relieves him of humdrum melodic responsibilities but doesn't get him up on the one--smart guys do go for texture in a pinch. Like his smart predecessor James Taylor, who used to climax concerts with the clever macho parody "Steamroller," this supporter of good causes reaches the masses with "Sledgehammer," which is no parody. Where is "Biko" now that we need it more than ever? B-
>155 poststhis was a better year for music than i remembered it being
Talk about washed, and unlike Aerosmith there's no miracle turnaround for him in the coming years.
>>130227447when Paradise starts playing
>>130222304you guys ever heard of Dokken? that george lynch kid could outplay EVH any day of the week.
In which Narada Michael Walden returns to the land of weenies whence he came, and on some underling's steam--not up to composing these turkeys himself, he hired the songs out and then laid them on Re, who managed to sing as if she still cared. Duet attraction George Michael can't touch Annie Lennox; duet attraction Larry Graham can't even touch Peter Wolf. For this Clive didn't milk Who's Zoomin' Who? till it bled? [Catalogue number: AL 8442.] B-
>>130227712Also "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" is still an aural atrocity and this album gets a pass only because that song was not on it.
Last time he said bad is bad, this time he says hip is square, and there you have the difference between a straight-shooting album and a conventional one, between one that catches your elbow and one they ram down your throat. B-
Chicago's Anglodisco clones meet Anglodisco renegade Adrian Sherwood and promptly improve themselves by trading in wimpy on arty. Fleetingly gothic, marginally industrial, unrelenting in a vaguely threatening way, they shout "The world is ending" on a crowded dancefloor. No one panics, but some do drift off--they're getting a little bored. B-
>>130226522>Neil meets cheesy 80s pop production
Musically, this anything but retro fusion of Fresh's foundation and Sgt. Pepper's filigrees is nothing short of amazing. Only the tin-eared will overlook the unkiltered wit of its pop-baroque inventions, only the lead-assed deny its lean, quirky grooves, both of which are so arresting that at first you don't take in the equally spectacular assurance with which the singer skips from mood to mood and register to register. I just wish the thing weren't such a damn kaleidoscope: far from unifying its multifarious parts, its soundtrack function destroys what little chance the lyrics have of bringing it together. Christopher is Prince, I guess, but nothing here tempts me to make sure. I'd much rather find out whether the former Rogers Nelson really takes all this trouble just so he can die and/or make love underneath whatever kind of moon, or if he has something less banal in mind. A-
>>130227812I never did like Prince for some reason.
Young modern Lou makes his electronic move, dispensing with live drums on six tracks and leaving the programming to newly annointed computer whiz Fernando Saunders. Old fart Lou works up a pretty fair head of current decrying "Video Violence" and bows to the '80s by situating evil "Outside." His most expedient album since The Bells and his worst since Rock and Roll Heart. B
Freddy Mercury isn't really a fag... is he?
>>130227880nah it's gotta be mere rumors just like the ones about Halford
The songwriting's sharper, but he's not. Whether their focus is personal ("Like a Rock"), social ("Miami"), or personal-as-social ("Tightrope"), all his evocations of this rock and that hard place add up to is high-grade soap opera. Between John Robinson's measured arena beat and Craig Frost's Bittanesque semiclassicisms, Seger comes on as a world-weary elder statesman, which is to say an incurable cornball. Transcending all this is "The Ring," the tale of a good marriage that didn't get it all, and too bad Bruce won't cover it. B
>>130227980I hate LAR, incidentally.
>>130227980>>130228030I'm not 19 anymore either, but you don't hear me whining about it.
I respect these guys, really--their dedication to dementia is a rare and wondrous thing. But their claque's idea of accessibility is Iron Butterfly on bad acid digging deconstruction, yet another version of the touching avant-garde truism which holds that the proper study of incoherence is incoherent. Upped a notch or two for concept, attitude, hype, bullshit, somewhere in there. B-
Having listened far more than natural inclination dictated, I've become actively annoyed with this vocal watershed. From its strong lounge-jazz beat to its conscious avoidance of distracting lyrical detail, it's all husky, burnished mood, the fulfillment of the quiet-storm format black radio devised to lure staider customers away from white-bread temptations like soft rock and easy listening. God knows it's more soulful, and sexier, too, but that's all it is--a reification of the human voice as vehicle of an expression purer than expression ever ought to be. B-
>>130222304hey any of you dig those Red Hot Chili Pepper guys? they're making the buzz in SoCal.
https://youtu.be/vxyKqDqzu70?si=PczD3AkMIOLMdatZ&t=405
Never again can us wiseasses call it corporate rock without thinking twice. Whatever possessed Tom Scholz to spend seven years perfecting this apparently unoccupied articulation of an art-metal thought extinct years ago, it wasn't megaplatinum ambition. He's more like the Archbishop of Latter-Day Arena Rock, perfecting majestic guitar sounds and angelic vocals for hockey-rink cathedrals the world over--and also, since he's patently reluctant to venture from his studio retreat, elegiac melodies suitable to a radio ministry. If he seems more hobbyist than artist, more Trekkie than Blind Boy Grunt, that's no reason to get snobbish. And no reason to listen, either. C
>>130228149>spends eight years working on this thing>ends up with exactly the same album as the first two
Two catchy weirdos, eighteen songs, and the hits just keep on coming in an exuberantly annoying show of creative superabundance. Their secret is that as unmediated pop postmodernists they can be themselves stealing from anywhere, modulating without strain or personal commitment from hick to nut to nerd. Like the cross-eyed bear in the regretful but not altogether kind "Hide Away Folk Family," their "shoes are laced with irony," but that doesn't doom them to art-school cleverness or never meaning what they say. Their great subject is the information overload that lends these songs their form. They live in a world where "Everything Right Is Wrong Again" and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog." A
>>130228173The birth of Reddit sporkcore pop.
>>130228113Rick James called her the most stuck-up bitch he'd ever met.
>>130222538>>130223038kys contrarian, early Bon Jovi clears.
>>130228190>taking seriously the words of a guy who subjected women to non-consensual BDSM sessions while high out of his mind on drugs
With everybody from Patti to Belinda to Peter to Eldra kissing pop's ass, Roth gives it a pinch and keeps on trucking. Maybe because he lived out his wimpier fantasies on last year's EP, here he's free to mastermind his own piece of multiplatinum potential. Sure he covers "That's Life," but he also assembles a metal band that'll cut old buddies: Maynard Ferguson drummer, cult heaven bassist, and on guitar former Zappa and Lydon sideman Steve Vai, who splits the difference between parody and virtuosity. I mean, Vai is funny without opening his mouth. And of course, so is our voluble auteur, who makes Miss Liberty a burlesque queen and neither lady a whore. B+
>>130223826"Live to tell" is the greatest song of 1986 and it's not even close.
The soundtrack to the Stephen King movie "Maximum Overdrive" works well by keeping the sexism muted and by emphasizing songs (Bon Scott appears here only once, on the tired "Ride On"), while two of the three new cuts are instrumentals. But this is their most presentable collection nevertheless. B
>>130228235the synth hooks didn't age too well
>>130228264caught the movie last week. mostly trash. still, that potty-mouthed girl has a very unique-sounding voice. she should voice cartoon characters or something.
Go Mets!
Press is saying they've booked some studio time to record a new album, not some shitty greatest hits album. Let's hope the extended time apart will bring about some good songs; I'm sure they've got another run left in them.
>>130223826i've somehow never been moved by Madonna and idk what it is
>>130228277>song from 1986 sounds like it's from 1986omg no waaaaaaiiii!!!!
>>130228318Because you're a zoomer, you were born long after Madonna's start, peak, decline and revival, you got no memories attached to her music.
Grant Hart breaks up with the love of his life, Bob Mould can't shake off a bad trip, and hand in hand they sell out to the big bad major with the most disconsolate record of their never exactly cheerful career. Of course, between the swelling melodies that are supposed to give them pop accessibility and an attention to recorded sound that does some justice to their humongous musical details, the overall effect is more inspirational than depressing--this is the album that combines the supersonic soar of Flip Your Wig with the full-grown vision of New Day Rising. As for pop accessibility, we shall see. A
>>130228336nta but if you're a Millenial your main memory of her is her horrendous 2000s midlife crisis era, so...
No previous crossover diva has purveyed such an out-and-out fabrication. Tina's weathered sexpot, Whitney's soulful yuppie--these are credible plays on credible personas. But though Patti is managed by her longtime husband and advised by her longtime son, she nevertheless keynotes her multiplatinum bid with a tribute to the loneliness of the soulful yuppie, written by yet another successfully married couple but inspired I'm sure by one-cut-stand Michael McDonald (cf. Tina meets Bryan, Aretha meets George, and I bet Whitney trades Jermaine in on Phil Collins or somebody next time). Then again, Patti doesn't start out with such surefire goods--her abrasive nasality has always kept her reputation cult. Which is why it's just as well for Patti that Richard Perry overwhelms the eight other producers: beats and tunes kick in till you could care less what organ she's singing through. B
>>130228359>>130228221Oh, he means Patti LaBelle, I see. For a second I thought he meant Patti Smith, but she hasn't had an album out yet this decade.
>>130228346I'm a Millennial and my memories of Madonna's music are my mom playing her 80s records while doing the house chores and "Don't Tell Me" and "What It Feels Like for a Girl" being on heavy rotation right before the old world ended on 9/11 so yeah lots of memories attached to her music even if I hate Madonna herself I still can't hate her pre-2001 music.
>>130228359The MOR Diana Ross, aimed at moms rather than gay dudes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OizkvZ2xkpYOne of the best they ever played
>>130228359>>130227712i tell you, the industry really got the mileage out of that whole 60s black pop crew, also including Dionne and Diana, who are not featured in this thread because their latest albums came out in '85
>>130228444this was her last decent album, and she never sold much of anything as her label couldn't be bothered to promote her
>>130226631>Except for the postfeminist "Housework,"This is the anti-"Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves." Actually, it's what happened when the stronk women decided doing it for themselves really wasn't much fun at all.
>>130228113She sounds like she has a wad of peanut butter in her mouth and yeah her music is just background noise to play at Macy's while you're browsing the lampshades.
>>130228190do you really get the impression from AB's music that she is an even slightly fun person at all instead of pretentious as fuck? no you don't.
>>130227158oh boy is track 8 ever overplayed
Even when it's this sumptuous, there's a problem with aural wallpaper--once you start paying attention to it, it's not wallpaper anymore, it's pictures on the wall. And while as a wallpaper these pictures may be something, they can't compete with the ones you've hung up special. That's why I prefer my aural wallpaper either so richly patterned you can't see past the whole (Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians) or so intricately worked you can gaze at the details forever (Eno's Another Green World). In between I'll take Julie London. B
Imagine Sgt. Pepper if McCartney hadn't needed Lennon--if he hadn't been such a wet--and you'll get an inkling of what these insular popsters have damn near pulled off. Granted, there's barely a hint of overarching significance, but after all, this isn't 1967. With Todd Rundgren sequencing and twiddling those knobs, they continue strong for the first nine or ten (out of fourteen) songs. Only when the topics become darker and more cosmic do they clutter things with sound and whimsy; as long as they content themselves with leisurely, Shelleyan evocations of summer love and the four seasons, they'll draw you into their world if you give them the chance--most enticingly on a song called "Grass," about something good to do there. A-
>>130224819what can i say about Barbra? the woman is just...cursed. she's always wished so badly that she could have been born in 1914 instead of 1942 and sang "Stardust" on the radio with Connie Boswell.
Alice is suffering from a bit of how do you do fellow kids syndrome by this point.
>>130227712Ok I laughed at this one.
F
He's back.
>>130227880I dunno. Highlander soundtrack and it's tour wasn't bad though.
dude cocaine and spandex
>yfw the first several albums posted in the thread are metalslopstay predictable, white boys
>>130231378Most decades are really a collection of mini-decades. The stereotype coke and spandex 80s was mostly just 84-88 and was not representative of the early part of the decade nor the tail end.
Miles's endgame at Columbia was true fusion--improvised jazz-rock, pretty good of its sort, but what a sort. This is more like pop-funk Sketches of Spain, with the starperson's trumpet glancing smartly off an up-to-date panoply of catchy little tunes, beats, and rhythm effects. I cried fraud at first, and if you have no use for catchy little anythings you'll agree, but I changed my mind. Marcus Miller acquits himself in the Gil Evans role, George Duke gets off a nice lick, and Scritti Politti provides a snappier cover than Cyndi Lauper. Minor, and his best in a decade. B+
>>130231936Miles still going how do you do fellow kids in contrast to certain of his peers (most actually?) who have fucked off from the modern world.
>Halford checked into alcohol and drug rehab in late 1985 after his gay lover committed suicide in front of him in a drug-fueled argument. He spent most of January '86 recuperating in preparation for Judas Priest's upcoming Fuel For Life Tour, which proved the band's biggest and most financially successful tour ever.[3]
