Saturday January 21, 2012
Strictly speaking, this song from the late great Arthur Lee, frontman of the legendary L.A. psychedelic rock band Love, does not qualify as '80s music in the most tidy sense of the term. After all, though originally released on Lee's self-titled 1981 solo LP, the song emerged from various but scattered solo activities during the '70s. When the album was released, few music listeners were even aware Lee was still active in the middle of the new wave era, if they knew who he was at all. This kind of obscurity has always been unjust to the legacy of Lee and his original bandmates during Love's late-'60s heyday, but unfortunately pop music has always held little room for music legends to get their music heard years removed from their popular impact. Nevertheless, if a record comes out any time during the '80s, it's fair game for the lofty and searching reach of this regular feature.
"Bend Down" certainly doesn't sound of the '80s, as Lee's soulful vocals and adventurous spirit have a lot more in common with Jimi Hendrix than Prince. Even so, the visionary nature of all three of these artists has survived decades of record label upheaval, changing music fads and - in Lee's case - turmoil that included lengthy imprisonment during the late '90s and ultimately a premature death from cancer in 2006. Iconoclastic to an extreme that probably never helped his record sales or mainstream acceptance, Lee similarly takes his own path here. Still, the power of his vocals have the ability to cut through plenty of nonsense, as do the guitar heroics of cohorts Velvert Turner and John Sterling. Anything Lee attempted musically had a tendency to exhilarate; I'm just glad he contributed something that contains even a smallest link to the '80s music landscape.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Rhino
Thursday January 12, 2012
During the late '60s and early '70s, Burton Cummings served memorably as lead vocalist and a chief songwriter in The Guess Who, one of Canada's most popular and successful classic rock bands. Then, when that band dissolved in 1975, Cummings launched a solo career that paid immediate dividends, especially in his homeland. Even so, the singer-songwriter's solo efforts had steadily decreasing impact in the U.S. leading up to the release of his 1980 LP Woman Love, over which Cummings was decidedly displeased. Nevertheless, the album contained several strong compositions, even if the overuse of synthesizers betrayed the major-label concessions Cummings was apparently forced to make to get it distributed.
In the ensuing years of his continuing but increasingly less lucrative solo career, "Heavenly Blue" has remained a mainstay of Cummings' catalogue, and it is relatively easy to hear why. Though less angry and raw than on many of The Guess Who's most lasting hits, Cummings' vocals here reveal both his immense talent and inherent soulfulness. This is far more than mere adult contemporary or soft rock, even if few Americans were knowledgeable of the fact at the time. In fact, the acoustic guitar and piano foundation brings this track almost to the level of some of this artist's finest '60s compositions (written with former bandmate Randy Bachman), "Laughing" and "No Time." This is an '80s sleeper for American listeners like me who have just recently regained interest in old FM rock favorites.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Columbia
Wednesday January 4, 2012
Readers who have visited this site previously have probably caught wind of my significant admiration for "What About Me," an '80s pop song from the Australian band Moving Pictures that became a modest American hit in both 1982 and 1989. I genuinely enjoy the pronounced melodrama of this track, but more than anything else the piano-based melody remains one of the most haunting '80s tunes I can remember. But I'm actually not here particularly to spotlight this song yet again; instead, I'm strongly reminded of it by another early-'80s ballad - also drenched in piano - that has caught my ear this week.
Back in 1980, singer-songwriter Jamie Sheriff released a major-label album called No Heroes that attracted some serious attention on the pop music scene. Unfortunately, despite a long working career as a musician for film scores, among other things, Sheriff has been known for few other prominent recordings during the past three decades. Even so, his "Waitress in a Diner" is another successful example (actually predating "What About Me") of a pop song strongly dramatizing the experience of an overlooked blue-collar member of America's service industry. Sheriff's vocal performance here bleeds passion and honesty, and it's absolutely criminal that more '80s fans (including myself) don't remember his highly worthy musical contributions more often. I don't know if this comparison is accurate in a particularly obvious way to music fans, but I can't help noticing a resemblance between the raw, unbridled singing styles of both Sheriff and a quietly legendary British artist of the '60s and '70s I've been listening to obsessively lately, the great Terry Reid. The phrase "forgotten gem" can certainly have no better illustrative examples than these two unsung artists, but true fans of music are really missing something if they've never heard their work. Consider this a gentle but forceful nudge in the direction of changing that.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Polydor
Wednesday December 28, 2011
Have I mentioned before in this space how much I love the serendipity involved in the search for and discovery of worthy but forgotten pop and rock songs from the past? I'm sure I have, of course, as this is a concept that largely inspired this weekly feature in the first place. For that reason, I won't belabor that point, other than to describe the wonderfully surprising way I happened upon this week's selection.
Having recently immersed myself in the quite prolific discography of British heavy blues/hard rock band Whitesnake, I wanted to find a bridging hook between David Coverdale, that band's frontman, and some other seemingly unrelated but totally worthy track from his peak era. Because Whitesnake's massive late-'80s popularity as a hair metal/arena rock band falls far short of telling the whole story of Coverdale as a long-term rock artist, I looked to the group's lesser-known activities of the late '70s and early '80s. By chance, that led me to former Whitesnake bass player Neil Murray, who - among his many band memberships - played in a supergroup for a brief period of the mid-'80s fronted by original Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di'Anno. The rest of the story is truly about a particular song and not so much the personnel coincidences.
The catchy and boldly entertaining "Living in a F*!#ing Time Warp" is tremendous fun, but it's also a nice showcase for the sneering and edgy vocal stylings of Di'Anno, who has released plenty of music since his ousting from legendary New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden. Pete Willis, one of the original guitarists for Def Leppard who has much in common with Di'Anno in being dismissed from a successful hard rock band that later became bona fide superstars, also appears here. And although there may not be any deeper meaning to the track's casual use of the cardinal profanity combined with Di'Anno's angry delivery, the song's raw, frenzied power is ultimately undeniable for anyone fortunate enough to have heard this relatively obscure treasure.
EP Cover Image Courtesy of Food for Thought
