Sophomore year of college. I was just starting to buy LPs in earnest, so only one of the albums below was something that came close to being purchased in real time (yes, it was Yes). The Lauper album was down in the WTLX studios, though, so I became plenty familiar with it.
1984 was a transitional year for the design of SR. New layouts and fonts got rolled out over the course of several months. But business was still business--what other fun stuff got a look in this issue?
Article
Chris Albertson Interviews Susannah McCorkle
McCorkle's fourth album, The People That You Never Get to Love, had been named one of SR's Records of the Year for 1983 in the previous issue. In this profile, we learn how she came to "burn" to be a singer (listening to a friend's copy of Billie Holliday's "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" in Paris), how she was able to break into the jazz scene in London (a letter to Philip Larkin resulted in a reference to a pub bandleader), and about her experiences singing in a department store restaurant dressed like Marilyn Monroe ("As I peeled Marilyn off me—the wig, the false eyelashes, the rhinestones, the white-on-white makeup—I realized that she had done this all the time, that she was unrecognizable when she walked the streets. It was eerie.")
This month's reviewers are Chris Albertson, Phyl Garland, Alanna Nash, Mark Peel, Peter Reilly, Steve Simels, and Joel Vance.
Best of the Month
--Emmylou Harris, White Shoes (AN) "The important thing is that after several mediocre albums in the last couple of years, Emmylou Harris is back with an inordinately strong release, one that should bolster her reputation as a superior interpreter of not only country music but rock as well."
--Dionne Warwick, How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye (PG) "A faltering step or two notwithstanding, we can be grateful that Luther Vandross has fulfilled his dream of producing Dionne Warwick."
Featured Reviews
--Blue Öyster Cult, The Revolution by Night (MP) "While one more Blue Öyster Cult album—even a good one—may seem redundant at this point, we'll always need this band as the benchmark for what works and what doesn't in heavy-metal. This one works."
--Johnny Cash, Johnny 99 (AN) "…jolts Cash out of his passive, elder-statesman pose and presents him as a vibrant and revitalized musician, one who may not exactly be on the cutting edge of what's happening in today's country music but is nevertheless more aware than most of what should or should not be propelling the music forward."
--Alberta Hunter, Look for the Silver Lining (PR) "Now somewhere in her eighties, Hunter continues to perform with all the aplomb of a mere slip of sixty or so."
--Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Somewhere in Afrika (MP) "The album is more than just a sampler of today's heavy sounds, however. Its second side is an ambitious suite of hard rock fused with native African music, a study in oppression and revolt in Mann's birthplace, South Africa…it's so consistently excellent that it may end Manfred Mann's career as a cover artist altogether."
--Original Broadway Cast, My One and Only (PR) "…this is one of the best original-cast albums of the last several years, and it's as welcome as flowers in the spring."
--Elvis Presley, A Legendary Performer, Volume 4 (JV) "You might suspect that the fourth volume (in this series) contains only barrel-scrapings for the faithful. But there are at least four highly interesting tracks on this album of previously unreleased material."
--Paul Simon, Heart and Bones (MP) "…might easily have been called Hearts and Minds for much of it deals with the conflict between emotion and intellect—the two edges along which Simon's music has always cut. Although his message is that the two are mutually exclusive, the album is, in fact its own perfect rebuttal, a nearly perfect collaboration between lyricism and logic."
Recordings of Special Merit
--Big Daddy, S/T (JV) "...richly deserved skewering of a dozen modern tunes, many of which deserve euthanasia." The follow-up LP was covered last year when we took a peek at the March 1986 issue.
--An Evening with Windham Hill Live (MP) "Windham Hill's emphasis is not so much on form or technique as on tone, color, sensation, and emotion. Which is not to say this music is wouout form or that the musicians don't possess great skill."
--Genesis, S/T (MP) "Peopled with a host of out-of-the-ordinary characters…Genesis is still essentially an album of straightforward music from a band that seems to get better with the years."
--Jason and the Nashville Scorchers, Fervor (SS) "…some will hail them as punk-country, but what they're doing is actually in a direct line from Gram Parson's Flying Burrito Brothers—they're a raggedy, emotionally compelling country-rock outfit fronted by a singer whose vocal chop are not extraordinary but who sings every note as if his life depended on it."
--Reba McEntire, Behind the Scene (AN) "The material, mostly ballads and assertive uptempo tunes about a woman's plight in love, is thoroughly country…and it's thoroughly smart, with none of those stomach-turning pseudo-country titles…This album ought to do it for her, and for traditional country fans too."
--Maria Muldaur, Sweet and Slow (AN) "…strives not for another colossal chart success but rather to allow Muldaur to stretch out and enjoy herself with two of her favorite musical idioms (blues and jazz)."
--Ian Tyson, Old Corrals & Sagebrush (AN) "His modern-day buckaroos ride pickup trucks instead of packhorses, but he makes it clear that the cowboy's joys and heartaches have grown no less simple or severe. This is more an elegiac album than a romantic one, an elegant, graceful look at an era now almost gone."
--Utopia, The Utopia Sampler (Louis Meredith) "This new video, fortunately, is pop-rock all the way, and it's a delight. All three tunes are vintage Sixties revisionist, and the visual images Todd has conjured up…are glitzy, imaginative, and funny."
--Shelly West, Red Hot (PR) "…West's buxom vocals and often truly funny, matter-of-fact delivery gives each of these performances a double-edged quality of expectant horniness combined with the foreknowledge of inevitable disaster."
--Paul Young, No Parlez (MP) "…this is one of the most elegantly arranged and produced albus I've come in some time…The production overpowers the content, making (this) an album of spectacular moments but an elusive record on the whole."
Other Disks Reviewed
--ABC, Beauty Stab (MP) "Trouble is, ABC belongs back in that cabaret. They're glamour boys, not punks or roughnecks."
--David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, the Motion Picture (SS) "If this kind of early-Seventies hairdresser-from-outer-space stuff still interests you, you'd be better off looking for Bowie bootlegs."
--Richard and Karen Carpenter, Voice of the Heart (PR) "I don't care who are, you are going to listen with half an ear for indications of her physical condition."
--Eurythmics, Touch (MP) "…largely an exposition of the vulnerability attached to love and its damaging consequences…Heartbreak should always be so entertaining."
--Robin Gibb, How Old Are You? (PR) "Gibb's vocals are pleasant enough, but his delivery has all the excitement of a rubber ducky in a saucer."
--Cyndi Lauper, She's So Unusual (SS) "…Lauper, a prototypical New Wave tootsie who might well be the Real Debbie Harry, has an astonishing voice, sort of a cross between Ronnie Spector and Birgit Nilsson, and when she has the right material to work with she's devastating."
--Willie Nelson, Without a Song (PR) "In small doses Nelson is a singer of much charm and sincerity; in large ones he leaves too much of that saccharine aftertaste."
--Juice Newton, Dirty Looks (AN) "There are a couple of semi-interesting things here, but on the whole, Newton sounds like the typical female singer who does everything her producer tells her to—and forgets why she started singing in the first place."
--Ray Parker, Jr., Woman Out of Control (CA) "…offers enough variety to keep the attention level high, and the beat is calculated to keep the body moving…Most commendable, however, is the fact that, album after album, Parker continues to show originality and taste."
--Teddy Pendergrass, Heaven Only Knows (PG) "Here he shouts, bellows, and writhes in the grip of sexual ardor, though he does not revert to his old cave-man posturing…but the material does not rank with the best he has recorded."
--Lionel Richie, Can't Slow Down (PG) "…full of high-quality, highly listenable songs, though the peaks aren't a high as in his best earlier work. Yet even in second gear, Lionel Richie is better than most other tunesmiths and singers out there."
--Trio, Trio and Error (MP) "The lyrics (those in English, anyway) are refreshingly unpretentious and unambiguous, and the instrumentals are, if not the most technically accomplished, surely among the most impassioned I've heard in some time. I confess to being completely baffled by this album. Delightfully baffled, though."
--Yes, 90125 (MP) "In the absence of strong instrumental ideas, the band is here reduced to trying all possible permutations of Anderson's idiosyncratic, tintinnabulary cadences—in extravagantly overdubbed choruses, elaborate harmonies, and synthesized embellishments."
Other Video Reviews
--Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Daylight Again (CA) "…this is all concert footage. The lighting is accordingly wanting, but the stereo sound is respectable remote stuff. As video discs go, this is very good value for the money."
--Little River Band, Live Exposure (CA) "Musically, it is guaranteed to meet the expectations of any Little River Band fan, but I suspect only a staunch fan will go wild over the visual glimpse this LaserDisc offers."
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