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Movie and Entertainment News >> Music >> Styles >> 80s
80s News
Fortunately, '70s rock was relatively well populated with moderately heavy guitar rock bands featuring soulful lead singers. However, far fewer of these such artists continued to record long enough to be intact when the '80s arrived. Revered veteran guitarist Robin Trower turned out to be a welcome exception to this pop music generality, as his band produced consistently on the strength of both Trower's pulsating, heavily distorted playing style and the gravelly, rumbling vocals of Scottish bass player Jim Dewar. This lineup of the band established itself as one of '70s rock's most potent power trios, and although Trower traversed the rest of the '80s with different bandmates - including Cream legend Jack Bruce and another underrated Scottish-born lead singer in Davey Pattison - Trower remained a key if seldom spotlighted '80s music figure.
"Ready for the Taking" is merely one of many slow-burn tracks from 1980's Victims of the Fury, but it may be the one that most literally emits sparks and rising steam as thick as the artificial smoke machines of '70s stadiums rained down upon audiences during the arena rock era. This is timeless hard rock with nary a keyboard to be found, and that's more than just as well given the fact that Trower's guitars leave little room for extraneous instrumental piddling. Though released just barely on the fringe of the '80s (some music resources list this as a 1979 recording and others as 1980), it's important to note that someone was bothering to make raw, minimally produced guitar-fueled music at this time. If only such good things could have lasted a bit longer.
- Sample or download "Ready for the Taking" here.
- Compare prices on Robin Trower CDs here.
- Top Multiple-Guitar Songs of the '80s
- Top Hard Rock Songs of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Chrysalis
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Robin Trower's "Ready for the Taking" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 22:19:24.
Tulsa, Oklahoma native Dwight Twilley served as one of the leading lights of the power pop revival of the mid '70s in America, which almost guarantees that his music never reached as many ears as it should have. When Twilley went solo at the end of the '70s, he somehow became even more obscure, releasing records that radio wouldn't touch and the industry wouldn't promote. Even the advent of new wave and college rock during the early '80s couldn't help Twilley's 1982 release, Scuba Divers, an album that featured refreshing acoustic arrangements and a guitar-centered Beatles fixation. Nevertheless, the synthesizer-obsessed new wave needed Twilley's throwback mentality far more than anyone ever acknowledged at the time.
That's why songs from this record like "Touchin' the Wind" deserve to have their unsung and relatively unheard status challenged. Twilley stands with Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello as one of the era's finest singer-songwriter voices in terms of both lyric-writing and expressive vocals. It's never too late to learn this truth as a music enthusiast, and song for song this record doesn't disappoint - despite some lukewarm reviews of its content at the time. Lovers of songcraft and the uniquely American modern singer-songwriter sound should stock up on some Twilley records, from his heyday years when he led his own band to his less noticed solo output of the '80s. Myself included, of course.
- Sample or download "Touchin' the Wind" here.
- Compare prices on Dwight Twilley CDs here.
- College Rock Pop Songs of the '80s
- Top Nick Lowe Songs of the '80s
- Top Elvis Costello Songs of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Capitol Records
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Dwight Twilley's "Touchin' the Wind" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Sunday, January 29th, 2012 at 13:13:25.
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.
- Sample or download "Bend Down" here.
- Compare prices on Love CDs here.
- Compare prices on Prince CDs here.
- Top 10 Prince Songs of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Rhino
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Arthur Lee's "Bend Down" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Saturday, January 21st, 2012 at 20:04:21.
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.
- Sample or download "Heavenly Blue" here.
- Compare prices on Burton Cummings CDs here.
- Top Soft Rock Songs of the '80s
- Top Soft Rock/Adult Contemporary Artists of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Columbia
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Burton Cummings' "Heavenly Blue" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Thursday, January 12th, 2012 at 22:45:02.
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.
- Listen to "Waitress in a Diner" in its entirety here.
- Top '80s Songs of Self-Pity & Self-Absorption
- Jamie Sheriff's Official Music Website
- Compare prices on Terry Reid CDs here.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Polydor
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Jamie Sheriff's "Waitress in a Diner" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 at 22:22:52.
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.
- Sample or download "Living in a F*!#king Time Warp" here.
- Compare prices on Paul Di'Anno CDs here.
- Top Def Leppard Songs of the '80s
- Top 10 Hair Metal Ballads of the '80s
EP Cover Image Courtesy of Food for Thought
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Gogmagog's "Living in a F*!#ing Time Warp" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 at 20:30:55.
At the risk of making this week's installment seem even more complicated than it already is, this superb synth pop track - which features one of the finest keyboard riffs and melodic hooks of the era - actually qualifies as a "forgotten gem" only in the United States. U.K. duo Yazoo - consisting of founding Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke and singer Alison Moyet - was forced to take on the similar but truncated moniker Yaz when an ultimately fleeting American band called Yazoo threatened the pair with substantial legal action. Of course, this name controversy may have had absolutely nothing to do with why this tune climbed to No. 2 on the U.K. pop charts in 1982 even as it stalled far short of the U.S. Billboard Top 40. Even so, there's no reasonable explanation for the massive disparity of mainstream success for this track in the two largest English-speaking pop music markets.
Quite simply, "Only You" is an unquestionable pop masterpiece, a fact of which I was recently reminded through a recent, impromptu viewing of the 1998 teen romantic comedy Can't Hardly Wait. During the film's climactic if slightly unconvincing final scene, this tune cuts through the impassioned if easily parodied performances of Ethan Embry and Jennifer Love Hewitt to demand reverent notice. This doesn't explain why I had never been particularly struck by the track through several cable viewings of the film, but that's beside the point. Great music - even that of the highest order - will always find its way to appreciative ears eventually. I can only blame the ear(s) of the beholder in this case. Nevertheless, I will take this opportunity to puzzle over the fact that while the film is admittedly inspired by '80s teen films and '80s pop music, it creates a bit of a disorienting vibe because it is clearly not set during the '80s. I'm not sure how much this matters, but it may be another way in which the film is at times unconvincingly retro. Barry Manilow as a major plot hinge? Really?
- Sample or download "Only You" here.
- Compare prices on Yazoo CDs here.
- Synth Pop Genre Profile
- Howard Jones Artist Profile
- Top Keyboard Riffs of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Rhino/Warner Bros.
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Yazoo's "Only You" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Monday, December 19th, 2011 at 23:05:38.
Despite its origin as a prefabricated soul and R&B outfit concocted by Soul Train producer Don Cornelius, this vocal trio made some genuinely intriguing dance-pop throughout the '80s. Core members Jeffrey Daniel, Howard Hewett and Jody Watley (who would later become a late-'80s pop superstar) combined to create several spirited singles that performed well on Billboard's niche R&B charts. Somehow, however, only two of those songs even flirted with the pop Top 20, the generally well-remembered "Dead Giveaway" and "Dancing in the Sheets." This is particularly hard to believe given the massive hitmaking accomplishments of Watley once she launched a solo career in 1987.
"A Night to Remember" happens to be a particularly strong example of the group's signature sound, serving out romance and funk aplenty on the strength of smooth, layered male and female vocals. Music like this may have been dismissed as unsubstantial back in the day, but in retrospect this is fairly well-grounded stuff, based in soulful R&B grooves and tasty if slightly artificial beats. The talent of Watley would later be proven many times over, but Daniel and Hewett never got much appreciation for their fine contributions to the era's dance-flavored pop music. This track should go quite far in rectifying that oversight.
- Listen to "A Night to Remember" in its entirety and watch the music video here.
- Compare prices on Shalamar CDs here.
- Compare prices on Jody Watley CDs here.
- Quiet Storm Genre Profile
Album Cover Image Courtesy of SOLAR Records
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Shalamar's "A Night to Remember" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Sunday, December 11th, 2011 at 22:05:33.
It may be true that the early-'80s landscape of new wave, synth pop, post-punk and college rock contained its share of quirky, playful, and just plain odd artists. Nevertheless, the partnership of brothers Ron and Russell Mael helped Sparks to be one of the most consistently challenging groups of this type over the last 30-plus years. Always sporting a pop sensibility of some kind, the music of Sparks heavily employs synthesizers and other keyboard sounds, but like another impossible-to-categorize American band of roughly the same period - The Tubes - Sparks will inject loud guitars and biting lyrics at the most unexpected moments.
This unpredictability does not necessarily define 1982's "I Predict," a tune showcased on that same year's unforgettably and provocatively titled Angst in My Pants. Even so, the rather structured format of this tune ultimately refuses to follow even its own rules, as early lyrics questioning the Queen of England's actual gender and suggesting that famous entertainment dog Lassie and Elvis Presley once carried on a torrid affair eventually shift in tone to subjects far more serious. Of course, this doesn't happen until nearly the end of the tune, but when the wallop of grave prognostications arrives, it's quite a doozy. "They're gonna stop having the sun/So you better get tan now" has turned out to be downright prophetic in the three decades that have passed since this single's release. And that lyric's facets of meaning - in retrospect - confirm that Sparks has never been merely a goofy alternative pop band. Still, it's quite likely that fun is the primary purpose of this truly unique long-term brotherly musical project.
- Sample or download "I Predict" here.
- Compare prices on Sparks CDs here.
- Top New Wave Artists of the '80s
- Top College Rock Pop Songs of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Atlantic/Phantom Import Distribution
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Sparks - "I Predict" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 21:54:35.
During the past week or two, I've been relishing my recent discovery of 3wk.com, particularly its classic underground Internet radio station that has allowed me to hear some stunning stuff - both partially known and totally unknown to me - that I never thought possible. While most of this music hails from the '60s and '70s, the entire situation got me to thinking, once again, about the vast array of "unheard music" that spans all eras. Perhaps in the case of music more than any other media, ultimate state of worthiness has absolutely nothing to do with (and many times compares inversely to) a selection of music's basic level of availability.
Anyway, I won't rant anew about that situation and run the risk of sounding tiresomely repetitious. Instead, allow me to point to one of the most interesting, amusing and thought-provoking curiosities of the '80s: alternative roots rock band Colorblind James Experience. I've heard the delightfully off-kilter "Considering a Move to Memphis" a handful of times on satellite radio over the years, and each time I've made a mental note to try and find out what the deal is with this odd but somehow joyous geographical meditation. Ultimately, the lyrics of late Oswego, New York legend Chuck Cuminale take every risk here of sticking too closely to an established meter and rhyme scheme, but the man is so skilled and so lovingly motivated to make a tribute to one of America's greatest music towns that everything comes off smooth, substantial and brilliant. Among many memorable lines, the song's final verse lyrics resonate long after they are sung/stated: "When I arrive in Memphis I'll put a sign out on the door - 'It's ok to disturb me, that's what I came here for.'" Just perfect for when you need a truly alternative musical bonk over the head.
- Listen to "Considering a Move to Memphis" in its entirety here.
- Compare prices on Colorblind James Experience CDs here.
- Top 10 Obscure & Underground Artists of the '80s
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Fundamental/Red Rhino
This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Colorblind James Experience - "Considering a Move to Memphis" originally appeared on About.com 80s Music on Saturday, November 26th, 2011 at 20:28:05.