Bradley's Buzz

Random CDs - Special Edition

In the past I've talked about a few of my girl Benatar's albums including her first three classic albums that were remastered and released last year, and since it is the week of her birthday, I thought I would take this week's random CDs and lace them with Patty love, that's right random Pat Benatar CDs, who could ask for anything more? Certainly not my stereo or I.


Get Nervous (Chrysalis; 1982)
Definitely my third favorite Benatar album of all her releases (right after the first two), for her fourth album Pat had a few new things up her leotard. Actually she dumped the leotard look all together by this time and opted for the new wave short skirts and mini dresses, she had also married her guitarist Neil Giraldo since her last album and one of her guitarists Scott Sheets left being replaced by Charlie Giardino, a keyboardist, and thus with a new found fervor Pat released Get Nervous. From the minute you look at the awesome cover artwork you know you're in for a trip. Beginning with the lead off single "Shadows Of The Night" Pat was onto a new power pop kick, luckily while mixing up the song co-producer Neil felt the song needed something at the intro and accidentally had the vocal track playing by itself, and voila he had his beginning. Not until Whitney's "I Will Always Love You" cover did another song start acapella and actually still grab you so fiercely. From the rocking pop to a keyboard infused pseudo Motown revival in "Looking For A Stranger" Pat's voice sounds better and better with each track, the third track "Anxiety (Get Nervous)" is fuelled by a rounding guitar lick that was performed straight on for all 3 and a half minutes in the days before looping. The video is hilarious, the song is infectious and hilarious and actually quite rocking. Pat turns it down a notch (at least in the beginning) for the ballad "Fight It Out" before belting every single note she has in her little frame and then turning it up to Led Zeppelin-ish rock with one of my favs "The Victim" with Pat belting and belittling "your choice of love was never very bright/ you've got a burning desire to be the victim/ you're bleeding from the soul/ you're hurting from the heart" and then one of my all time Benatar singles "Little Too Late" with its drum rolls and keyboard infusions, it's classic 80's pop and full of that Benatar attitude I love. From here the songs go into even more of a new wavey vein with "I'll Do It" and "Tell It To Her" mixing the keyboard pop with Neil's rock guitar and Pat's anger at full throttle. Interesting to me is that her only co-write on this album is "Tell It To Her" and it's about the only time you'll find one of Pat's angst ridden songs actually talking about her lover having a girlfriend on the side. For the most part she's just usually pissed cause he doesn't treat her right or did her wrong but here she's dumping the bastage cuz he's got a chick on the side, then what was my fav Benatar song for years "I Want Out" with awesome guitar, awesome breaks and beats and Benatar full on voice. The whole thing ends with a strange little ditty "Silent Partner" that begins with a barrelling keyboard whirl before turning into a super fast paced rocker. An excellant way to end one of her most excellant albums. By the way, when i was but a wee boy, the Christmas of 1982 found under my tree was one of those black tape recorders and a brand new cassette to play in it - that's right Get Nervous. I wore that sucker out. Now I own the cassette, a few copies of the vinyl (looking for the mint edition) and on CD. Now if only Chrysalis/Capitol would remaster the sucker it'd be like Christmas 1982 all over again.

Tropico (Chrysalis; 1984)
Between Get Nervous and Tropico was a live album called Live From Earth which contained 8 songs from a few live shows over the 82-83 tour, also on the album were two new studio tracks, more synthesized pop that what she had done before, the two songs "Lipstick Lies" and a little ditty named "Love Is A Battlefield" showed Pat heading into a different direction. As her "Love" single took over the airwaves and MTV in late 1983, Pat started recording a new album. She also found out she was pregnant, so the whole process took on new meaning for the girl. Gone were the crunch hard rock attitudes of albums like In The Heat Of The Night and Crimes Of Passion, and even the new wave pop of Get Nervous was replaced by a sound a tad more organic. Going with the vein brought out in "Love Is A Battlefield" there was more acoustic instruments and ironically (perhaps) more drum machines. The hard pumping was gone and replaced with melody. Not necassarily a great seller compared to her other albums Tropico still launched some top 40 singles including "Ooh Ooh Song" the only pseudo rocker on the album and "We Belong" which became her second biggest selling single of all time. If you're familiar with either of the songs you can get an idea of what Tropico is really about. But Pat isn't playing an old Grandma here either, the album opens with the crunching sounds of "Diamond Field" before moving into the hit single then a calming Spanish styled influence of "Painted Desert" which could be boring if Pat's voice wasn't so wonderful in it, then the 80's push their way in with the drum machine in full balance on both "Temporary Heroes" and "Love In The Ice Age", the thing is both of these songs are really good, no matter how 80's they may sound. The combination of sublte drum machines and the keyboards make it all the more interesting to me. "Ooh Ooh Song" opens what was once the second side before going into the chug a chug backbeat and Spaghetti Western guitars of "The Outlaw Blues" which is probably one of the best cuts on Tropico. A little story of a Jesse James' type of hero, it puts a whole gold mine feeling to the album, and since the title actually comes from the name of an old gold mine you have to wonder if Pat and Neil were trying to come up with a new take on old West. "The Outlaw Blues" shows up again in 1989 on the CD Version of Pat's first best of set Best Shots in a just as cool remixed version. The only real dud on the album is "Suburban King" set to just a small drum and some guitar the story of a laid off and pissed off suburban dad who's bitter over his wife working, I see the idea, and I see the reasoning but when the album came out everyone I know made me skip over the song. Now it appeals to me a tad more and with my new found idea that this could've been a sort of concept album in disguise, I like the suburban cowboy idea, the final two tracks go back to the 80's drum machine keyboard pop of earlier tracks, this time a Tom Kelly/Billy Steinberg (they helped or wrote on 'Fire & Ice', 'Precious Time', 'I'm Gonna Follow You' and 'Like A Virgin') "A Crazy World Like This" reminds us to forget about the little things life throws at us and remember to appreciate those we love, a fitting song for Pat and Niel as they were going in the family way and even more fitting for them is the song they co-wrote together "Takin' It Back" a sort of attack on the music business that put so much pressure on our poor girl in the early days. Eventually anyone with success in the music biz makes a song like this so I guess after 5 albums it was time for Pat to take her swing.

Seven The Hard Way (Chrysalis; 1985)
Pat's mild mood of 1984 and her Tropico album was long gone by the time she released Seven The Hard Way in November of 1985. In between the two albums she had what would unfortunetly be her last top ten hit with "Invincible" from the film The Legend Of Billie Jean. When the new mother Pat wanted to take a bit of time off, Chrysalis called upon her old contract which stipulated she had to make a new album every 9 months or she would forfeit her profits until the new album was completed. Meaning the time she spent to herself, her residual checks from all her previous hits wouldn't go to her. Nice huh? So Pat, angry and forced to make another album headed to the studio with Neil. According to them, everyone involved hates this album but to me I think it's actually quite refreshing after Tropico. There's a new spirit to it all, if Pat was pissed off it only improved her vocals, beginning with the single "Sex As A Weapon" Pat found a song to give her interpretation of modern consumerism and it's reliance on the naked bodies and sex to sell products including her own record company, the critics and perhaps the public didn't buy it and just liked the titalation of it all. It was voted one of the worst singles of all time by some schlub whose only criteria for that was Pat's insistance that it meant more than what it seemed. I think it's one of her more overlooked singles, though I know the video was on MTV all the time and still appears on VH1 a lot. For a more obscure and overlooked single we go to the second track, the absolutely brilliant "Le Bel Age", a rock styled ballad with full on drums, major overdubbs of Pat's voice and some great lyrics written by Robert Tepper - "There comes a time when we should see things clear/ free from the innocence/ there is no circumstance too severe...Le Bel Age/ only our love will remain/ Le Bel Age/ close to the truth once again" and from that point Pat just keeps singing and singing blowing it out for a full five minutes. From there are three great classic rock songs, full of seether and burning energy "Walking In The Underground" and "Red Vision" are probably two of the darker songs Pat has ever done, in between them is a 3 minute rock gem "Big Life" which was sent to radio for promotion but never did much. The songs are all on the gritty side of the Benatar mobile and the lyrics are dark but to me they make up some of the best stuff she had done up to this point. "Walking" begins with a muffled trumpet blowing before Pat chimes in "Cold sweat/ sweat it out in the land of the midnight sun" while "Red Vision" tells a dirty tale of anger taking over by beginning with a winding guitar and crazed drum roll loop before breaking into a choppy beat and Pat's pissiness, the song has some of my favorite lyrics Pat ever sang, "Mind like a steal trap/ heart like a prison/ with tears of rage you've wept in our red vision". Next up our girl covers the 4 Tops "Seven Rooms Of Gloom" which to me is a fairly obscure Motown song to cover but then I discovered Blondie also covered it and it just brings this whole strange feeling to me, like why are these two bands so connected in my world? Anyhoos, Pat's is the stellar version of my two girls as her voice is full of fire and the mummified horns and grinding guitar and drums makes this thing more horror than desparate love song. If you check on You Tube you can find a live performance of the song that Pat did on MTV Awards in 1985 in a crazy gold wig, but be prepared she rocks the house, and sings live! "Run Between The Raindrops" is a beautiful little song Neil wrote for his new little girl Haley - 'you've got to run between the raindrops if you want to see the sun/ run, run, run between the raindrops/ you're treading water on a river of tears/ and I don't know what to do/ I can take a beating/ but I ain't gonna let it happen to you..." Though Pat didn't want to do it, Chrysalis put "Invincible" on the album, which I'm sure helped sell it but Pat, at the time felt it didn't fit in with the rest of the album. Perhaps not, sure the lyrics are full of fire and passion like most of the album but the Mike Chapman production does have a little more melody and less darkness than the rest of Seven The Hard Way but it hardly stands out like a sore thumb or anything and actually moves you into the final cut "The Art Of Letting Go" which is a kind of combination of the dark sounds here and the light pop on Tropico, so it has that sort of "Invincible" type of mass appeal.

Wide Awake In Dreamland (Chrysalis; 1988)
Pat took a few years off after Seven The Hard Way and seeing as I was practically a homeless runaway around the summer of 1988, I had no idea she finally had a new album coming out, but one day on WIFC they played the awesome "All Fired Up" by Pat and I knew the world was all good again. The song is probably one of her best of all time, starting with a rousing guitar intro before the drums pump in for a fast paced rock and roll tribute to positivity, "living with my eyes closed/going day to day/ I never had a reason/ I never cared anyway" before the chorus kicks in "Now I believe there comes a time/ when everything just falls in line/ we live and learn from our mistakes/ the deepest cuts are healed by faith" and for some strange reason the song never even nears cheesiness. Smartly enough the first single is also the opener for the Wide Awake In Dreamland album. The whole album plays to two ideals, the happiness you can find and need to find and the drama that leads you to the depths of darkness, of course they're strung together in those subjects by what was once each side of the record. After "All Fired Up", the band slows down for a semi tribute to Bob Marley called "One Love (Song Of The Lion)" a nice little groove drives the song with lyrics about searching for peace, before the rocking "Let's Stay Together" that bangs from beginning to end with Pat delivering with ferocity, then another slow and sweet ditty "Don't Walk Away" which was released as the second single and though it didn't chart in the US, it was #42 in the UK, a very great feat for Miss Pat since her most famous songs didn't even score that high across the pond. The Nick Gilder co-written ballad has Pat reaching the stars with her high octaves and the break down with overdubs of her soprano and her growl is awesome, "Too Long A Soldier" is the following track and my favorite on the album, a 6 minute Spanish styled rock ballad about soldiers and war and its effect which ends with Pat singing a line from "The Star Spangled Banner", it's truly brilliant. The uglier side of the world is reflected on the next batch of songs as the rocking breaks in for "Cool Zero" an urban tale of mischeif and hijinxs, "Cerebral Man" is an unusual song in the Pat canon, a fairly sophisticated little song about lost love that is probably considered filler but really needs to be heard, then the poor Johnny who could or would never amount to anything in "Lift 'Em On Up", followed by the child abuse tale of Melissa in "Suffer The Little Children" which Pat wrote after a real life case involving a kidnapped little girl named Melissa, and the final and my second favorite track, the title track which begins with whishing guitar rolls and breaks into a new wavey rock song supposedly about drug addiction, but with the great vocal performance, obscure yet entertaining lyrics and great instrumentation, it could be about nothing and it would still be a classic Benatar song.

Gravity's Rainbow (Chrysalis; 1993) Pat's last album for the label she recorded for since her debut, Gravity's Rainbow is my favorite Pat Benatar album right behind Get Nervous. This may come as a shock (or surpise at least) to others since its probably an album most people don't even know about. For that it's a crying shame. Plus it's one of my favorite Benatar looks ever. That long hair, the 70's inspired clothing, the hats. Awesome! In between her 1988 album and this one, Pat recorded her blues album True Love; regarded as a flop because it didn't sell as well or gain as much airplay as other Benatar recordings, the experience left our girl more in control and happier than she had been in a long time. The idea of recording live and with a group sent her to the studio with a whole new attitude and the organic feel is very strong on Gravity's Rainbow. She rocks it out just like contemporaries of the time, this is after all an album from the 90's so don't look to it for a throw back to Pat's hey day of the 80's because these songs seem more influenced by the grungey punk that was popular around the time. Not that Pat is at all trying to be young and hip and go against her own grain, instead they've taken that raw feel and put it together with their natural ideals of melodic pop. What comes across is an album of sing along toe tappin' rockin' and smackin' grunge pop if you will. The opening of the album is actually just a few notes on a piano with a gigantic punch at the end before "Everybody Lay Down" comes flying up from the underground, this song was #1 on the Rock Radio stations and still Chrysalis opted not to release it as an official single, though promo copies were out; the song is along the lines of "All Fired Up" only instead of celebrating the people it's a throw down to the people who are just giving up on everything, "Everybody go round/ go round/ everybody lay down/ lay down/ don't nobody make a sound/ everybody lay down" before her growl comes barrelling in "everybody say hey!/ don't nobody say nooooo!" It's awesome! Then the opening guitar ripple of "Somebody's Baby" follows, "he used to be somebody's baby/ he used to matter", perhaps a strange subject for a rock single but the thought that the homeless, the drug addled, all the like were once somebody's light, the video is absolutely amazing and should've been huge. It's also very touching, you can view it here.

The rest of the album continues building up from those opening tracks, rousing rockers like "Santuary", "Tradin' Down" and "Disconnected" show that Pat didn't lose an ounce of spunk during her blues album, while the soulful "You & I" and the ballad "Everytime I Fall Back" show the toned down Pat in just as good of light as the rock songs. After the lack of promotion Chrysalis Records put into the album, and the third line of executives since Pat's signing in 1979, our girl asked for the money they owed her and walked off to do what she wanted. As for her Chrysalis swan song Gravity's Rainbow, if you find this one in the bargain bin, and you more than likely will, buy it! It don't matter if you don't remember the singles or know any of the songs, by the time you're done listening you will have a new favorite Pat Benatar album.

Innomorata (CMC; 1997)
Pat cut her hair, changed record labels and took about ten years off before coming back with Innomarata in early 1997. This album holds a little bit of special memory for me as it came out when I was living in Minneapolis and because I actually lived in a big city I knew Pat would be making an apperance on her tour and sure enough no longer did I buy the album before Pat showed up. I had seen her on her True Love tour but of course she only performed the songs from the blues set and this was the first time I got to enjoy Pat in full on rock mode, plus it was a small club tour so she was right in front of me! I loved it. As for the music, Pat tones down the rock that was on Gravity's Rainbow but keeps her acoustic love in full bloom. Her vocals are as tight and great as ever and the first single "Strawberry Wine" was so different from anything she sang or did before I was ready to send it to the alternative radio station with a fake name on it just to see how much airplay it would get wihtout the Benatar moniker on it.In fact, most of the songs on the album don't sound like classic or even 90's Benatar, it's a long winded jam out for Pat and Neil and their new band members. Utilizing violins and keyboards, every song has a more impromptu feel to it than the full productions of her early work. There aren't any really bitter Benatar bits on here either, but that doesn't mean the songs aren't good. "Only You" is a lasting testament to her loved one and your own when you hear it, but it's a rocking little song that doesn't milk out any fake sentiment. "Angry" and "I Don't Want To Be Your Friend" sound like bitch fests on titles only but both are subdued little tracks, "Angry"'s chorus actually is "I'm not angry anymore" while the Spanish influenced "Friend" is about lost love and sure she doesn't want to be his friend cause she wants to be his lover. "At This Time" the follow up promo only single to "Strawberry Wine" rocks it out acoustically as Pat tries to find the time to hook up with someone, and the guitar only "Papa's Roses" is so sad and touching it should be illegal. The story of a father who paid more attention to his beloved roses than his own children, it once again doesn't falter into schmaltz and I think that lies soley in Pat's performance. It's hard to find schmaltz when there's so much convictioin her voice. She sings everything like she believes it, and if she believes it I sure as hell am not getting into her pint sized way.

And that my friends is six more lovely little albums as to why Pat Benatar is a rock and roll goddess and now you have some albums to check out and love just as much (well mabye as much) as I do!

posted by swivek @ 2:39 PM