Bradley's Buzz

Random CDs

Here we are once again, taking a trip through the endless array of music that makes me bop, gag and jaunt all around my little shop of antiquities and reproduction furniture. In other words, the music that keeps me from tearing this place up. So this week we've been listening to a variety of things, since I did do a little shopping for myself this past Holiday season. So here's the 7 random CDs that made me bop to and fro this week-

Ani Difranco - Dilate (1996; Righteous Babe)
When I moved to Idaho, I found some fast and furious pals by hanging out at the gay bar Mic N Mac's, luckily they were the coolest bunch of people in the town and are all still my friends. On the jukebox in constant rotation was this little gem of an album by angst ridden Ms. Difranco. Most notably, "Untouchable Face" which somehow tapped into almost everyone's conciousness, particularly mine as I had just left a loathsome fuck face in Minneapolis - "Fuck you, and you're untouchable face" Ani tells her foe and how I too could relate. The whole album is fulled of punch and pissiness and it was the very first CD I bought in Idaho. Of course I sold it off and never replaced it as I had downloaded all the songs years ago, but I did buy a copy once and sent it to my sister as she loved the songs I had her listen to, and now finally I broke down and bought myself a replacement copy. From "Superman" (I used to be a Superman, I would swoop down and save me from myself/ and you were like a phone booth that I somehow stumbled into/ and now I am just like everyone else), all cleverly written, all acoustically and powerfully performed. I've tried other Ani CD's but Dilate is to me her crowned achievement. Even covering "Amazing Grace" with a very pissy mood to it, the "Napoleon" bitch fest about the record business, and a lot of moody broken heart love songs. Dilate is genius and now that I own it again I can't stop playing it.

Michael Jackson - Thriller (1982; Epic)
Everyone in the world owned a vinyl copy of this album once it hit big. At the time I thought it was a tad over rated and of course you couldn't escape MJ or his videos and Thriller is the opitime of how music was forever changed by MTV - not only did his videos sell the album, they were able to launch a total of 7 singles off of one 9 song album, unheard of at the time. When someone becomes huge and overplayed, I usually lose interest quite fast and instead of the popular songs find myself going towards the lesser known tracks. At the time Thriller broke my favorite song was actually "Wanna Be Startin' Something" but now listening to the song, the lyrics are quite awful but the beat, oh yes that beat is still golden. My copy of Thriller is the awesome remastered special additon (thanks Lisa!) with bonus cuts and audio about the songs by producers and arranagers, so it's really quite interesting. But it all boils down to the music itself and I must admit twenty some odd years later I am impressed with the album. I love the singles with equal passion - "Beat It", "Billie Jean", "Human Nature" (my current fav), "PYT", "The Girl Is Mine" with Paul McCartney(which is a song I used to loathe but now isn't quite as bad - though I still cringe when they talk to each other at the end, "oh paul I told you, I'm a lover not a fighter" umm okay Mikey) and the title track which you would think sounds like a dated piece of cheese but amazingly enough it's a very entertaining song. There's still the question as to why this of all the albums released at the time is the best selling album (or close to the best selling album) of all time, but it is a fun piece of music though it's a tad sad to think about what Mr. Jackson has done to himself in recent years. You just have to forget all that and look at the cover of what he used to be and hear the songs. Though once again I question who this damn Billie Jean is, if you recall she shows up in "Wanna Be..." as well. He really had it in for this girl. For the record, I always knew he wasn't the father of her baby, I had no doubt. In fact I have severe doubts he's the father of the kids he dangles off of balconies as well.

Irene Cara - What A Feelin' (1983; Network)
Don't you judge me, this beeatch can sing. In fact not only could she sing back in the 80's, about two years ago she was on Baby One More Time, a strange little TV show where stars of yesterday would come on and perform one of their old hits plus a hit by a more contemporary artist and then they'd be voted on, on the Irene issue, this girl won - though Juice Newton was a close runner up to me. Anyhoos, this is probably the most famous of Irene's small output - coming out just after the mega hit Flashdance...What A Feelin' from the Flashdance film, this album, obviously named after the hit, also contains her next set of top 40 hits (including two more top tens) "Why Me?", "The Dream (Hold On To Your Dream)" and "Breakdance." With the help of Giorgio Moroder, Irene had her little putter on the dance vibe of the time. All mostly dancey rock pop so popular at the time, What A Feelin' was amazingly enough not a very big hit as an album despite launching four hit singles. The other tracks on the albums include a few of the rocky ballads of the 80's though Irene's smoky vocals and fairly interesting lyrics save these from falling too far into the cheese fest of 1983. The highlight (to me at least) is a little synthy pop song called "Romance '83" and it's the very reason I just had to get my hands on a copy of this remastered CD (it's out of print of course). The song set to a technoish beat tells the story of lady and her man who is "You're busy when I call you up on the telephone/ You're playing those Atari games and I'm all alone/ What I need is Romance '83" the bridge is awesome as she sings, "I look back at a time when the world was so young/ a beautiful ecology/ Satisfied with only the land and the trees/ instead we mass produce machines" blaming the technology of the 80's for ruining love while a robotic voice chants "Input/output/ microprocessor dealy/ VCF/ VCA/ modulation decay", an absolute gas of the past as the technology then is nothing compared to what we deal with everyday. My only real complaint of the CD which contains bonus tracks is the version of "Why Me?" included as the album song isn't really, it's the long dance mix. Luckily I have the single mix on my computer so an Irene Cara best of Bubbatunes isn't too far off now. The ultimate highlight of this rare collection is a song called "Talk Too Much", a driving synthy rock number about our girl trying to get into her man's pants but he's always talking is super exciting, the strange thing is it was only available as a B-side which is odd as it's by far the best album track on here. Also notable is the extra bonus remix tracks that appear here include the title track with a bunch of different lyrics. The original song is still better but it's still interesting.

Cher - Cher (1987; Geffen)
Had Cher named her big selling 1998 Believe album Cher, she would've made a history book or two as she recorded in the 60's and then had a brief dry spell until the early 70's when she released an album called Cher, then after a few hits it all dried up again until this 1987 album entitled Cher. But alas Believe wasn't called Cher and that album as fun and perhaps innovative as it was isn't as good as this one. In fact, after all these years it's quite clear to me that Cher can put out numerous excellant singles but in ways of full albums they aren't very good. However, this album seems to be the exception. Perhaps it's because when it came out I listened to it all the time and so all the songs are good. Of course it could also be that after the success of this album she made her next one that sounded almost identical, just like her follow up to Believe was almost a carbon copy to that album. But hey you can't blame the girl for trying to make a few extra bucks. Anyhoos, onto the 1987 album which opens with what is probably my favorite Cher single ever "I Found Someone"; a rockin' pseudo ballad complete with keyboards and the like, this was the song that brought the singing Cher back to light. Written by Michael Bolton and originally recorded by Laura Branigan in 1985, this is to me the best version of the song as Cher rocks it out a tad more than Ms. Branigan did. Then we go onto the Jon Bon Jovi composed "We All Sleep Alone" another brilliant singer from the girl and then an amped up and redone version of the Sonny written song "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" produced by the bon of Jovi in fact, this one rocks harder than the original and I like it. There are a few dudish songs on this 10 song set and "Main Man" is probably the song I hate the most. For some reason they even tried to release it as a single, it's just a slowish type of ballad with Cher spewing out some fairly strange lyrics for a woman of her age and umm personally conflicted life, but then we move onto two of my all time favorite songs "Give Our Love A Fighting Chance" is perhaps full of cliches and even those rock n roll riffs of the 80's that themselves are cliches but it's catchy and I can't help but love it; then Cher cashes in on some of those celebrity C-lists she is on by getting Bonnie Tyler and Darlene Love to sing a pseudo duet on "Perfection" which is so damn catchy it gets me singing everytime. The lyrics seem to fit Cher better than some of these songs as well, "All my life I've been driven by Perfection/ pushed it to the limit every night and day/ oh, I've been driven by Perfection/ but nothing's perfect if love ain't right" and the ultimate in lyrics, "When love is here to stay/and then it's gone today/you've got a list of lovers looking like a resume" - cracks me up every single time. There's some typical 80's fare in here as well including "Working Girl" which sounds like a song that should've been on the soundtrack to the Melanie Griffith movie of the same year, and "Critical Times" which is what one would probably call filter before ending the whole thing with the rock ballad "It's Been Hard Enough Getting Over You" which ironically, Laura Branigan ended up covering a few years later. So for the casual fan there's a million Cher compilations out there and for the extremist, they would want all the crappy albums Cher's put out over the last hundred years but for the semi-fan I would recommend buying one compilation and this album cause you really need to hear the songs that are the cream of the Cher album.

LIZ PHAIR - Exile In Guyville (1993; Matador)
Considered by most to be the best of Liz Phair's output, Exile In Guyville is a supposed reaction album shout back to the Rolling Stones album Exile On Main Street, though most people agree it isn't song by song and there are other songs on here that aren't directly linked to the album. The most notable thing about the album is of course the fact that a woman singing about her sexual aggressions and her complete control over everything even when falling apart wasn't really done by any one else, particular someone who came out of the ashes with an independant album. The greatest thing on here to me is "Flower", a slow aching little story with such classic lyrics as "everytime I see your face/ I get all wet between my legs" and "I'll fuck til your dick turns blue," oh yes, how many times I've said those lines at a bar. After all these years of being a Liz fan this was actually the only regular released album I didn't own, so I finally broke down and bought it. Liz conquers every single bit of the indie scene from arty folk to power pop like "Nobody Said" and she actually makes it all work and of course "Fuck and Run" used to be my theme song. However, I personally am having a hard time getting into it, but I think there's a reason for that and it has to do with the fact that albums of this nature need to be heard with your head phones on, your glass of wine and your memory of what the independant alternative 90's scene was. Perhaps this weekend I'll take the opportunity to really listen to what many consider one of the best albums of all time. Until then, I may have to put on Whitechocolatespaceegg to sing along with.

KENNY ROGERS - 20 Greatest Hits (United Artists)
Okay now you can laugh out loud; go ahead I know you want to. But let me just tell you a few stories - when I was a wee tyke my cousins had a Kenny Rogers album and they loved him, in fact they bought all his albums from what I recall until around 1984 when heavy metal and the teen years hit them, and then last Christmas Juanita (the Leivas' mommy) had brought some cassettes to listen including a Kenny Rogers greatest hits. While looking through the track list I thought, "Hey I remember most of these songs and I really liked them," so this year I thought I'll get the Mother Leivas a Kenny CD and when I found some fairly cheap I bought myself a copy as well. I had tried to find some real cheap ones but it seemed like none of the comps had all the songs I was looking for so I finally found this one. Now just to set the record straight, I do like Kenny's voice and I do remember almost every single one of these hits, particularly since they cover his biggest selling years of the late 70's and early 80's on the UA label, but the songs aren't all as good as I remember. I remember loving "Lucille" (you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille/ four hungry children and a crop in the field - though I confess I used to think it was 400 children) when I was a kid, but it's not as dramatic as I thought it was, "Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town" has this raunchy little beat that I always recall, and that's the one reason I bought this comp over other ones as it was on here, however the song is insane, all about an army vet who's in a wheel chair and pleading with his wife not to take her love to town, it's tragic and not as fun as I thought it was. Other songs are exactly like I remember them, "The Gambler", "Lady" with those oh so Lionel Richie piano keys, and though "Coward Of The County" is still one of my favorites I always wonder what made country singers want to sing about girls being raped and seeking revenge. There's a million songs like that and sickly I like them all including most notably Tanya Tucker's "No Man's Land" whose main character actually takes her own revenge on the man who raped her, here it's the boy raised to mind his dead incarcerated father who told him he didn't have to fight to be a man, but when those damn Gatlin boys rape his girl Becky he decides it's time to fight. Strangely intoxicating don't be surprised when this turns up on compilation CDs I make people. Also included is one of my favorites in "Don't Fall In Love With A Dreamer" which probably has more to do with Kim Carnes singing on it than anything. All in all, this is a good one to put on when feeling nostalgic but I definitely won't be buying any more Kenny though if 1984's Barry Gibb produced Eyes That See In The Dark shows up in a bargain bin I may have no choice but take it home.
The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969; Capitol)
So it occured to me one day that I didn't own a single Beatles CD. Can you even believe it? Arguably the best band in all of rock and roll and not even a greatest hits on my shelf. Since I'm a tad obsessive when it comes to stuff, I decided I didn't want any run of the mill Best Of, but instead wanted to go through and buy the albums from these boys the way they were originally sent out, so I decided I'd start with the albums that were what many considered to be innovative and the ones I knew I always wanted but never got. Now my first impulse was to buy "the white album" but upon closer inspection I realized I wanted Revolver and Abbey Road first. And this week we have been playing this little gem on and off. I knew this was one of the last Beatles album but what I didn't know is that it WAS the last Beatles album ever recorded, another album was released after this but it had already been recorded by the time the boys headed into Abbey Road. I knew I wanted this album the minute I realized "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" was on here as for some reason that is my ultimate favorite Beatles song, I know I'm very strange. But also on this 1969 masterpeice is "Come Together", "Octopus' Garden", and "Something" to name but a few of the familiar tunes. A sort darker than the way the Beatles bounced into the world only a mere 5 years before, the reason this band is so important and influential is the fact that those 5 years saw these boys doing what no one had ever done before, coming up with insane and strange mixes to add to the guitar pop they brought to life. From one direction to another these four boys are remarkable and every single piece of genius is evident on Abbey Road. The songs are more experimental than most of what you hear even today yet they are familiar and long lasting. I sing along with every single song, I feel every single emotion and believe me when you hear me running around screaming "I Want You" you know it's absolutely stunning! There are probably more important Beatles albums and perhaps more entertaining albums in the catalog but since this is my very first Beatles ever (a hundred and one years later) I think it will remain a favorite for years and years.

And there you have the strangely intoxicating music we've listened to this week and the music you should check out in your upcoming week - til next week...

posted by swivek @ 11:19 AM