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BubbaTUNESday Cher - Prisoner

bub 127 Cher – Prisoner (1979; 2008)
(June 17, 2008)

It didn’t take long for our girl to hop back onto the recording stool and come up with another album for Casablanca – in fact by my calculation, it was probably only a few months for Prisoner, came out in 1979 as well.

The album didn’t do nearly as well as Take Me Home, but according to those know it alls at Wikipedia, the album did go gold though it didn’t seem to chart very high – if at all.

Regardless of the chart positions and sales, this was an album Cher apparently wanted to make. I’m sure Casablanca pressured her into another disco-fied album but our sassy gal was a little too smart to just go that route.

Inserted in between dancey disco is some rock and some pop and some of just about everything. An 8 song collection handled and mostly written by Bob Esty and Michele Aller with Cher supervising, these were all songs for Cher about Cher for Cher fans. She wanted the peeps to know what was going on in her life and how she felt, but couldn’t be bothered to write the songs herself (I kid.)

None the less, we have some interesting dips into Cher’s world – the ultimate and best track on the whole set is “Hell On Wheels” – an opus ride into roller disco with some rock edges to it. This was when Cher was actually spinning her roller skates at LA roller discos every night. It’s completely brilliant and just happened to have “Git Down (Guitar Groupie)” from Take Me Home as a B-side on the 7” making it one of the best singles to come out in the 70s.

“Holdin’ Out For Love” bee bops through a poppy keyboard and was the second single. The story of being tripped up in love before and deciding this time she’s “holding on/ holding in/ holdin out for love..” It’s actually pretty catchy.

The opening title track is an opus of sound that fills the whole first six minutes of the album and is one of the highlights of the album, but in all honesty as much as I wanted to love Prisoner as a whole album it kind of falls short.

Mirror Image and Outrageous! are classic examples into the personality of Cher – particularly how the paparazzi and people saw her. The cool keyboard lines in “Mirror Image” make it stand up a bit more than “Outrageous” but in both cases I think the lyrics kind of weight it down.

The same goes for “Boys & Girls” a full on rock song full of fire and fun, you would think. Once those lyrics start flying out it’s hard to keep concentrated. There’s just something that doesn’t work for me.

While “Shoppin’” is just something everyone has to hear. It’s about, well shoppin’ – one of Cher’s past times and as much as I would even love to love it just on sheer camp value, I think she’s too serious about it for it be just for fun; while “Holy Smoke!” is actually catchy and fun as she talks about the ills of the modern world. With a little re-write here and there it would’ve been great!

I may be acting a bit harsh on Prisoner, after all I did take all this time to put together the music, do the artwork, include lyrics and the whole shizz – but that has a lot to do with the fact the artwork and promo works for Prisoner are brillz! The best cover shot of Cher’s albums ever! Plus the whole of the album is actually a piece of Cher history and it’s definitely worth hearing and having for the big Cher fans.

A CD version was released as an import along with the Take Me Home but I think the album was remixed and the fact is it’s damn hard and expensive to find and with the ultimate brilliance of the album artwork on both Take Me Home and Prisoner, neither of which was reproduced for that CD, the Bubbatunes are really the best Cher re-releases ever – plus we have bonus tracks and bonus bonus tracks.

The 7” versions of the two singles “Hell On Wheels” and “Holdin’ Out For Love” are here as is the super cool “Bad Love” – a song she did in all Giorgio Moroder coolness for the film Foxes in 1980 (a movie which had “On The Radio” by Donna Summer as the theme song)… and thanks to Amoeba Records, I found the 12” of “Hell On Wheels” which is even longer than the album version plus it was backed with a 12” version of “Git Down (Guitar Groupie)” and though neither are mentioned in my artwork, they are here in the download just for you!... Don’t tell Cher.

Cher – Prisoner (bub126)
Track List:
01. Prisoner 02. Holdin’ Out For Love 03. Shoppin’ 04. Boys & Girls 05. Mirror Image 06. Hell On Wheels 07. Holy Smoke! 08. Outrageous
Bonus Tracks:
09. Hell On Wheels (Single Version) 10. Holdin’ Out For Love (Single Version) 11. Bad Love 12. Hell On Wheels (12” Version) 13. Git Down (Guitar Groupie) (12” Version)

DOWNLOAD CHER – PRISONER

Labels: bub127, BubbaTUNESday, Bubbtunes, Cher, Hell On Wheels, Prisoner

posted by swivek @ 11:53 AM