Bradley's Buzz

BubbaTUNESday - bub135 Cher - Misses

Welcome back to our BubbaTUNESday!

First I have some pretty cool news, so despite all the work and effort I put into my Bubbatunes to create some reissued albums that are no longer or never have been on CD, every now and then it's all for naught cuz some company up and actually puts out the CD. A few months ago, Wounded Bird released Lisa Hartman's Til My Heart Stops and I was ecstatic and now in really cool news a company called Cherry Pop released the first two Kim Wilde albums with bonus tracks and album art and next month they will release the third album.. so someone finally got it right! And now those Kim Wilde releases are officially out of print on Bubbatunes...

But what is in release from Bubbatunes are two brand new ones coming up in the next few weeks but before we can get to them, we have to look at the last two from 2008 - a couple of compilations that were made as gifts but really are a gift to myself as well... and our first one is a certified diva who has had some ups and downs, we are going to concentrate on the downs

bub135 CHER - MISSES (December 2008)
When she's good she's really good and when she's bad - she's divine.. Cher has certainly had her ups and downs in her career but the beatch keeps coming back, but in between her numerous come back success stories there are a slew of lesser charting songs that are still very entertaining if not downright good. I decided with all the Best Of Cher albums out there it was high time there was a Worst of Cher sort of.. as these songs aren't bad, they just weren't hits.

So we have Cher Misses which spans most of her career lows opening with some great 60's gems - some which were on her excellant though overlooked album 3864 Jackson Highway which was recorded at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. These cuts are some of my all time fav Cher songs including her cover of "For What It's Worth" (you may not know the title but it's the Buffalo Springfield song 'stop children what's that sound/ everybody look what's goin down") which was a single but didn't chart, then there's a B-side "The First Time" about well you can guess, but boy is she ptent on it, "Classified 1A" is a super cool Sonny Bono Vietnam song that is apparantly one of Cher's favorite songs, and my favorite of the bunch, "I Walk On Guilded Splinters" is so cool you will just about wet your undies.

After this string of songs, Cher started to have some hits again both with Sonny and without catapulting to the early 70's with the Dark Lady, Gypsys songs. Then her variety show ended, she split with Sonny and signed on with David Geffen at Warner Brothers Records where she wanted to re-emerge as a rock star. It didn't really pan out.

1975's album Stars is considered by many Cher fans to be her best performance ever and it certainly does have its moments including the Indian Reservation vs. Government sting in "Geronimo's Cadillac" which was lifted as the first unsuccessful single from the album. Also her cover of "Bell Bottom Blues" is really, really good.

Since Stars didn't do much to promote Cher as a rock goddess, she upped the ante for the next album I'd Rather Believe In You in 1976 complete with hippy cool schtick looks on the cover, but alas the album didn't provide any hits or even bother charting but it gave us a cool single with "Long Distance Love Affair" (not the Sheena Easton song) and another cover, this time "Knock On Wood" done in a cool R&B stomp like the original and two years before Amii Stewart would rearrange it and create a disco classic.

Warner Brothers decided Cher's newfound rock woman wasn't fairing very well so they set her back up with Snuff Garrett who had delivered the Dark Lady, Gypsys etc. songs. So what we get from her album Cherished is a slightly watered down version of those story songs including the single "War Paint & Soft Feathers" which is basically a combo of "Half Breed" and "Gypsys Tramps & Theives" but its good, it just came out about four years too late.

Cher would record one more album with Warner Brothers Allman & Woman, a duet set with her then husband of two minutes Gregg Allman (also released in 1977) but it didn't chart and there weren't any songs that really jumped out at me to even bother putting on Missed... so we move to a more successful time.

1979 brought Cher another comeback when she signed to Casablanca and they made her make a disco album...she got a gold album and a top ten single with Take Me Home out of the deal but it was a little harder to follow up. The second single "Wasn't It Good" was re-arranged into both a 7" single and a 12" version and though it charted very low on the charts (enough to warrant being on this comp) it wasn't a hit and you won't see it on very many Cher compilations but it's just as good if not better than "Take Me Home."

Also from the Take Me Home album comes "Git Down (Guitar Groupie)" which was the flip side to a single released from the next album (we'll get to that) but it's just so damn good it should've been a hit... a little more rock than disco it's all about a lady from the Valley who follows the hottest axe in town cuz she really knows how to git on down... it's excellant.

The final Take Me Home release was the third single, a country/pop song that comes out of nowhere - "It's Too Late To Love Me Now" is actually a really good ballad but again it didn't come anywhere near the top 100 chart.

Following the moment of success with Take Me Home, our girl recorded another album right away Prisoner. An album that lunged between discofied pop and new wave pop and sometimes would be rock. It really isn't as good as I remembered it but it certainly has its moments including the lead off single "Hell On Wheels" which did score low on the charts but certainly didn't classify as a hit. The second single "Holdin' Out For Love" is super fun and bouncy and the Pointer Sisters would even record it as a Bside around 1980 but again Cher didn't score with this one though I think it would've made a more radio friendly single than "Hell On Wheels" still it didn't chart anywhere.

Our girl tried one more disco tune out for size with "Bad Love" produced by Giorgio Moroder for the soundtrack to the film Foxes in 1980. Though it wasn't released as a single it's a great song and needed to be a hit.

Cher's final Casablanca album found her as the front person to the rock outfit Black Rose. Once again she was after a rock goddess moniker and once again it didn't work out for her. The album, the would be tour, the man she was dating in the band - it all fell to crap but it didn't give us one kick ass tune to place on Misses - "Never Should've Started" where Cher starts singing and I swear you don't even recognize her - right away anyway.

Two years later Cher signed onto Columbia Records and gave us one of her own personal favorite songs "I Paralyze" produced by John Farrar, Olivia Newton-John's main go to man. The album fizzled, the single fizzled - the lead off single (girl groupie bop pop) "Rudy" failed... and to tell you the truth I don't know why. I remember Cher performing "I Paralyze" On Solid Gold like every week yet the song didn't chart at all. The whole album is pretty good and Cher says she still plans on re-recording "I Paralyze" one day, we'll see how that works out for her.

After I Paralyze, Cher hit the big screen and began making movies and lots of money, so she decided to try once again and be a rock goddess and this time it worked. Her 1987 self titled rock album was a big hit with three fairly big singles but one final single didn't quite do it for the radio world - "Main Man" was the final single released from Cher following the success of "I Found Someone", "We All Sleep Alone" and to a smaller extent "Skin Deep".

But because Cher is one of my all time favorite albums I had to include two songs that weren't singles but could've been huge - I just bet. "Perfection" is a rocking ditty that starts off with Cher singing with Bonnie Tyler and Darlene Love about how perfect life could be except love sucks, one of my all time fav lines ever is in the song - "when love is here to stay / then its gone today/ you've got a list of lovers lookin' like a resume" Ha!

The other song from Cher on our collection is "Give Our Love A Fightin' Chance" which is full of gun and fighting cliches but rocking and I love it and you should too.

Our final song on Misses is another one that is from this big height period of Cher's career but didn't score as high as her other singles of the time - "You Wouldn't Know Love" is another bitchy rocker from her Heart Of Stone album (which I believe is one of her biggest selling albums) and it did score on the charts but not in the way the other singles "If I Could Turn Back Time", "Just Like Jesse James" and the title track did..

So there you have Cher in all of her missed glory... I hope you enjoy it. Next week we look at our last compilation from last year and it's from a gal I like to think of as forever ciji - can u figure it out?


bub135 CHER - MISSES (2008)
Track List: 01. I Walk On Guilded Splinters 02. For What It's Worth 03. The First Time 04. Classified 1A 05. Geronimo's Cadillac 06. Bell Bottom Blues 06. Long Distance Love Affair 07. Knock On Wood 08. War Paint & Soft Feathers 09. Git Down (Guitar Groupie) 10. Wasn't It Good (Single Version) 11. It's Too Late To Love Me Now 12. Hell On Wheels (Single Version) 13. Holdin' Out For Love (Single Version) 14. Bad Love 15. Never Should've Started 16. Rudy 17. I Paralyze 18. Give Our Love A Fighting Chance 19. Perfection 20. Main Man 21. You Wouldn't Know Love

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Labels: bub135, BubbaTUNESday, Cher, Rarities

posted by swivek @ 8:16 AM