Christopher Cross - "Christopher Cross" (1979)

Rating: 4
Verdict: Blue Bin

I read enough about music that I sort of knew what to expect from this album, even though I don't think I'd heard any songs from it besides "Sailing." Quiet soft-rock with pianos, strings and horns that apparently dominated the radio in 1979 and won five Grammies (I will resist the obligatory potshot at the Grammies since I'm sure my target audience shares my opinion on them). Unsurprisingly, Cross has faded into obscurity given that there is little of lasting musical value here.

Still, this record does boast a 4.5 star rating on allmusic.com so probably deserves a dismissal that is longer than one paragraph. Thus, I'll give it two! Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes that this "was a hell of a record -- it just was a hell of a soft rock record, something that doesn't carry a lot of weight among most audiences." His general point is the album is consistent, well-crafted, and has strength beyond the singles. And at some level, I don't think he's incorrect. The songs do have hooks, are mostly memorable, and there's no particular drop in quality to be found. But they're also so limp and languid that there's just no way I can imagine myself feeling emotional stimulation from this music. My reward to Mr. Cross for his craftsmanship is giving this record a 4 out of 10 instead of a 1 or a 2, and I have a strong feeling that his later albums would be in that range for me, considering this is supposed to be his best. But it's still a no doubt blue bin record.

The Clarke/Duke Project - "II" (1983)

Rating: 4

Verdict: Blue Bin

Although I have still been making my way through my album collection and merrily blue-binning records, it has come to my attention that I haven't actually been reviewing them. So I'm back to review the Clarke/Duke  Project!

I actually own three records by Stanley Clarke, who for those who don't know (I didn't), is best known for his bass playing on his own solo fusion records in the 70s as well as those of various jazz supergroups. The other two records I own, Journey to Love and School Days, I rather enjoyed and showcased a surprising level of diversity and inventiveness on Clarke's part in addition to the expected hyperactive bass playing (also worthwhile). And yet, prior to listening to this record, released just seven years after School Days, I looked up the allmusic.com rating and saw a 1.5 star rating. I doubted the veracity of such a low mark but really shouldn't have.

Indeed, Clarke was a victim of the same mass loss of taste in the 1980s that affected so many other musicians who released excellent music in the 60s and 70s. Having released several seminal jazz albums, he performed some inscrutable calculus that led him to the conclusion that the next way to proceed as an artist was to release albums of poorly sung dance-pop backed by drum machines and synthesizers. There are occasional glimpses on this record of Clarke's stupendous bass playing as well as a jazz-informed sense of melody. But I believe that these aspects may well make this particular album worse instead of better since they obscure whatever hooks there may well be. I will admit that the record isn't totally abysmal, but what it is is pointless and a disappointment compared to what came before. Blue bin!

Crystal Gayle - "We Must Believe In Magic" (1977)

Rating: 5

I own two records by Crystal Gayle, who I had never heard of prior to that fateful day when I bought four boxes of records for $70. Apparently she was a somewhat popular country singer in the late 70s and early 80s but has faded into obscurity today, being most notable for being the younger singer of Loretta Lynn and having recorded a soundtrack album with Tom Waits. Both of these facts give her some credibility in my eyes, and although I am not exactly a country buff, I did find the pure country songs on We Must Believe in Magic to be tolerable. Gayle has a nice, though not exceptional voice and she's preferable to most modern country for sure.

The problem with this record is that the notion of trying to have a crossover hit had already seeped its way into Nashville, and several tracks here are misguided attempts to blend the horn section and rhythm of a disco song with the steel guitars of a country song (well, it was 1977). The main offenders are the disco-country cover of Cole Porter's "It's All Right with Me" (as awful as it sounds) and the closing title track, a synthesizer-led adult contemporary ballad that really isn't country at all and featuring lyrics about Alpha Centauri, ensuring that it would be dated by 1978.

So apart from the efforts to be modern, the country songs here are decent. But I'm not a country buff, so those songs aren't enough for me to rate this as a good album. They're decent, but they're not George Jones. Blue bin!

Mr. Mister - "Welcome to the Real World" (1985)

Rating: 3

Mr. Mister was a group of L.A. session musicians who formed in the early 80s to put their own spin on the pop-rock style of bands like Toto and Chicago (that sentence should tell you all you need to know about this band, but I shall proceed nonetheless). Indeed, lead singer Richard Page was offered the opportunity to lead both those groups, but declined and was rewarded with two #1 hits in "Kyrie" and "Broken Wings." Commercially, Mr. Mister was briefly very successful before fading into oblivion. Artistically, not so much.

I listened to the first three tracks on the first side and heard nothing but flat stadium rock with dopey keyboards and sludgy power chords in place of riffs. So I was prepared to turn the record off before even making it to the end of side one but then noticed that the three major hits on the album (the two aforementioned, plus top 10 single "Is It Love") were all aligned in a row on the second side. I'm not sure if Mr. Mister thought that would give them some credibility or perhaps force listeners to pay attention to their faceless music of the first side, but either way, definitely not a good move. Sometimes you just have to admit your limitations and front-load the album because that's all anyone wants to hear anyways.

Of course, it's not like those hits were particularly good, which I strongly suspect to be correlated with Mr. Mister's subsequent decline. "Kyrie" has the catchiest chorus on the record but said chorus is indistinguishable from Toto's "Africa." "Broken Wings" is the only song here that I recognized ("take... these broken wings") and I would call it the worst song on the album if I had actually listened to every song on the album. It's a prototypical power ballad, and like many 80s power ballads of ill repute, the group seemed to think that playing the entire song at a dragging tempo and having Page offer up somber platitudes is the same thing as writing a heart-wrenching love song. It isn't. 

So while allmusic.com may give this album four stars by default for being the Mr. Mister album with the most hits, that just makes me terrified to imagine what their other albums might be like. Blue bin!

Blue Bin Singles

As I tend to be an album-oriented person, I have found myself neglecting the small pile of singles that I acquired as part of my record collection. Though there are some worthy singles to be found in it (i.e, The Beatles' "Real Love"), there is also, of course, much to be jeered at and scorned. This post is about those unlucky singles that fall into the latter category.

The Young Moderns - "Body Won't Obey/(she's a) Disposable Girl"


The Young Moderns supplant whatever random jazz artist last held the title for Most Obscure Musical Act in my collection. My customary search on allmusic.com turned up no results for the group whatsoever. I then located this very single on rateyourmusic.com, with exactly one rating on its page and no other works by the Young Moderns listed. For this apparently hip, youthful group that featured both a male and female Jamie (as I inferred from the back of the single cover), this single was their one chance to make it big. And with the results sounding like the Sex Pistols if Yoko Ono were their lead singer, they failed.

Billy Ocean - "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going"


Robotic R&B dance-pop lacking the charm of Ocean's most famous single "Get Out of my Dreams (And Into My Car)." The most entertaining thing about this single for me is that the B-side is an instrumental version of the A-side, as if anyone would ever want to hear five minutes of a three-note electronic bass line played over a drum machine.

Dion - "Abraham, Martin & John/From Both Sides Now"


From the crooner most famous for "The Wanderer," this single found Dion attempting to recast himself as a sensitive folk-rock performer. On the A-side, Dion contemplates the assassinations of Lincoln, King and Kennedy but has nothing interesting or meaningful to say ("But it seems the good they die young/I just looked around and he's gone") nor despite laying on strings and organ, is the song anything but boring.

R.J.'s Latest Arrival - "Shackles"


Dating back to 1983, this was, for all I know, this was a pioneering rap single. Unfortunately, this R.J. or perhaps his latest arrival had yet to pioneer quality in rap. Once again, the B-side is an instrumental so you get to hear a lot of scratched turntables if you're into that kind of thing.

Art & Dotty Todd - "Chanson D'Amour"/Johnny Crawford - "Cindy's Birthday"


Pre-Beatles pap. To make a Bayesian inference, the odds of me enjoying a song by the performers Art and Dotty Todd are close to zero.

J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers - "Last Kiss/Hey Little Girl"


Hey, it's that song Pearl Jam covered in the 1990s! But there can only be one great early 60s song about the death of a teenager and that song is "Leader of the Pack." Okay, I like this song too, but it's not the original version, and this obscure cover isn't particularly noteworthy.

Mike Cross - "Rock 'n' Rye" (1980)

Rating: 4

This album is definitely one of the most obscure records in my collection, having obtained exactly one rating on rateyourmusic.com (and zero reviews). Even allmusic.com didn't review this album, though Mike Cross does at least have his own biography. Because of this, I know that he went to UNC-Chapel Hill, thus joining James Taylor in the annals of mediocre musicians hailing from the town where I currently live. Oops, did I spoil the surprise?

Although I had the impression from the album cover of the other Mike Cross album I own (yes, I have two) that this would be some sort of Irish folk album, it is in fact mostly straight-up country, with some occasional electric guitar and fiddle thrown in. It is at least 'old-school' country, i.e., not just an insular ode to the redneck lifestyle like modern country, but with lyrical subject matter mostly about broken hearts and getting drunk. I am not particularly inclined towards even this kind of music, but much like with blues, the songs are all pretty much the same, so it is safe to say that a country record succeeds largely on the passion and sincerity of the singer. And although Cross seems to be a genial fellow, his slow songs aren't wracked and anguished enough for my liking, and his fast songs not funny enough. I'm not going to pop a boner for just any country record made before 1990, so there's only one judgment I can give Rock 'n' Rye: blue bin!

James Taylor - "Gorilla" (1975)

Rating: 4

Frankly, I can't stand James Taylor, Chapel Hill lineage or no. To quote allmusic.com, "when people use the term 'singer/songwriter' in praise or in criticism, they're thinking of James Taylor." Indeed Taylor is who I associate with the term "singer-singwriter" and I absolutely mean it in criticism the majority of the time. Gorilla is a fairly lightweight album, exploring more poppy acoustic arrangements, so isn't exactly like the man's most famous (or infamous) work, but does share the same critical flaw that there isn't a single memorable melody to be found on the record. Perhaps I exaggerate, but this record does nothing to correct my impression that behind Taylor's warm, smooth vocals and pleasant guitar playing, there isn't much interesting musically here. Lyrically, there are some interesting moments, but this isn't exactly supposed to be a 'deep' album anyways, not that it would impress me much more if it were. Someday I'll listen to Sweet Baby James and decide once and for all if there is anything in James Taylor's discography I would enjoy, but if there is, it certainly isn't here. Blue bin!

Stanley Turrentine - "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" (1975)

Rating: 4

Basically the same thing as his 1974 release Pieces of Dreams. Slightly better due to two tracks ("T's Dream," "Tommy's Tune") which are much closer to classic jazz than the orchestrated pap that makes up the rest of the album, but there's still the matter of the orchestrated pap that makes up the rest of the album. On the other hand, his token pop/rock cover is less inspired this time around since jazz CCR makes significantly less sense than jazz Stevie Wonder. But on the third (?) hand, this one has a pretty sweet album cover. Obviously I don't have much else to say besides the obvious: blue bin!

Stanley Turrentine - "Pieces of Dreams" (1974)

Rating: 4

For some reason, I own three records by tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. In the early days of this blog, I reviewed his 1976 release Everybody Come On Out and (barely) decided it was worth keeping. Today, I feel not quite so sympathetic and am reconsidering my verdict on his other record as well. If I were more of a jazz connoisseur, I suspect I would be grievously offended by Turrentine's 70s schtick. The reason is that the music is heavily orchestrated, with saxophone solos played over the strings in a warm, inoffensive tone, never straying too far from the main melody. In other words, easy listening, dentist's office jazz. 

I am not a jazz connoisseur, so it's hard for me to feel too outraged by this material. But I still found it to be, on the whole, boring. I'm sure it would work fine as the soundtrack to a TV show or as faintly heard background music riding in an elevator, but as active listening material, it failed to engage me. The only potential point of interest for me is that there is a version of Stevie Wonder's "Evil" on the second side, but when all Turrentine does is play the vocal melody on saxophone, it's hard to see the point. Sure, the chord changes are still cool, but Stevie's version is far more interesting. Blue bin!

Eddie Money - "Playing for Keeps" (1980) & "Can't Hold Back" (1986)

       

Rating: 2 and 4

I didn't think I had anything interesting to say about one Eddie Money album, so why not review two at once! Even better for this sort of premise, allmusic.com gave 1980's Playing for Keeps 2 stars but gave 1986's Can't Hold Back 4.5 stars, which potentially makes for an interesting compare and contrast exercise. Was Money really that much more successful with his 1986 effort than his 1980 effort? And if so, why?

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

No, of course not. Both albums suck. 

Okay, Can't Hold Back is definitely better. On Playing for Keeps, Money attempts to cast himself as a straight-up classic rocker, but his music lacks any of the elements that make good classic rock successful, and winds up boring and faceless. Eddie's voice is like Rod Stewart's without the rasp. In other words, it's not really much like anything at all. 

On Can't Hold Back, Mr. Money (or perhaps his production team) conceded that he was really in this for radio success, added keyboards and horns, more melodic choruses, and the result was his most famous single ("Take Me Home Tonight") as well as renewed commercial success. I could almost be convinced that this is a good album, because I can't deny that the songs have hooks, and it's surprisingly consistent. And then Money's lifeless vocals remind me that there is really no reason to listen to even Can't Hold Back, presumably his best, more than once. Blue bin for all! 

Steve Perry - "Street Talk" (1984)

Rating: 4

I will admit, this is one of those times where there was probably a close to zero chance that I would vote to keep this record. Although I enjoy "Don't Stop Believin" as much as any frat brother, it's because it's so cheesy, stupid, and over-the-top that it's fun to sing along to, and certainly not because I identify with the pathos of Journey, who is really just a worse version of Kansas. If lead singer Steve Perry had any latent songwriting talent, he probably would have displayed it prior to going solo.

And as I expected, Street Talk is a pretty mediocre album. Still, it did at least provide me with an "oh yeah, that song" moment with the first track, "Oh Sherrie" (click the link, I guarantee you'll have one too), which I do take a certain pleasure in. To Perry's credit, this is mostly straightforward arena rock and lacks the progressive inclinations of Journey, thus ensuring that it avoids being totally reprehensible. Not to Perry's credit is that the songwriting is boring, the musicianship weak, and even the tracks that have decent hooks ("Oh Sherrie," "Foolish Heart") are nothing more than polished, sterile craftsmanship. He can hit some impressive notes and has a quintessential mid-80s rock voice, but I'm not really sure those attributes are even good things in this context. Blue bin!

Paul Carrack - "Suburban Voodoo" (1982)

Rating: 5

According to allmusic.com, Paul Carrack was "pop music's ultimate journeyman," with "his finest work coming at the expense of his own identity." Shockingly, these traits make for a thoroughly mediocre solo album. Produced by Nick Lowe, Suburban Voodoo sounds pretty much exactly like Lowe's own Labour of Lust, with elements of Squeeze thrown in (who Carrack also sang for). Carrack's vocal style is ostensibly soulful, but fails to convey really much of anything.

Still, I do use the word mediocre in the literal sense, and nothing here struck me as being bad necessarily. The production is good enough that it all sounds perfectly pleasant and there are some catchy guitar riffs and choruses to be found here and there. If I had been listening to it as background music, I might even have convinced myself that this record was a keeper. But outside of the first track "Letter of Love," no song really held my interest from beginning to end. For that reason, although I found it much preferable to 1987's One Good Reason (which proved that without Lowe's production, Carrack quickly moves from mediocre to bad), Suburban Voodoo fails my most fundamental criterion, which is whether I ever see myself wanting to listen to it again. Blue bin!

U2 - "No Line on the Horizon" (2009)

Rating: 5

It had certainly seemed to me that although U2 is no doubt past their prime, that at least they had settled into being a veteran band that could pump out a decent album every four or five years. No Line on the Horizon, though, kind of sucks, and drawing from the authority of having listened to every single U2 studio album, I declare this to be the worst record they've ever released. Well, at least tied with Pop.

The album is split up into very distinct sections - the first five songs are in the same basic style as How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, if not quite as dynamic and somewhat overlong, but at least this section fulfills the basic prerequisites of good U2 music, anthemic choruses and thick, chiming Edge guitar riffs. The next two songs are basically weaker re-writes of "Vertigo" and "All Because of You" from the last album, and somehow, "Get On Your Boots" (also the lead single!) is just as irritating as "Vertigo." And finally, after that brief and unwelcoming interlude, the band finishes the album with four more songs in the same style as the first five - the difference being that none of these has anything resembling an interesting melody or guitar part, thus ensuring that my final impression of the album is one of utter boredom.

So although the first part of the album is solid, it doesn't even hit the high points of their last two albums, and certainly doesn't make up for six songs in a row that I don't care for at all. But don't listen to me, Rolling Stone gave it five stars, so it must be great! Blue bin all the way.

Bette Midler - "Beaches (Soundtrack)" (1988)

Rating: 3

I probably am not comfortable enough with myself to keep this album even if I did like it. Fortunately, I don't! In fairness, I don't really know much about the movie for which this is the soundtrack, but the album consists of Bette Midler singing a mix of old standards and dated adult contemporary ballads. The most famous song here is "Wind Beneath My Wings," which is the best song Diane Warren never wrote. It has a nice melody, though. Unsurprisingly, the old songs fare better as they have more stripped-down arrangements, the exception being a horrid cover of "Under the Boardwalk," which is of course the first song on the album. But ultimately, there's not a lot to say about this record, and even if it was all covers of old standards, there wouldn't be much point to keep it around. Blue bin!

U2 - "Pop" (1997)

Well, it's been a month since I wrote my last review on this blog. So much for putting 'one record a day' in the URL! But due to popular demand, I have decided to end my hiatus by reviewing U2's Pop, an album which I do not own on vinyl and thus can't exactly blue bin. Oh well. Since my blue bin is full anyways, I decided to invent a new conceit for this blog, which is to review the albums I listen to on my iPod on the way to and from work. But don't worry, I plan to continue to review vinyls too!

As for Pop, it continues the U2 trend of the 90s in dabbling with techno and electronica. Although I would strongly hesitate to call this good, I do have to give some credit to the group for not making total asses of themselves with albums like this one and Zooropa. My feeling, and I doubt I am alone in this, is that the strengths of U2 were always the righteous power of Bono and the Edge's thick, textured guitar playing. During their electronic period, these elements were basically gone or severely reduced. Still, whether it was their litany of hip producers of the time, or the Edge proving himself to be a versatile multi-instrumentalist, Pop features a lot of interesting guitar loops and samples and arrangements that frequently shift between moods and textures in a way that seemed beyond the band's grasp in the 80s.

So it's not the electronic music influences that make this a mediocre album, but rather, the fact that the busy arrangements ultimately can't mask what is Bono's weakest set of songs. Apart from the soaring, Joshua Tree throwback ballad "Staring at the Sun," there is little emotional power to be found here, and like even the best U2 albums, the melodies are mostly AWOL. The better songs are interesting mostly for their arrangements (like "MOFO" with its pumped-up bass line), and even some songs that do appear to have a lot going for them ("Discotheque") fail to gel into something cohesive. Still, it's all mostly mediocre to decent, apart from the truly wretched "Miami" (think Bono near-rapping over an industrial dance beat), so I can't get too angry about Pop. But if I could blue bin it, I would.

Boz Scaggs - "Down Two Then Left" (1977)

I listened to Boz Scaggs' most acclaimed album (Silk Degrees) and felt lukewarm about it, so I expected to dislike Down Two Then Left. And I was right! This is not a terrible record, and I admit that the slick L.A. production works well with Scaggs' soul/funk/rock sound. There are some popping bass lines and nearly every track has a decent groove. But apart from "Lido Shuffle," Scaggs is incapable of writing any songs that I find catchy or memorable. Bin blue!

Original Soundtrack - "Arthur" (1981)

Probably the second-greatest album of all time entitled Arthur, but where the greatest album called Arthur would make my top 100 rock albums (the one by the Kinks), I plan to abandon this one in the imminent blue bin purge of 2012 (the bin is finally full!). Although I haven't seen the movie, I did see enough previews for the re-make starring Russell Brand to have very low expectations for this particular soundtrack.

I suppose my expectations were exceeded in that the overall quality of the vocal melodies (and string melodies on the all-instrumental second side) is pretty good. Burt Bacharach still had some talent in 1981, and perhaps, in a completely different context, these solid melodies could have resulted in some actual good songs. Alas, someone in the movie business decided that the ideal performers for these songs would be forgettable 80s acts like Christopher Cross and Ambrosia. The result is the arrangements are about as sappy and generic as possible, from the drooping adult contemporary of Stephen Bishop and Cross to the sub-Toto arena rock of Ambrosia. On the second side, some of the same themes are repeated with instrumental versions, which is preferable, but then again, also generic to the extreme, just with Hollywood classical replacing Hollywood pop-rock. Blue bin!

Allan Rich - "Glass Heart" (1976)

Another candidate for most obscure album I own (no allmusic.com review!), and honestly, I can see why. This certainly isn't the worst album I've ever heard and Allan Rich, whoever he may be, has some modicum of musical talent, with a voice reminiscent of James Taylor and apparently, the ability to play the piano as well. But  as I was able to immediately ascertain from his decision to lead off his record with a Bruce Springsteen cover, Rich fails on Glass Heart to establish any personality, or really anything memorable about him. His sound is most reminiscent of Boz Scaggs - well-produced, soulful, mid 70s pop-rock. But even compared to the incredibly bland soul of Scaggs, Rich's music drifts in and out, any positive impressions fated to wither and perish. Blue bin!

Jimmy Buffett - "Living and Dying in 3/4 Time" (1974)

The best Jimmy Buffett song ever written is "Bananas and Blow." The second best is "Margaritaville." And the third best is "Come Monday," taken from Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. The rest of the record, though, I didn't really care for, even though I listened to it shortly before departing for New Orleans and Mardi Gras to try and get myself in the mood for some casual debauchery. Oh well. I feel that Buffett is occasionally capable of writing a nice melody, but most of his songs rely solely on his persona to sell themselves. And what does it say that his best song wasn't even written or performed by him? Blue bin!

Bread - "Lost Without Your Love" (1977)

I hear no appreciable difference between Lost Without Your Love and Manna, so I really can't explain why allmusic.com gave Manna 4.5 stars, making me wonder if there was something I had missed, and why they gave Lost just 2 stars. What I hear is a band that is quite consistent in their adherence to formula, production value, and gentle melody. Indeed, like Manna, it all sounds perfectly fine, but even after consuming two cups of coffee with breakfast, my reaction to this music is not to cry a lonely tear, but rather, to fall asleep. Blue bin!