The B-52’s – Whammy!
This album was released in 1983. It is the fourth album from the group. This was a simpler album for the group. It utilized drum machines and synth sounds. It was a departure in sound scape from their first two albums. It still has the classic sounds of male talking vocals and harmonized soprano female vocals. This was the saving grace for most people that liked The B-52’s. This album was not received with open arms it seems as I have read some reviews of the album. I think it is a great album but very different from what I am use to from the group. I did not even know that this album existed until a friend of mine brought it up in conversation. The only reason that I own it is that I happened upon it at a local used record store. I was lucky enough to find it on used vinyl. The record is in great condition, probably because the original purchaser did not find it as good as the previous two albums. There were a few singles that were released from this album. The first is called Legal Tender. The lyrics talk of counterfeiting money. It also talks about the heavy equipment needed in order to make such a thing happen. It is not detailed enough to actually help someone learn how to counterfeit money but it is an interesting story about inflation and what people would do to get the money that they need in order to live. The next single that was released is called Whammy Kiss. This song has a really cool synth bass line that I really like. The sound of the bass is slightly distorted but is also very rounded in tone. The song is obviously about hard lovin’. The music is good enough to ignore the lyrics if you are not into sexual lyrics. The last single from the album is called Song For A Future Generation. This is the first song to have all five members of the band adding to the vocals of a song. The lyrics are a satirical look at heterosexual coupling. This is shown by the “dating agency” style introductions of each of the band members. This album, it seems, is always overlooked in their catalog. It is very unique. I am not sure that it should be in everyone’s B-52’s collection but I think that it should be in everyone’s new wave genre collection.
The Police – Synchronicity
This is the fifth album from The Police. It was released in 1983. As was indicative if the time, the band mostly lost the reggae sound in favor of a synth driven album. The new wave was pressing in on all music it would seem. There were four singles released from this album. The first is called Every Breath You Take. Sting wrote the song about an obsessive ex-lover. The fans of The Police did not see it that way. The fans saw it as something of a positive outlook that a lover may have of his significant other. Either way it is still a good song musically speaking. I remember the video for this song as nothing super special. It was filmed in black and white with the back ground being black. There is a small string section playing with the group in this video and later there is a guy cleaning a sky scraper window using scaffolding. The next song that was released is called Wrapped Around Your Finger. This song has lyrical references to the German legend of Faust and references to Scylla and Charybdis monsters of Greek mythology. I remember the video for this one particularly well. The band are in a room filled with candles on tall metal posts. The band is placed in the middle of these rows of candles separated. Sting is seen dancing between the rows of candles not playing his bass guitar at all. He is dressed in white with sunglasses. I don’t know what the sunglasses are for seeing as the room has no lighting except for the candle light. There are a couple of points in the video where he is seen holding one of the metal candle holders and knocking over some of the others with it. Then there is the end of the video where he is just blatantly knocking all of the candle holders over making a huge mess. I was always told to not make a mess or to clean up the mess. Here, he gets away with making a mess and not having to do the work of cleaning it all up. I think that this drove me nuts as a kid because he got to make a big mess and did not need to worry about cleaning it up. The next single is called Synchronicity II. The song is a reference to Carl Jung’s theory of Synchronicity. The lyrics tell of a man who is a husband, father and an employee. In each of these rolls he is very unhappy. He is looking for peace and clarity but because of his problems in each of his rolls he can not find what he is looking for. The video for this song I thought was so much more interesting than the previous songs video. It featured the band in a future that seems to be falling apart. I thought it was so cool looking. The drummer was placed at the top of a mass of drums placed at odd angles making it hard for him to hit any particular drum head. The cloths that they were wearing were torn and tattered. There was also a wind machine blowing random garbage and paper around the set. The last single to be released on this album is called King of Pain. This song did not have a video to go with it. The song is piano driven in the opening but the drums kick in with a simple guitar part being plucked on the strings. The chorus uses a nice distortion with a delay pedal on the guitar giving it a nice contrast. The album is probably the best that the group has done but it was, sadly, their last album as a rock group.
Spandau Ballet – True
This was the third album from the group. It was released in 1983. The album was heavily influenced by jazz, soul and R&B music. The first single from the album, the title track, is called True. This song was used in the John Hughes film called Sixteen Candles. I have become a fan of the 1980s films by John Hughes and this song has come to mean more to me that a hit single from the 80s. It is now directly linked, in my mind, directly to this movie. This song had a video that went with it. Sadly, the video does not reference the movie Sixteen Candles. The video is just the band playing the song with a purple background and lights that are simulating the movement of water. It is a great song but the video leaves something to be desired. The second single from this album is called Gold. The song seems to be about finding something precious and keeping a hold of it through out your life. The video has more of a story than the first single or it is at least more entertaining than the first video is. The story in the video seems to be about putting together a puzzle made of gold. The album as a whole is interesting but not a necessary album to have unless you are into the 80s dance/new wave sound. I can’t exactly recommend this one because there are only a couple of songs that are actually worth having. I think that if one were to download the title track, True, from this album that would be all that one would really need.
After The Fire – ATF
This album was released in 1982. It is a compilation album containing tracks from their first three albums. There was a new track included on this compilation called Der Kommissar. In the rest of the world this album was named Der Kommissar. The name of the album, ATF, was chosen as the title of the album by Epic Records. The only single that was released off the album was the title track, Der Kommissar. The song itself is a English cover of the minor hit from Falco earlier that same year. The ATF version was more popular in the US than the original Falco version. On the other hand, I do remember seeing the video for the Falco version on MTV when I was a kid. I like the ATF version better than the Falco version. I do not have the Falco version to compare the two at the moment though. I will say that I like the guitar sound from the ATF version. The problem is that both tracks were released so closely together that it would be hard to distinguish the two of them by my memory alone. Since I only have one of the two versions I can not give an accurate assessment between the two. I will say that this album has some really great sounding new wave music on it though, very poppy and up beat. I love it!
That is all I have for now...
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