The Tubes - Outside Inside (1983)

Note: this release was originally purchased as an LP, later replaced by this import CD from the UK.

The group's biggest-selling album, this release is more of the catchy, high gloss power pop found on their previous album, The Completion Backward Principle, with production from David Foster and playing help from the members of Toto. Now that I read the previous sentence, it seems like the putdowns the music critics used (see below), but not so - since I liked Completion Backward Principle, I like most of this one as well.

Press of the time:

• Rolling Stone (★★): "this Tubes fan is disappointed"
• Stereo Review: "characterless, hook-riddled, heavy-metal contrivances"
• Billboard: "the emphasis on the band's musicality, rather than its earlier penchant for outrageous satire"
• CashBox: "the band seemed to move beyond mere cult status and become embraced by the rock mainstream"
• Robert Christgau (C+): "these soulful California cats did their professional best to simulate a Journey album."
• Trouser Press: "the kind of empty wind their pals in Toto generate."

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #18
• Billboard Rock: #2
• CashBox: #18
• Rolling Stone: #16

Tracks: Three singles were released in the US, including the band's biggest hit, She's A Beauty (#10 pop, #1 rock), The Monkey Time (#68 pop, #16 rock), and the EWF knock-off Tip Of My Tongue (#52 pop). Coincidently(?), those three singles weren't primarily written by the band:

• She's A Beauty - Toto's Steve Lukather and producer David Foster
• The Monkey Time - Curtis Mayfield
• Tip Of My Tongue - Maurice White

Nevertheless, those three are the top tracks on the album, but I also have a strange affection for the wacky Wild Women Of Wongo. Of the remaining filler, I dig No Not Again, Out Of The Business, and Fantastic Delusion. 

The version of Monkey Time included on this CD is the original duet with Martha Davis; the US single contained a re-recorded version with Davis' vocal replaced by Michele Gray.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: Nothing immediately comes to mind. My time during the spring and summer months of 1983 were spent working the drive-thru window at Burger King, a time I recapped when I posted about The Completion Backward Principle. I also spent a week in Austin being brainwashed; you can read my memories of that experience over at My Favorite Decade. The brainwashing didn't take.

Around the time this album was released, I was finishing up my junior year of high school. My grades that semester? According to my personal archives (a.k.a. a shoebox of stuff my mother saved for me), here ya go:

• Band: 96
• Chemistry: 82
• Typing: 95
• English: 85
• Government: 92
• French I: 95

Previously revisited for the blog:
The Best of The Tubes 1981-1987 (1991)
The Completion Backward Principle (1981)

Various Artists - Windham Hill Records: Sampler '82 (1982)

Selections from the Windham Hill Records album catalogue. This album was the second such sampler issued from Windham Hill, a New Age label that existed from 1976-2007.

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: Did not chart
• Billboard Jazz: #33

Tracks, with my picks indicated (✔):

1. Remedios - William Ackerman from the album Passage
2. Blosson/Meadow - George Winston from the album Winter Into Spring ✔
3. The Happy Couple - Michael Hedges from the album Breakfast In The Field ✔
4. Minou's Waltz - Ira Stein & Russel Walder from the album Elements
5. A Thousand Teardrops - Shadowfax from the album Shadowfax
6. Wedding Rain - Liz Story from the album Solid Colors ✔
7. Tideline - Darol Anger & Barbara Higbie from the album Tideline
8. Purple Mountain - Scott Cossu from the album Wind Dance
9. Clockwork - Alex de Grassi from the album Clockwork ✔

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None. I wasn't much into this stuff until later in the decade, around '87-'89. While I enjoy the music and find it quite relaxing and meditative, I can only handle it in small doses - usually no more than one album at a time. Go figure.

I recently picked up this disc from a local thrift store for a quarter, partially because of the music, but mainly because it still had the original smooth-sided jewel case. In the past, I would often remark that I'm not a CD collector, but rather a music junkie who just happens to prefer buying CDs to other formats. However, when I buy a disc because of the packaging, I need to go ahead and acknowledge the fact that I am indeed a CD collector. "Hi, my name is Mark, and I'm a CD collector."

Previously revisited for the blog:
Sampler '94 (1994)
Windham Hill - The First Ten Years (1990)

Buggles - Adventures In Modern Recording (1981)

Note: this release was originally purchased as an LP, later replaced by a the 2010 CD reissue with 10 bonus tracks (UK import). Judging by the prices I'm currently seeing online, this CD must have gone out-of-print after I purchased it.

I'll sidestep my usual responsibilities by letting Trevor Horn explain the history of his album. Just click the thumbnail below:

I agree that this album has weaker material, but unlike Mr. Horn, I don't like this one better than The Age Of Plastic. As mentioned in the Trouser Press review below, this album is "interesting but not gripping." I should also note that the Horn-Downes split was apparently acrimonious. Horn makes it seem like Downes wasn't involved when Downes appears on 4 tracks and has co-writing & co-producing credits on 3 of those 4. Rightfully, Horn should get most of the credit and if it took going the production of this album to get to later Horn-produced albums like The Lexicon Of Love, 90125, Who's Afraid Of The Art Of Noise, Duck Rock, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, and the stuff with Seal, I'm quite glad it happened.

However, if you like The Age Of Plastic, you're probably better off finding a copy of English Garden by Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club than Adventures In Modern Recording.

Press of the time:

• Smash Hits (5½ out of 10): "the whole is much less than the sum of the parts"
• Record Mirror: "a weedy piece of whimsy"
• Billboard: "electronic and progressive rock experimentations"
• CashBox: "Despite their light-hearted pop image, this duo did pioneer the use of many electronic and synthesizer effects that more serious-minded British groups are pushing today."
• Trouser Press: "interesting but not gripping. Who's this intended for?"

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #161
• CashBox: #165

Tracks: My crack staff informs me that I Am A Camera was released as a US single, but failed to chart. My top picks are Beatnik, Vermillion Sands, and to a lesser extent, the title track and Inner City.

Bonus tracks: Includes 2 b-sides, the 12" mix of I Am A Camera, plus 7 demos. "Interesting but not gripping," but even more so. Leans more prog rock than synthpop. Two of the demos were given to Yes, another to Dollar.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: Nothing from 1981; I wasn't aware of this album until the mid-'90s. When I finally learned of its existence, I picked up a used copy of the vinyl record as it had yet to be released on CD.

I saw "The Buggles" in concert in Houston on April 28, 2023 when they opened for Seal. They included a song from this album in the six song set. Downes wasn't invited and it was really the Trevor Horn show: he played bass, sang vocals, and it was all songs he had a hand in producing. To wit:

• Two Tribes (Frankie Goes to Hollywood cover; instrumental)
• Living in the Plastic Age (from The Age Of Plastic)
• Elstree (from The Age Of Plastic)
• I Am a Camera (from Adventures In Modern Recording)
• Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes cover)
• Video Killed the Radio Star (from The Age Of Plastic)

Then the band changed clothes and returned to the stage as Seal's backing band. Yes, I bought an overpriced concert tee (two actually - one for Buggles, another for Seal). For what it's worth, when I saw Asia perform in April, 2008 in Dallas, Downes donned a silver sequined jacket and the band performed Video Killed the Radio Star.

Previously revisited for the blog:
The Age Of Plastic (1980)

Talking Heads - Remain In Light (1980)

Note: the CD I own is the 1989 reissue.

I've read quite a few books* concerning this band and the making of this particular album. I've come to the following two conclusions:

1. At the time of this album's production, there was quite a bit of tension between Brian Eno, David Byrne, and Tina Weymouth.
2. Nobody's personal account of that time comes close to agreeing with the recollections of others involved. In the words of movie producer Robert Evans: "There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently." Memories can't wait, maybe?

In any case, us kids don't like it when parents fight and the squabbling only detracts from the music here.

I somewhat disagree with the critics - I think it's a very good album, don't get me wrong, but I just don't understand all the hubbub. I'd rank this album in the middle of the band's releases. Maybe you just had to be there? There was a lot of talk surrounding this album using words like Afro-beat and polyrhythms. While those influences are there, the music is just another progression of the Talking Heads' funky art rock. From the May 1982 edition of Mother Jones magazine:

Some observers suggested they were ripping off African culture. But the objection doesn't hold. As Harrison puts it, "We're not going back to the source - we're meeting it halfway." (p. 39)

To my ears, Remain In Light is simply an extension of I Zimbra from the most excellent (and better) album, Fear Of Music. Take that extension, add an immersion into the music of Fela Kuti (particularly the 1973 album Afrodisiac), plus the Eno-Byrne collaboration, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and you've got the music heard here, for the most part. Ghosts was recorded in '79-'80 - before Remain in Light - but problems clearing the spoken word samples delayed its release.

I'm sure I'm just missing something and it wouldn't be the first time that's happened. The album placed at number #4 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of Top 100 Albums of the Eighties and the write-up contains conflicting recollections as mentioned above. Worth a look, though. Speaking of Rolling Stone, they ranked the album at number 39 in the 2020 edition of its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, writing "Just try not dancing to 'Once in a Lifetime.'" I haven't even bothered trying. Why would I want to?

Press of the time:

• Rolling Stone: "yields scary, funny music to which you can dance and think, think and dance, dance and think, ad infinitum."
• Robert Christgau (A): "In which David Byrne conquers his fear of music in a visionary Afrofunk synthesis--clear-eyed, detached, almost mystically optimistic."
• High Fidelity: "Not since the early Velvet Underground has an American band forged such an artful combination of breathtaking aesthetic exploration with straightforward pop culture awareness."
• Stereo Review: "an often arresting effort"
• Roadrunner: "Immense, gigantic, do yourself a favor..."
• Smash Hits (8 out of 10): "A great band."
• Trouser Press: "Their music gains in meaning with each listen."

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #19
• CashBox: #32
• Rolling Stone: #10

Tracks: I like all of what was side one: Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On), Crosseyed And Painless, and The Great Curve. It plays like a great dance album should. Then we're treated to Once In A Lifetime which is easily my all-time favorite Talking Heads song. Even after all these years, I never tire of hearing it. The music, the lyrics, the preaching - it all works perfectly. Houses In Motion is next and is just ok, especially when compared to what precedes it. Then I lose interest.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: My first exposure to Talking Heads that I can recall was seeing the video to Once In A Lifetime on MTV at some point in 1982 or '83. My buddy Jim lent me his copy of the LP and, when the rest of the album didn't measure up to Once In A Lifetime upon first listen (how could it?), I quickly returned it without recording to a blank cassette and giving it a fair shot. Yet another folly of my youth.

Previously revisited for the blog:

The Best Of (2004)	Speaking In Tongues (1983)
Little Creatures (1985)	The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads (1982)
Stop Making Sense (1984)	Fear Of Music (1979)

*The best of these is This Must Be The Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century by David Bowman (Harper Collins, 2001)

Joe Jackson - I'm The Man (1979)

Note: the CD I listened to was the 2001 reissue with a bonus track.

Despite the terrible cover photo, this album fits in somewhere among my top 3 or 4 Joe Jackson albums. (Night And Day is far and away at the top of that list, but the others vary depending on my ever-changing moods.) In any case, it contains 3 of my favorite Jackson songs: the title track, It's Different For Girls, and On Your Radio. Jackson's own thoughts on the album as found on Jackson's website:

This is really Part Two of ‘Look Sharp’ – it was released less than a year later. I don’t know how I even had the time to write and record a slightly more mature record, but I think it is, and the best of the first three.

I'll agree, especially with that last part. A fun new wave rocker that's an amalgam of power pop, '60s R&B, reggae, punk, and maybe even jazz, played with minimal instrumentation.

Press of the time:

• High Fidelity: "as brilliant as its predecessor"
• Smash Hits (7½ out of 10): "Good album - investigate."
• CashBox: "one of the most accessible and commercially viable new wave rockers around"
• Record World: "Jackson shows off added sophistication (albeit anger) in his lyrics."
• Record Mirror (++++): "offering confirmation and extensions of the man's validity"
• Rolling Stone: "Overall, the music, though it remains derivative and broadly stroked, is more forceful and zesty than Look Sharp!'s"
• Stereo Review: "it's a superb album"
• Robert Christgau (C+): "Oh yeah?"

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard Top 200: #22
• CashBox: #25
• Rolling Stone: #22

Tracks: My favorite cut is It's Different For Girls, closely followed by the other two songs mentioned above. Also good are Kinda Kute, Get That Girl, and Friday. I'm not much of a fan of Geraldine And John.

Bonus track: A live cover of Chuck Berry's Come On, recorded at Hollywood's Whisky a Go Go on Saturday, May 12, 1979. It was the b-side to the It's Different For Girls single and appeared on the 1979 A&M sampler album, Propaganda.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: I didn't have this album back in '79, but somehow I heard the title track on the radio and was immediately hooked. The single was listed in the December 15, 1979 issue of Billboard (p. 70) so that must have happened around that time. The single failed to chart in the US. If only I had been bothered to seek out whose song it was.

I read Jackson's autobiography, A Cure for Gravity, back when it was released in 2000 and, if I recall correctly, was greatly disappointed he chose to end it after the recording/release of Look Sharp. So no mention of I'm The Man.

Previously revisited for the blog:

Rain (2008)	Big World (1986)
Volume 4 (2003)	Body and Soul (1984)
Night And Day II (2000)	Night and Day (1982)
Tucker Soundtrack (1988)	Look Sharp! (1979)

Various Artists - Billboard Top Dance Hits 1978 (1992)

Truth in advertising from the good folks over at Rhino: ten dance tunes from 1978, all but two hit #1 on the Billboard Dance chart. Great cuts, lots of them, and with a running time of nearly an hour, one of the longer discs in this series. Case in point: the magnificent MacArthur Park Suite is included in its entirety, including not only the Jimmy Webb classic, but also the original songs One Of A Kind and Heaven Knows. Overall, a fantastic compilation with the just the right blend of the often-heard and rarely-heard.

One in a series of ten covering the years 1976-1985, not to be confused with either The Disco Years or Special Editions Disco series, also issued by Rhino.

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks, with chart peaks and links to previous appearances on this blog. Extended mixes marked with an asterisk, others are 7" single versions:

Song	Artist	Time	Dance	Hot 100	R&B	Prev.
Shake Your Groove Thing	Peaches & Herb	3:25	2	5	4	1,2
MacArthur Park Suite*	Donna Summer	17:47	1	†	†	1
You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)	Sylvester	3:45	1	36	20	1
Come Into My Heart*	USA-European Connection	7:57	1
From East To West	Voyage	3:27	1		85	1
After Dark*	Pattie Brooks	7:52	1			1
If My Friends Could See Me Now	Linda Clifford	3:47	1	54	68	1
Boogie Oogie Oogie	A Taste Of Honey	3:37	1	1	1	1,2
Y.M.C.A.	Village People	4:00	2	2	32	1,2,3
Last Dance††	Donna Summer	3:19	1	3	5	1,2

^†The single version of MacArthur Park peaked at #1 pop and #8 R&B while the single version of Heaven Knows (a duet with Joe "Bean" Esposito of Brooklyn Dreams) peaked at #4 pop and #10 R&B.

^††In later CD pressings, Le Freak by Chic is substituted for Last Dance as track 10 in the compilation.

The only new-to-me cut is Come Into My Heart which, to my ears, is the weakest cut on the disc - not terrible but could use some catchier hooks and a more prominent bass line. But man-oh-man those cuts from Donna Summer and Sylvester are top shelf; they never fail to get me moving.

Exclusive CD longbox photo courtesy of
Dirk Digglinator of the Hambonian Archives.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None

Previously revisited for the blog:
Billboard Top Dance Hits 1976 (1992)
Billboard Top Dance Hits 1979 (1992)
Billboard Top Dance Hits 1980 (1992)

Television - Marquee Moon (1977)

A fantastic guitar album - the riffs on this thing!

I dig all the mythology of this group and its relationship to CBGBs, Max's Kansas City, Patti Smith, etc. and you can readily hear the influences of predecessors such as The Velvet Underground and New York Dolls as well as contemporaries Talking Heads. To someone who came to the album many years after its release (I'm talking about me), it's simply another good album from the '70s. But to have it heard it the mileau of the 1970's NYC scene must have really been something. Sorry I missed it. If you want to hear this music as part of an evolution from the Velvets to R.E.M., it's there, but if you also want to hear it as part of an evolution from The Doors to Tom Petty, that's there too.

To aid in my understanding of the context in which this music was created, I turned to the 2011 book in the 33⅓ series:

The book places the album firmly in a noctural, lower New York City setting ("...a quintessential album of the New York night.") and that's spot on. I'll add that it seems like a very summerish album to my ears, so my preferred listing situation is outside on a hot, summer night, strolling the neighborhood, taking in the sounds while I sweat and swat at mosquitoes. At 222 pages, the book itself is one of the longer I've read in the series. The first ⅔ of the book is familiar history of that time and place, but well-done. The book really takes off on page 156 when we finally get to the album, complete with a thorough track-by-track breakdown.

My copy of the CD (a 1987 reissue) contains the full 10:40 version of the title track but, unfortunately, no lyrics.

Press of the time:

• High Fidelity: "Leader Tom Verlaine's lyrics are all but indecipherable, but it doesn't matter - the music more than makes up for it."
• Stereo Review: "sounds to me like warmed-over Bruce Springsteen"
• Record World: "The playing is solid and imaginative"
• CashBox: "While Tom Verlaine's whiny voice is nothing to write home about, the instrumentals are above average"
• Robert Christgau (A+): "I haven't had such intense pleasure from a new release since I got into Layla three months after it came out, and this took about fifteen seconds."
• Rolling Stone: "[Verlaine] structures his compositions around these spooky, spare riffs and they stick to the back of your skull."

This album placed third in The Village Voice's annual 'Pazz & Jop' critic's poll for 1977:

In its 2020 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Rolling Stone ranked Marquee Moon at #107:

The music on the album is quite varied. It’s Post-Punk at heart, yet it’s filled with Jazz and Rock ‘n Roll influences. It’s a New York record through and through, with many references to Manhattan throughout. The album is a solid listen from start to finish...Still such a fantastic record.

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: Did not chart
• CashBox: #158
• Official Charts (UK): #28

Tracks, ranked but it's all a close race. Certainly nothing skippable among these eight:

8. Torn Curtain
7. Elevation
6. Friction
5. Prove It
4. Venus
3. Guiding Light
2. See No Evil
1. Marquee Moon

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.