Relive the Cheese!
One of my time-waster activities lately has been going through old vinyl (the stuff I haven't replaced with CDs yet) and dumping some of it into iTunes. The records are an interesting time-warp for me. There's a lot of the usual stuff you'd expect from someone who was in college (and sometimes volunteered at the college radio station) in the late 80s: a bunch of Talking Heads, REM (all pre-Green and therefore not sucky, thank you very much), Art of Noise, Brian Eno, Elvis Costello, and the like. Plus a few guilty pleasures (*cough* Styx *cough*).
There's a few bizarre one-hit wonders as well. In particular I'm greatly enjoying relistening to an album from 1988 by Jon Astley, "Everybody Loves the Pilot...Except the Crew." This is a weird one. Astley is mostly known as a producer. His highest-profile fame was work he did for The Who; he's known as the guy who managed to edit "Who Are You" down from like nine million minutes to something approximating single length (at least for the time), and he remastered The Who's catalog for the digital era, apparently doing such a great job that even Pete "Really Picky Dude" Townshend thought it was pretty good.
Anyway, Jon Astley had an extremely brief pop singer career as well. "Everybody Loves the Pilot...Except the Crew" was the first of his two albums. I've listened to it a couple of times this week, for the first time in about fifteen years. It had one hit on it, "Jane's Getting Serious," which probably made Astley a bunch of money later on later when it got looped in a commercial for Ketchup or something. Pretty much all the songs on the album are good. Astley has a Bowie or Iggy Pop-esque baritone rumble voice, and he writes very clever lyrics about being afraid of modern life and commitment. What really makes his stuff entertaining, though, is the production. This guy is clearly aware of the inherent comedy in the overproduction rampant in pop music during that era, and he lampoons it by going completely over the edge. Like, seriously over the edge. Vast quantities of cheesy synths and sound effects, dive-bombing metal guitars, and in one tune approximately sixty-three key modulations.
It's delightful! I suppose it might not have been intentional, but sort of like the de Laurentiis Flash Gordon movie, it's very difficult to believe that the total excess wasn't done on purpose for fun. Highly entertaining, and recommended.
There's a few bizarre one-hit wonders as well. In particular I'm greatly enjoying relistening to an album from 1988 by Jon Astley, "Everybody Loves the Pilot...Except the Crew." This is a weird one. Astley is mostly known as a producer. His highest-profile fame was work he did for The Who; he's known as the guy who managed to edit "Who Are You" down from like nine million minutes to something approximating single length (at least for the time), and he remastered The Who's catalog for the digital era, apparently doing such a great job that even Pete "Really Picky Dude" Townshend thought it was pretty good.
Anyway, Jon Astley had an extremely brief pop singer career as well. "Everybody Loves the Pilot...Except the Crew" was the first of his two albums. I've listened to it a couple of times this week, for the first time in about fifteen years. It had one hit on it, "Jane's Getting Serious," which probably made Astley a bunch of money later on later when it got looped in a commercial for Ketchup or something. Pretty much all the songs on the album are good. Astley has a Bowie or Iggy Pop-esque baritone rumble voice, and he writes very clever lyrics about being afraid of modern life and commitment. What really makes his stuff entertaining, though, is the production. This guy is clearly aware of the inherent comedy in the overproduction rampant in pop music during that era, and he lampoons it by going completely over the edge. Like, seriously over the edge. Vast quantities of cheesy synths and sound effects, dive-bombing metal guitars, and in one tune approximately sixty-three key modulations.
It's delightful! I suppose it might not have been intentional, but sort of like the de Laurentiis Flash Gordon movie, it's very difficult to believe that the total excess wasn't done on purpose for fun. Highly entertaining, and recommended.
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