Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

Tune in to KCUS
4 Out Of 4 Stars

A giddy, goofy piece of rock and roll camp that delivers on all counts, from the homages to classic rock albums and pictures to the cameos from Moby, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Alex Lifeson, "Suck" makes glorious hash of the overworked vampire movie and rock band films. Dave Foley manages "The Winners," a mediocre band that travels in a hearse and can't catch a break. That is, until the sexy female bass player gets bit and becomes a goth idol. Before you know it, the band is gaining fans by the thousands, leaving a trail of groupies in their wake and Malcolm McDowell on their trail.

There is no real attempt to make this anything but a corny cult flick, even the 'animation' is hokey. Alice and Iggy are obviously having a blast chewing their parts, and there's an hysterical inside joke regarding Moby as the lead singer of a rival band. The original songs are just good enough to be Spinal Tapp-ish, but not too bad as to make you graon. The soundtrack itself contains the likes of Lou Reed, Iggy, Cooper, David Bowie and The Burning Brides, and is a true addition to the film. "Suck" is exactly the kind of film that should be on the A-List for a few decades' worth of Halloween parties.

Oops, Eah?
3 Out of 5 Stars 

Daryl Hall and John Oates had such an incredible run on the charts that a collapse was inevitable, and "Ooh Yeah" was that album. It's not a bad album as much as an average one, and after a four year break between studio albums, average equated bad in the ears of the public. Add that "Ooh Yeah" is overproduced, and the duo's string broke here.

There should be a caveat inserted in here that the times were also changing; Phil Collins was white soul-man of choice by now and his songwriting was hitting a peak in this period. "Ooh Yeah" still managed three top 40 singles in the top 10 "Everything Your Heart Desires," along with "Downtown Life" and "Missed Opportunity." There's also a trilogy of sorts with "Soul Love," "Real Love," and "Keep On Pushing Love" as the album's closers. John Oates gets a solid vocal on "Rockabilty," while "Rocket To God" is one of Hall's better album tracks.

The ultimate problem, though, is the production. Pumped full of 80's electronic keyboards and faux soul horns (think Huey Lewis), most of "Ooh Yeah" now sounds like an obvious date stamp. Which is a shame, because it seems like Hall and Oates recognized that error by the time the follow-up, the far more acoustic "Change Of Season" and the career comeback in 1997 of "Marigold Sky." By then, it was too late to regain their chart dominance, even if they've regained their maturity and excellence. "Ooh Yeah" is an 80's album and sounds the part.

He Wants Me, If Only Part of The Time
4 Out Of 5 Stars

That brilliant line came from Til Tuesday's biggest hit, "Voices Carry," and is likely the song most folks recall the band by. It also launched both the band and their lead singer/songwriter, Aimee Mann. While Mann has since embarked on a critically acclaimed career as a solo singer/songwriter, "Coming Up Close: A Retrospective" both follows the breif, three album arc of Til Tuesday and shows Mann's evolution.

"Voices Carry," both the single and first album, was typical of the MTV 80's. Synth and drum heavy, the photogenic Mann quickly struck a chord as the girl in the video to stand up in the opera scene to scream at her creep boyfriend. The songs "Love In A Vacuum" and "Looking Over My Shoulder" (which peaked at 61 on Billboard but oddly is left off this set) followed in the same vein.

While the band was set for a successful follow-up, Mann's songwriting had begun to shift into a more personal direction, as well as losing the funky new-wave style. "Welcome Home" was a great album, but lack of a "Voices Carry" clone lead many to peg the band as one-hit wonders. The stinging "What About Love" did manage to peak at 26, but the song "Coming Up Close," a terrific song about the twilight of a relationship, stalled at 59. There's also a taste of the quirkier points of her solo career with "Will She Just Fall Done," a poppy song about a dysfunctional girlfriend.

The rest of the band was feeling left out by the start of the third album, "Everything's Different Now." Only Mann and Drummer Michael Hausman with session players, it's basically Mann's first solo album and is partially about her breakup with songwriter Jules Shear (who co-wrote the title track). It included a collaboration with Elvis Costello on "The Other End of The Telescope" and Til Tuesday's last charting single, "Believed You Were Lucky" (a censored version, which completely changed the tome of the song) that peaked at 95. "Everything's Different Now" officially embarked Mann on her pop-folk voyage, as well as a legal battle that held up her solo recordings for another seven years.

"Coming Up Close" finishes out with an unreleased track by the original band called "Do It Again," with no other info about its origins. It's a pretty good song, but that was it for any reunions since Mann has been touring and recording steadily since. Overall, since only the debut remains in print, this retrospective is a worthy overview of a band whose output has been long overlooked.

The Milking of The Legend Begins Here
2 Out of 5 Stars

Three years after John Lennon was assassinated, the first of his posthumous albums appeared. "Milk and Honey" is a collection of songs that John and Yoko were working on at the time of "Double Fantasy," but were unfinished. So let's be frank about this; "Milk and Honey" is half a finished album composed primarily of John Lennon's incomplete demos and Yoko's finished works.

While in 1983, this might have been met with the still lingering pain of John's murder, 26 years later and newly remastered, this album comes up painfully short. It's interesting to hear Lennon's playfulness and the goofy ad-libs, but that is the kind of patter that would have been gone when the time for the master take was laid down. When I hear the la-la's and na-na's in "Borrowed Time," I get the feeling that Lennon was still treating the lyrics as a work in progress. Even the album's best known single, "Nobody Told Me," has such a jerky chorus vocal that I figured it to be an unfinished segment. (Even so, it's one of "Milk and Honey's" highlights.)

Only once does the roughness of the recordings transcend, and that is on Lennon's cassette demo of "Grow Old With Me." Lennon was aiming for the stars on this one, and there's a certain raw charisma that comes out of this very simple love song. There's a hint of an "Imagine" to come, had there only been the chance. Like what the surviving Beatles ultimately did with a similar cassette of "Real Love" years later, perhaps.

Yoko also gets one really great song, in the closing "You're The One," which she wrote after John's death. "In the world's eyes, we were Laurel and Hardy," she pines, only to follow that verse with "in our minds, we were Heathcliff and Cathy." It's one of the few times she's hit upon an amazing song, and it almost justifies the album's purchase. But ultimately, while not as gawd-awful as "Menlove Ave" (which not-so-mysteriously did not get in this 2010 remastering blitz), "Milk and Honey" is unfinished music, placed on the market to feed the morbidly curious. I re-bought it, yes, but now I remember why I sold it out of the collection decades ago.

Day 23. A song that you want to play at your wedding.





Day 24. A song that you want to play at your funeral.

Two of them: In this Order

Alphaville:




The Kinks - a song that always makes me both happy and sad at the same time.

Day 16. A song that you used to love but now hate
None.

Day 17. A song that you hear (too) often on the radio.