ROGER WATERS - RADIO KAOS
When this album was released, Waters was definitely my political hero. I worshiped him. I have not amended this historical review whilst uploading it in 2022, but it is fair to say that in recent years, my admiration has waned somewhat. This album, though, remains in my mind as an important and very good piece of work, and some of it was recorded not that far from where I now live.
An album which has attracted massively negative comments. Indeed, I remember reading a review of this at the time of release in The Independent newspaper which concluded with the quote: "Mr Waters, Sir, you are mad".
Well, no, he's not. This is a loose concept album, based around a profoundly disabled Welsh kid named Billy, who can only communicate via radio waves, who strikes up a friendship with an LA disc jock, tells the story of how his brother, a striking coal miner, was jailed for throwing a boulder off of a bridge killing a taxi driver (this is based on an actual event in the 1980's coal miners' strike in Wales), and then foretelling the ultimate nuclear fight, before making an upbeat statement on how the ultimate holocaust might be averted following the world coming together in Live Aid.
In other words, your typical Waters Day at the office!
There is some great music in here, and it is always a hugely emotional album. Who Needs Information is the brother story, and it oozes bitterness and regret over the treatment by Thatcher of the coal miners, their industry, and the communities which were decimated by the foolhardiness of both sides. The brass section is fantastic on this, as is the Welsh Male Voice Choir chanting gently in the background. This was, by the way, the Pontarddulais Male Voice Choir, based just a few short miles from where I live.
They also make a massive contribution to The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid), and I find the signature vocal extremely uplifting.
Elsewhere, the acoustic guitar and Waters keyboards effects on Me Or Him, combined with a wistful and plaintive vocal when the boy gets jailed for his crime, is as good as anything Waters has committed to vinyl. The bass line is something else as well. Taut and full of emotion, together with a hilarious radio line parodying Reagan, I love this track.
All in all, I think this is a hugely underrated album. I suppose if you think that Waters is the devil incarnate, then nothing will persuade you that this is anything other than awful. If, however, you are open to the idea that this represented the true spirit of Floyd, with exceptional song writing, musicianship, and political commentary, as compared with the relatively anodyne stuff that the official band were putting out at the time, then this album is for you.
Please do not consider this to be a "Waters goes pop" album (not that there would be anything wrong with that in itself). No, there are no boy meets girl, takes her to bed for a lovely lay types of songs here. This is a serious piece of work by a very serious artist and commentator.
An excellent addition to any prog rock collection.
There are times when you want something blazing out of the speakers, and others, like me this evening, when you just want to sit back, admire supreme musicianship, and let an ambient mood wash over you.
Phillips has released a number of these Private Parts & Pieces albums, and, I suppose, the only connection between any of them is that they show him at his experimental best, messing about, if you will, with different soundscapes.
Synths are very prominent here, together with his trademark acoustic & classical guitar work.
This album will not have you running out of the bed screaming madly. It is more likely to put you into bed in a mellow mood! And that is the point. This is one of those albums designed to make you relax, come down, and marvel at the beauty of it all.
It is not essential, but if you are interested in expanding the collection of the former Genesis man, you could do worse than start here.
Coming off the back of the critically acclaimed and commercial monster smash Misplaced Childhood, Marillion, under pressure from EMI, released this LP in 1987, rather than taking the break that all the band agreed was desperately needed following years of relentless touring and recording.
This is an album which divides Marillion fanatics like me and also reviewers. Reviews veer between masterpiece and God awful, whereas, in truth, it lies somewhere in between.
The one thing I will say about this is that it is, essentially, a Fish solo album in all but name, and the big man himself has been quoted many times as stating it is his favourite album from his period with the band. Look at the cover. The band look disinterested in the pub playing pool or staring vacuously into the distance. For this is absolutely all about Fish's personal demons. Drink, marriage, a rotten society, drugs, and more drink. Moreover, the band, aside from some of Steven Rothery's trademark beautiful guitar solo bursts, sound like an outfit truly in need of a rest and also rather tired of the whole (show) business.
That is not to say that there are not some wonderful moments on this. That Time Of The Night is one of the era's finest tracks. With Sugar Mice, Fish continued his uncanny knack of producing exceptional commercial music with prog sensibilities, although the other hit single, Incommunicado, is a little bit too frenetic for my tastes.
Also, when he sings with genuine passion and bitterness, especially on Slainte Mhath, Fish can raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
There are, though, too many fillers and tracks where the band are merely going through the motions. Going Under and Just For The Record, especially, are very forgettable. What follows these, White Russian, is, by contrast, perhaps the most mature track that the band had produced, with a thunderous riff and Kelly shining on piano accompanying a bitter and cynical Fish observation.
After this, the band and Fish would go their separate ways. For a lot of people, it was the end of the band as an interesting prog outfit. For me, their finest moments were to come, and the first time I heard Hogarth singing The King Of Sunset Town on his debut Season's End, I knew everything would be alright. Strange, really, because I had followed the band since seeing them at The Marquee before most people had ever heard of them, and Fish was as close to an idol for me as I was ever likely to get in that era or any other.
It is very good in places, but, to these experienced Marillion ears, the least satisfying of that era of the band. The best was yet to come.
Anderson does a Knopfler! I like Dire Straits, at least their earlier stuff, and it is very true that Ian does sound remarkably similar to Mark on the vocals on many parts of this album, but, in truth, any similarity was almost certainly owing to the difficulties he had been having with his vocal cords, requiring surgery. His voice had, literally, changed as a result.
This is a solid Tull release from the 1980's, and, especially on Farm On The Freeway, you can hear similarities and a progression from the superb Broadsword And The Beast. It's a thoughtful track devoted to a pet passion of running new society and technology through a farmer's land, with which no amount of compensation can possibly assuage the feeling of despair and defeat. The flute playing is magnificent, and Martin Barre sounds extremely good.
My favourite Tull period has always been the folkier one, and there is sufficient on here to satisfy my preference. Jump Start could almost be a track from Heavy Horses, such is the rich texture of the sound created. It's another very strong track, with a rocking guitar solo at the end, only slightly marred by some strange vocal whoos and effects.
The opener, Steel Monkey, is enjoyable enough, and was a single release reaching the giddy heights of number 84 in the UK charts, without being remotely essential.
The absolute dead ringer for Dire Straits is the short track Said She Was A Dancer, which I am bound to say sounds as if it were a cover from the debut album or Communique. Having said that, Knopfler didn't do irony as well as Anderson. Even the Barre sensitive solo is pure Knopfler, so they were obviously engaging in a spot of cross acting/dressing for this one! And we thought that type of thing had stopped with Hunting Girl!
Dogs In The Midwinter is a pleasant enough track, with some excellent flute and guitar work mainly backing some extremely stereotypical 1980's keyboards.
The lengthy epic on the album is Budapest, which clocks in at just over ten minutes. This excellent track, one of the clear highlights of their later career, has a blissfully melodic blues feel to it, and I really do think that Barre on this thoroughly enjoys revisiting his roots, because he has rarely sounded as good. The keyboards by Anderson, thankfully, take a back seat on this, and he does what he does best - telling an amusing and interesting story and interjecting with Barre on flute to keep the listener's interest throughout. This is, quite simply, Tull at their melodic and thoughtful best. A gem of a track and the standout on the album.
The remainder of the album is solid enough fare, without being exceptional. The pace picks up on Mountain Men, which is rather spoiled by Anderson clearly struggling with his vocal range and the fact that it drags on a little bit too long. The Waking Edge features some terrific interplay between Barre and Anderson, before a simple, but melodic piano introduces the main, understated, vocal. Raising Steam ends the album as it began, with a simple rocker.
Tull won the Grammy award for "Best Heavy Metal" for this album, which does rather make you wonder whether the judges had all taken a few days loaded with copious amounts of booze and drugs to reach their decision. What this is a solid release, that, in retrospect, puts a lie to the myth that prog giants could not release anything decent in this decade.
It's not an essential album by any means, but this is a very good album, and one that longstanding Tull fans will get pleasure out of.
Son of 90125, this album took an age to record and release, had Kaye bussed out to be replaced by Eddie Jobson of UK fame, and then Kaye bussed back in again. It was an attempt to reproduce the commercial success of 90125 but does not pull it off at all. In addition, Anderson left not long afterwards (again) in a huff and so led the way for the farcical situation where there were two Yes bands effectively in existence. And we thought that Floyd had the monopoly on crass egotistical nonsense!
The album itself is nowhere near as bad as some make it out to be, but it is, without doubt, one of the weakest LPs the band released.
The start of Rhythm of Love is encouraging, with dynamic vocal harmonies and rather sampled effects before becoming a stereotypical weak pop tune. It has little of the charm that Owner and It Can Happen possess.
The title track is equally poor and could almost be described as a dance/pop/rock fusion. The vocal harmonies are, at best, confused and the backing guitars merely chug along. Very disappointing after the heights reached with the equivalent tracks on 90125.
Things improve with Shoot High, Aim Low, which shows some progressive tendencies when things degenerate again with Almost Like Love which has the band playing almost as if they have overdosed on gallons of speed. This is the central problem with this album - it's not the fact that they play pop/rock, it's very poor pop/rock.
It picks up with Love will Find a Way, which has, as its central part, a nice Anderson chorus line with the first interesting interplay with Squire & Rabin. I'm Running also is a good track, although, as with most of the tracks, it is far too disorganised to merit anything other than a casual listen every now and again. Whereas I revisit 90125 very often, and (as I will state when I review it) Talk is a terribly underrated classic, this just does not hold any interest, for prog or pop fans alike.
The saving grace for me is the final track, and the one that, allegedly, moved Rabin to fury. Holy Lamb is clearly Anderson's attempt to inject some more traditional Yes feeling into the album. Whereas on the predecessor, he succeeded across the whole piece, with this it is only really with this one track which is essentially a solo effort. I adore the Hold the Light sequence of vocals and Rabin at least has the decency to put in a good guitar solo at the end.
This album should only really be purchased by those who must own every single Yes album, or who really want to splash out on Anderson at his best on the final track. Otherwise, it really is one to avoid, and it augured in the era of absolute high farce as far as band line-ups were concerned. That, though, is a story for different reviews!
Normally, I would state that the ratings for an album after a certain number of years and certainly numbers of reviews generally provide a prospective buyer with an accurate guide as to the merits or otherwise of an album. Not, though, in this case.
Hold Your Fire is a 1987 release by the band who, by this time, has reinvented themselves as a powerful, and influential, heavy pop/prog outfit. It moves the band further in the direction provided by its predecessor, Power Windows, but is, to these ears, far better in terms of overall quality, production, band interplay, and lyrics.
It features, for the first time, Geddy Lee receiving assistance from a guest female vocalist in the shape of Aimee Mann on the wonderful, and extremely commercial, Time Stand Still, and the track rightly remains a great live favourite.
Elsewhere, there is not one weak track on the entire work, and, to give us all heart, some genuine Rush classics. There is Time Stands Still, and the stunning Mission, providing five minutes of extremely technical power rock and toe tapping joy. Absolutely to the fore are Geddy's keyboards and joyfully lilting vocals. This track is simply a pleasure from start to finish, and proved, as if they needed to prove such a thing, that it was entirely possible for a band to move with the sounds and attitudes of the time without once prejudicing the virtuosity that made them famous in the first place.
My personal favourite, though, is the wonderful, oriental world inspired, Tai Shan. Peart's lyrics tell a wonderful story of personal fulfilment in the ancient eastern world, and whilst Lee's keys and vocals are, again, very much to the fore (and soaring they are, too), I really admire and enjoy Alex Lifeson's deliciously understated guitar on this track. A great way to finish a great LP.
Elsewhere, there is not one weak link. Prime Mover perhaps comes closest from them to classic status, moving along at a cracking pace, and I still really enjoy the inventive drum loop that opens the album on Force Ten that leads into a massive statement of intent for what follows.
In closing, I would ask prospective buyers of this to ignore the comments in some previous reviews about the absence of Lifeson. It simply isn't true. For sure, this is an album very much synth led, but Lifeson contributes one hell of a lot as almost a rhythm guitarist, and Peart's drumming sounds as good as it always did. In other words, this is the sound of a band completely at ease with themselves and the direction in which they were heading.
An excellent addition to any prog rock collection.