by Ashley Paskill

Artist: Hall & Oates

Year: 1973

Album: Abandoned Luncheonette

Every band has an album that launches them into fame and remains iconic through the years. For Philly-area natives Daryl Hall and John Oates, that album was 1973’s Abandoned Luncheonette, the duo’s second studio album. Though they both were involved with other musical projects in the past, they met through fate at Temple University. The rest is history.

I live about 15 or so minutes from where Oates grew up. We graduated from the same high school, and we both graduated from Temple with a degree in Journalism. I have been a fan of the duo all of my life, having grown up with their music and even seeing a workshop put on by Oates. I have seen Oates perform multiple times, both solo and with Hall.

Abandoned Luncheonette includes hits such as “Las Vegas Turnaround” and “Had I Known You Better Then.” This album also features “She’s Gone,” which Oates still plays at all of his shows, whether he is performing solo or with Hall. He says he has played it at every show since the song’s inception. To this day, that song remains one of the duo’s most famous songs.

Each of the album’s nine songs contains a song. “She’s Gone,” according to a story in Oates’ memoir, is about the time a girl stood him up. “Abandoned Luncheonette” talks about an actual luncheonette diner that existed in Pennsylvania, and the song talks about various characters seen there. The songs are also conversational as if the listener is having a conversation with the duo. Every song talks about a personal experience that occurred.

While Hall often takes the lead vocals in some of the duo’s most popular hits, it is nice to hear Oates featured on quite a few of the songs on this album. His voice is so underappreciated, though he is more known for his songwriting, which also shines on this album. It is fascinating to hear how each of their voices has matured over the years while keeping the same excellent quality.

This album proves that big dreams can come true, even for those who hail from small towns, and that even the most famous people have struggled with heartbreak and insecurities. Despite the fame, the duo always returns to their Philadelphia roots, which are highlighted in story and sound on Abandoned Luncheonette.

Artist: The Smashing Pumpkins

Album: The Aeroplane Flies High (Box Set)

Year: 1996

If memory serves correctly (which isn’t something that always happens), I mentioned in a much older article that 1996 was the year that belonged to The Smashing Pumpkins. They had released “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” in October of 1995, and it would go on to spawn 5 singles, while the band would also dominate the MTV Video Music Awards, mostly thanks to the video for “Tonight, Tonight”.

Unfortunately, it was also the year that touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin would both overdose, resulting in the former’s death and the latter being fired from the band. Indeed, 1996, for the band, was probably a perfect example of celebrating the highest of highs and dealing with the lowest of lows.

Now, back to the 5 singles I mentioned. It may be something that is forgotten these days, but back then, singles were actually released on CD. On top of that, import singles often featured b-sides not available on the singles released in the USA. For fans wanting all the songs, this was a costly, but necessary way, to get all those extra tracks.

Virgin Records took care of this problem, by releasing “The Aeroplane Flies High”. Released in November 1996, this box set contained all 5 singles released from “Mellon Collie…..”, along with all their respective b-sides, and an extra 5 cover songs added to the first disc. It was supposed to be limited to 200,000 copies, but demand for the set ended up being much higher than expected, resulting in more copies having to be produced.

Due to the limited run, as well as the fact it was almost entirely b-sides, and coming between 2 major studio albums, this release is often overlooked, despite being rather important.

“Mellon Collie….” had 28 songs, while a reported 40-50 had been worked on. With this box set rounding up every b-side, it ends up actually containing more music than its parent album. On top of that, it can be argued that some of these tracks should have been on the actual album itself (SP was one of those bands whose b-sides tended to be very strong). Indeed, fans often cite the tracks “Ugly” and “Set the Ray to Jerry” (both from the “1979” single) as two of the best songs the band has ever recorded.

Actually, the only track that drove people nuts was the “Pastichio Medley”, from the “Zero” single. This 23 minute track is comprised of nothing but riffs recorded between “Siamese Dream” and “Mellon Collie….”, and the main reason it drove people nuts was because we wanted the entire songs! (It wouldn’t be until the deluxe editions of “Mellon Collie….” and “Aeroplane” that we would get a lot of those tracks in full, and even then some remained unreleased).

When all is said and done, though, it’s what this box represents that is the most important aspect. Jimmy was gone. The direction and sound of the band would change rather drastically the following year. This would be the final new release to actually contain recordings featuring all 4 original members.

Basically, this was the release that drew a line in the sand, and unexpectedly would also see the end of an era. With hindsight being 20/20, it’s time people went back and listened to it.

Artist: The Beatles

Song Title: “Revolution (Take 20)”

Year: 1968, unreleased

I recently approached my editors with an idea of writing a Lost and Found article on a single song. An odd request, to be sure, but I was ultimately given permission, provided I could make it into a Lost and Found piece. Given the number of circumstances behind this, that actually was not difficult. Sure, most songs have stories behind them, but a full article? Yet here I am, doing it because outside of the more hardcore Beatles fans, this probably slipped by a lot of people. A history lesson on The Beatles is not needed here, that much is obvious, so let’s jump right into it, shall we?

50 years ago this year, The Beatles wrote and recorded their first double album, titled “The Beatles”, but more commonly known as the “White Album”. It was, for them, a reaction to the excess of the previous year’s releases; rather than a million overdubs, they decided to strip down the arrangements and rehearse tracks, with the idea that the rehearsals would then be treated as the basic tracks. They all also came with their own songs/ideas and were arguing more and more almost from the very beginning. Indeed, their problems, and eventual breakup, actually started with the recording of this double album. One of the songs that would end up being at the center of the problems? “Revolution”.

As some (or maybe even most) people know, there are 3 “Revolution” tracks. “Revolution No. 1”, which is a slower, more acoustic take, was used on the album. “Revolution No. 9”, which consisted of tape loops, backward effects, and random noises, was also placed on the album. Finally, “Revolution”, which was an upbeat, electric version of No. 1, was released as the b-side of “Hey Jude”, and is probably the best-known version of the three (despite being the final version recorded; more on that in a bit). Over the years, while there was some curiosity as to the usage of the numbers, it was never really explained. Indeed, #1 and #9 are so completely different from each other, that it was just chalked up to “Lennon being Lennon”. This view, though, would end up changing.

In 1988, Mark Lewisohn, who is considered one of the leading authorities on The Beatles, released, “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions”, which was a complete chronicle of every bit of music the band had put to tape during their time in Abbey Road Studios. Indeed, Mr. Lewisohn had access to the entire vault, and the book was presented in a diary format, along with interviews with various studio personnel, covering every session held; who played what, the work that was done that day, how the music, sounds, even overdubs, were recorded. It even chronicled the few unreleased tracks that were there, as well as alternate mixes and versions of songs.

In this book, it’s revealed that “Revolution #1” was the very first track recorded during the “White Album” sessions. All takes went to normal lengths, roughly 4-5 minutes…..that is, until take 18, which not only began immediately after the previous take (resulting in the engineer’s take announcement appearing on the recording) but ended up being over 10 minutes long! Yup. Over 10 minutes of jamming on the same chord sequence, with Lennon yelling “Alright” repeatedly, then just yelling and mumbling. Quite a sudden difference. Further overdubs would be added, including the sound of a radio station changing, Paul and George repeatedly singing, “Mama, Dada”, the band singing “Ahhhhh” in unison, along with horn overdubs, would bring the song up to take 20.

Now, at the time, Lennon was keen on putting this on the album and even wanted to release it as a single. For obvious reasons this wasn’t gonna happen; as it is, even the main body of the song was considered too slow for a single release. This is how we ended up with the single, “rock” version of “Revolution”. As for the 10+ minute album version, Lennon decided (or was persuaded, depending on the story), to chop the final 6 minutes off and fade out the main song, thus creating the version of “Revolution #1” we know on the album.

Not to let anything go to waste, he then took those last 6 minutes, which already contained various loops, and used it as the basis for “Revolution #9” by adding more tape loops with the help of both George Harrison and Yoko Ono. This would also make the album, albeit not without some fighting.

So we now know both “Revolution” #1 and #9 started from the same recording. It was considered one of the holy grails for fans, despite the overall dislike for #9. After all, just how would they actually sound together? A monitor mix, recorded from a studio playback but with Yoko rambling on top of it, leaked on bootlegs in the 90s, but was of poor quality to really listen to.

In 2009, The Beatles announced that they would be releasing brand new remasters of their catalog. This was a huge deal, as their albums were only ever released on CD once, in 1987. For years people were crying out for new remasters; while other artists re-released past albums, using the newest technologies to improve the sound of their albums (or, in some cases, make them worse), The Beatles albums just sort of languished. 2009 changed all of that. We got brand new remasters of all their albums, official releases of the mono versions, and even “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game. It was wonderful. Just a few months prior, though, we got the unexpected. The full, 10+ minute version of “Revolution (Take 20)” suddenly appeared on a bootleg and the internet. Not only that, it was in practically perfect quality, being a mono mix taken straight from tape.

It’s still a mystery as to who leaked it. It’s generally believed that only 2 copies of this mono mix existed; one in the vault of Abbey Road Studios, and a copy that Lennon himself took that day. Along with that, the timing of the leak was interesting, coming at a time when so much focus was on the band due to the impending remasters.

Finally, there was the reaction of those involved; the band, etc. Their reaction was…..nothing. Yup. None of the band, their estates…..nobody said a word about it, and in the research, I’ve done, to this day they still haven’t. The only reaction came from the record label, which was to have it removed from youtube. Too little, too late though. So, an excellent sounding copy of an unreleased version of a Beatles song leaks shortly before the brand new remasters are released, and they don’t have much of a reaction if any. Not only is the source unknown, but the options for such are limited. Could it have been done by them for extra publicity? Perhaps, but they’re not exactly a band that needs it.

Regardless, we finally got one of the holy grails. While it was reported by the press, it wasn’t quite as huge as you’d expect. Maybe it was because part of it involved “Revolution #9”, which a number of fans aren’t fond of due to being overly avant-garde. Maybe it was due to the label trying to stifle it as much as possible. Or maybe, just maybe, many people outside of the super hardcore fans didn’t know there was a story behind it or the importance behind the leak.

If you’ve read this, though, now you do. To think, this was 50 years ago this year, and it took 40 years to get to us. Now, if we can just have “Carnival of Light…..”

The only version on youtube was slowed down, I guess as a way to keep it up there (you know how people do that). However, here’s a link to a Beatles fan site that has the song posted at the correct speed: https://www.beatlesbible.com/2009/02/24/unreleased-revolution-1-mix/

Artist: Cheap Trick

Album: Cheap Trick

Year: 1977

Serial killers. Suicide. Pedophiles. Not the sort of topics you would relate to Cheap Trick, but sure enough, they’re all present on their debut album.

Cheap Trick is an example of a strange phenomenon I’ve seen happen on more than one occasion. Once in a while, a band comes along and doesn’t do well here at first (or sometimes ever)…but they become immediate successes in Japan. Artists such as Cheap Trick, Queen, and The Runaways, all experienced insane popularity in Japan before ever making a dent here.

In the case of Cheap Trick, their first 3 albums didn’t even crack the Top 40 here. “Surrender”, which is now considered one of their signature songs, only hit No. 62. The twist here is that it would be their live album, “Cheap Trick at Budokan”, recorded in Japan, that would end up launching them as stars around the world, including their own country (and it wasn’t even meant to be released here!).

It’s no secret that, live, the band was a much different beast than in the studio. In contrast to the polish that made the hits so smooth sounding, they were raw and aggressive. That’s where the debut comes in. Thanks, in part, to producer Jack Douglas (who had just recently worked on a string of classic Aerosmith albums), this first album managed to capture the raw, unpolished sound that the band was capable of. Along with that, it also was very dark lyrically.

“Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School” is a song about a pedophile. “Oh Candy” (released as a single, with no success) was written about a who committed suicide. Closing track (and this writer’s personal favorite) “The Ballad of TV Violence (I’m Not the Only Boy)” is about Richard Speck, who was a serial killer.

It’s not all darkness though, but even upbeat tracks like “He’s a Whore” (which, despite the title, is not just about sex) and opening track “ELO Kiddies” (which is open to interpretation, since even the band members have all given various explanations regarding what it’s about) have a sense of mischievousness that, while not quite lacking from future albums, definitely shines through much more here.

What we end up with is an album that was a much more accurate representation of the band’s sound. After the lack of success it had here (not even breaking the Top 200), they would go with a different producer. While it would eventually lead to success for the band, it would also result in them sounding much smoother and safer (a move even the band would bemoan in later years).

In the years since, despite career ups and downs, they’re still going strong, having been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and their first 4 albums are now regarded as classics.

The debut, though, stands out.

Artist: The Kinks

Album: The Kinks Present a Soap Opera

Year: 1975

Well….after a near 4 year hiatus, filled with varying life circumstances (and with the exception of my David Bowie tribute which apparently made some people cry), I’ve once again returned to the writing trenches. Special thanks to Michelle, Lauren, and Mandy for welcoming me back (again); this may be more occasional than regular this time around, but it will be much easier for me that way. On that note….

If you haven’t noticed from my past articles, I sometimes have this weird thing where I tend to like an album that is widely considered one of the worst releases in an artist’s discography. “The Kinks Present a Soap Opera” (from here on out referred to as just “Soap Opera”) is one of the best examples of this aspect.

At this point in their career, The Kinks were on a downswing, in the midst of what has been referred to as their “theatrical” phase, which began with the release of “Preservation Act 1” in 1973. At this point, they were past their golden era and also increased their lineup to include female backing vocalists and horn players. Along with this, Ray Davies started exerting even more control in the studio; “Soap Opera” is considered by many to be more of a Ray Davies solo album in all but name.

The roots of the album lie in the project “Starmaker”, which aired on Granada Television, and starred Davies in the titles role, with the rest of the band members serving as the backup and. It was decided to take the concept, and songs, into the studio, to create an entire album around it.

The basic plot involves the character Starmaker, who declares that he can make anybody a star, and decides to trade places with an average person named Norman, to see what it’s like to live as an average person. He works at Norman’s job, sleeps with his wife, and basically does regular things, though he starts to lose his grip on reality at the same time.

Now, this sounds like a decent plot for a rock opera, and it is. I grew up with fond memories of listening to this on 8 track, which, when I got older, exposed the first issue: the story can only be understood if the songs are listened to in order! It wasn’t until I was 21, and it got a CD reissue, that I heard the album as intended (which I assure you was quite a different running order), and it made more sense.

Thing is, the CD release exposed the second issue: there’s actual dialogue in between the tracks, but only in the lyric sheet and not recorded. Without the original vinyl release containing the lyric sheet, big chunks of the story that happens between the songs are missing. Why this dialogue wasn’t recorded is beyond me; it’s necessary in order to fully understand the story, especially during the second half. Seriously, if you can figure out the point of “Ducks on the Wall” without the link between that and the previous song, you’re amazing.

As for the music, it’s typical of The Kinks during the mid-70s; rock, music hall, blues. It’s not great, but it’s not as bad as the reputation may suggest, especially in these days of reality tv and people trying to switch jobs with others, etc. The overall charm is also the biggest frustration; the album feels incomplete and seems to end too quickly, and when you see the dialogue that’s written between the tracks, it feels like a lost opportunity. (The ending dialogue is also open to interpretation as to how the story actually goes, but that’s a whole other discussion…)

Would I recommend it? If you like albums with a sense of flair, a bit of silliness, and have enough curiosity to check out the lesser-known recordings of popular artists, absolutely. It would also help if theatrics are your thing. If you’re just looking for a great collection of songs from start to finish, though, look elsewhere…..

Then again, that wasn’t what Ray was going for with this album, so I guess you could say he at least partially succeeded in his goal….at least he can get credit for that.

Original Press Release from Norway:

The Cleaners from Venus – Living with Victoria Grey (1986)

1981 saw the release of the first proper Cleaners of Venus album from the multi-talented auteur, Martin Newell. Since then and even before, his career has continued unabated with success and failure factoring little into his determination to push out album after album of new material under his own name or one of the many projects he’s been a member of since the 70s. While perhaps more renowned in recent years as an accomplished poet in Essex, England, Newell’s output has continued well into the 21st century with his latest record released just last year.

Yet, without the assistance of Captured Tracks re-releasing much of his back-catalog in 2013, exposure to his more robust discography would have been limited. For a long time cassettes remained one, if not the only proper way to listen to a Cleaners album outside of a live performance.

Each of his albums as the sole constant member of this project has a devil-may-care ambiguity tied to the texture of their respective tracks. In keeping with this attitude, Newell carefully constructs a pop sound that has its roots in 60s psychedelics folded upon layers of more experimental instrumentation that at one time further stretched the limits of what pop was and what it could be. All of this is done by Newell with an intensely DIY ethos that rejected the standard of how music should be released.

If you had to place Newell in any particular category you could try and make a case that he belongs firmly in the realm of jangle pop, but it would be reductive to do so. Brushes with post-punk and new wave are frequent throughout his discography in the 80s and 90s. Yet with over 13 proper albums as The Cleaners from Venus alone, not everything is a guaranteed slam dunk with much of the Cleaners output from work from the mid to late 80s not receiving the same attention that had been given to his work earlier in the decade.

With Living With Victoria Grey that lack of attention may simply come down to the irreverent sampling bookending most of these compositions. Back to back, has the effect of undercutting the emotion pitched behind each track, making a proper listen jarring from transition to transition. As a whole, the album is much more purposefully madcap and doesn’t take itself too seriously when stacked against his earlier work.

Taking each track in piece by piece showcases the album as one of the most slavishly devoted to his influences from 60s pop standards. Tracks like “Stay On” and “What’s Going On (In Your Heart)” easily wring out this quality in droves. Others like “Mercury Girl” are more complexly detailed, recalling some of his more consistent efforts such as his standout Midnight Cleaners from 1982. Like the element itself, in this track Newell croons about a relationship that is ultimately toxic and amorphous. Destructive yet maudlin with the lyrics, the direction and distorted tone make this a bittersweet standout.

Perhaps nothing else sums up his tastes and predilections on Victoria Grey than a quote from a few years back when interviewed by Aug Stone of The Quietus in the tellingly titled “The Fall And Rise Of Martin Newell And The Cleaners From Venus.” “I’m very interested in anything that’s about 3 minutes long and slightly distorted with a good chorus,” Newell says. “That’s what I like. And I still am.”

The goal of this column, to “uncover” some brilliant yet fleetingly acknowledged artistic moment that’s been forgotten or temporarily misplaced, is a common cultural trope, like making end of the year lists or crying during Parenthood.  It’s also, inherently, a working commentary on how the memory of a culture works in real time.  To put that another way, columns like this one exist as reactions to the relentlessly commercialized reality of pop-culture consumption.  They’re a way of acknowledging the bedrock beneath the Megamalls.  History may be written by the victors, but culture, it turns out, is transcribed in double platinum.  Columns like this one are graffiti carved along those polished grooves.

That being said, the first thing I did after being given this assignment was cheat.  A crucial stipulation of this column is that the writer must find something that he or she has lost.  I did not meet this requirement, which is actually more of a prerequisite, because I haven’t really lost anything yet.  At 23, the most I can say is that some songs from Punk in Drublic (an album that went Gold) have gone hazy, and that I don’t really connect with Bleach (though I don’t think I’m supposed to connect with Bleach, but that’s a different article).  It’s not that I have an impeccable memory, far from it; it’s just that I haven’t quite reached my carrying capacity.  That’s more of a goal than anything at this point.  Some albums seem like they’d be better if you forgot about them first (this is where I mention Bleach again).

But that wasn’t the assignment.  The assignment was to find something, not intentionally lose it, so that’s exactly what I did: I found something that someone else had lost.

Like many people, I have an uncle.  I have a number of uncles, actually, but just one that’s relevant to the column.  His name’s Robert, but everyone calls him Trip.  He’s [enough] years old.  He was the first person to ever play “Bastards of Young” for me, and he was the one who gave me The Monitor for both my birthday and Christmas the year it came out (I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t know this).  Over the past decade, he’s put more life-redirecting albums in my hand than any one artist, or label, or tastemaker.  So when I got this assignment, the embryonic cultural critic that I am, I immediately reached out to him and asked for something he’d stored away, a record that was gathering dust in the attic of his taste, hoping I could dust off whatever he pulled out and figure out why it was there in the first place.  Why he’d kept it.

A couple of days after I asked for his suggestion, Trip e-mailed me back with the names of 40 records, each followed by a brief, catalogued summary – my personal favorite remains his concise poetry describing Material Issue’s International Pop Overthrow: “Chicago power pop trio, lead singer committed suicide”.  Out of necessity, I narrowed my choices quickly, ultimately landing on what I took to be the most obscure and insular choice: Jack Logan’s unwitting songwriting manifesto Bulk.

The best way to talk about Bulk, especially in 2015, is to say that it’s not an album.  It’s something else, something I’ve never really experienced before.  That something is certainly closer to being an album than it is to being, say, a wooden stool or a steering wheel, but there’s an otherness to the way it moves.  Bulk is still, above all, just a collection of songs, and that collection of songs was definitely written and recorded by a single artist, but these qualifications go pretty far out the fucking window once Logan turns his guitar inside out and invents Arcade Fire on the spot on the fourth track.

That track is called, “Female Jesus”, and it essentially comes out of nowhere.  This kind of hairpin turn is jarring just four songs in, but over time it becomes the collection’s default mode.  Bulk is a formless work.  This is mostly because the songs weren’t exactly meant to be shared.  Logan wrote and recorded the 42 songs on Bulk over a 14-year period where no one outside of his family really knew he could play the guitar.  He was better known as a comic book artist with a whole lot of weirdo rock cred, the kind of guy whose name would appear on sold-out guest lists but would never show.  He wrote a series of comic books about Peter Buck, REM’s guitarist, and eventually the two became friends.  It was Buck who first found out about Logan’s songwriting material, all 600 or so songs of it, and introduced him to Peter Jesperson, the same guy who’d “discovered” and then managed the Replacements.  

From there, it was Buck who was tasked with trimming Logan’s creative deluge to something marketable, and either as a testament to his prolific friend or a sign of over attachment, Buck was only able to bring the track list down to 42 songs, which would be stretched across two discs.  What Buck helped to create by doing this, though, is a piece of work that feels unstuck from time, where 1979 is 1993 is 1987 is 2015.  It’s like Slaughter-House Five with no narrative, like Boyhood if the scenes were in no particular order and the actors were constantly being replaced.  The songs don’t appear in chronological order, so the only real hint you get as to what year Logan recorded any given entry during is in the production.  But even that can prove misleading.  There’s a Delta Blues song on the album’s first disc that sounds like it could’ve been recorded in a Depression-era tin can.

What ends up happening is you forget about Jack Logan almost completely and start to take each song on its own terms, which is exactly what Logan would tell you he wants.  Without a firm grasp on time, the two discs have the unmistakable aesthetic of an iTunes library left on shuffle, a texture which, when you consider that these songs were all recorded before 1993, even further removes the proceedings from comprehensible physics.  So not long into it all, you find yourself floating through distinct realities.  There’s the strand of country music that actually gets how a truck can be a metaphor (“New Used Car and a Plate of Bar-B-Que”), the loopy National precursor about hating Mondays (“Monday Night”), and the kind of ecstatically self-effacing song every heartland rock renaissance band has been trying to write since all the 90’s amp lights burned out (“Shit for Brains”).  Logan rejects the opaque strangeness of similar recluses like Daniel Johnston for a kind of keen accessibility.

In much the same way that Ryan Adams wears genres as t-shirts like Bowie wore them as costumes, Jack Logan seems to pull his tropes on before every writing session like sweatpants.  He doesn’t tear through genres as much as he wades into them.  Blues seems to be his default, but he only really digs it as an excuse for playing with repetition.  He also doesn’t seem to think about genre precedents, and manages to pull together an impressive amount of cultural appropriation on this record, be it religious, ethnic, or, at one point, punk.  This might make Bulk the most American record ever made, but I’m still not sure if that’s a compliment or an allegation.

After a few solid spins through Bulk, I found myself reading a relatively recent interview Logan did with American songwriter where he was asked about his songwriting style and said this: “I’ve sort of realized that I have, over the years, developed my own little thing.  It’s not the typical singer/songwriter approach…  I refuse to do lyrics that are openly confessional, and I have never written anything meant to ‘move’ people emotionally…  I’m also not much on overt social commentary.  I tend to write about little snapshots of life, character studies of reprehensible characters, or little word puzzle constructions with veiled meanings. Not exactly a sure path to success.”  

It made me realize that it doesn’t matter if he pulls off any of the shit I was worried about.  He was never trying to make music that anyone would do anything with other than enjoy.  He wanted whoever heard it to take each song for what it was, and to live in it, and only there, for the brief time that it ran.  Jack Logan still hasn’t made an album.  Jack Logan has only made songs.

Considered to be part of the so-called Berlin Trilogy (despite not being recorded in Berlin at all), this was the third album in a row to have input from Brian Eno, following on from Low and Heroes. Obviously, those two albums are quite well known, both for the songs they’ve produced that have become classics, as well as the innovation of all the electronics involved, not to mention the concept of regular songs on one side, ambient instrumentals on the other. Considering the publicity put forth for Heroes, you would think Lodger would be very anticipated. So what happened?

Oddly enough, it wasn’t any one major thing, just a bunch of small things combined. The working relationship between Bowie and Eno was winding down; the album had no instrumentals, and was more regularly structured as an album of songs (with a loose pattern of one side dealing with travels, and the other dealing with critisims of the Western world). The mixing of the actual album was actually a bit muddier sounding than most of his albums. The album was definately much more accessible and pop-oriented than what came before it. That being said, it was definately not a normal album, even by Bowie standards.

The album did spawn a number of singles and videos, as well as songs that are fan-favorites to this day. “D.J.” was a rather cynical commentary on the DJ culture that was so big at the time. “Boys Keep Swinging” was a very garage band sounding track, brought about by having the musicians switch to instruments they normally did not play. It was also supported by a video featuring Bowie dressed in 3 different types of drag to sing the backing vocals, as well as a performance on “Saturday Night Live” to promote the track. “Look Back in Anger” was released as a single in America, and featured a video portraying Bowie as an artist who decays as his painting becomes better looking (based on “The Picture of Dorian Gray”).

There are also songs such as “Repetition”, which focuses on domestic violence, Bowie’s vocal purposely portraying a numb, disconnected feeling; “Yassassin”, which combined reggae with turkish music, and “Move On”, whose backing vocals were taken from the chorus of the Bowie-penned “All The Young Dudes”, ran backwards.

As the descriptions show, despite the more “normal” and “pop-oriented” direction this album took compared to the previous two, in no way was this a regular album, and if anything may have been much more daring and creative. It also pointed the way towards his next album; the highly successful “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)”. Lodger is an album that deserves to be heard by those who haven’t, and deserves to be given a second chance with open ears by those who have.

By Joe Jamnitzky