Time and The Nick of Time 3 out of 5 Stars
The stars aligned for Bonnie Raitt and her tenth album. A new record company (Capitol) that was hot to break her after a couple decades of cult status, a hot producer (Don Was) and a batch of songs tailored to her rough but tender pop-blues style. Combined with a couple great videos (especially Dennis Quaid in "Thing Called Love"), and things just seemed right. Suddenly, "Nick Of Time
" started selling in tonnage and Bonnie Raitt jumped from critical darling to stadium act. Add the the self-penned title song captured a worried baby-boomers' aging zeitgeist, and the album suddenly became Grammy bait. (See also Genius Loves Company 
and Raising Sand
.) After all, the academy loves a good comeback story if the music is as firmly middle of the road as is "Nick of Time." Was helped in that department by smoothing everything up to a fine polish. If you compare Raiit's gently rolling "Thing Called Love" to John Hiatt's spiky original, you'd see what I mean. Fellow cult singer Bonnie Hayes
got a sudden rush of exposure by having two songs included, the sweet "Have A Heart" (plucked as the theme to a Bob Hoskins movie) and the surly "Love Letters." Jerry Williams' "Real Man" also highlights Raitt's smooth, honest style. The original first half of the album remains a flawless set. It sent Raitt home from the 1989 Grammys with a pack of awards, including album of the year. It also set up the successful pattern for following albums, including the delight of Luck of the Draw
.
was one of those moments when Todd Rundgren locked himself alone in a studio and poured his heart out onto tape. Playing and singing everything himself without much pretense, "Hermit" is one of Todd's most direct and purest pop albums. It even offered up one of his few top 40 singles when "Can We Still Be Friends" snuck up the charts in the bicentennial year of 1976.
, early Utopia albums), but here he kept it concise. The whole album clocks in at just over a half hour, and not a slot is wasted. As a result, Hermit remains of of his best albums and a minor primer in pop classicism.
" mixes punky, Replacements like
thrashing with the them coming to prominence of grunge. It's an
otherwise inauspicious debut, the dawn of a band.
they slag the success of their hit during "
"), it did set
the tone for much of what Radiohead would develop as a band attitude
later.
should be posted. Not just for the historical amount of
white stuff dumped on my neighborhood, but for the cool music this
double disc set contains. There's some deep talent to be found here.
And I, for one, did not realize that Snow Patrol was almost a 15 year
old group.
The first song on "Up To Now" is the melancholy "Chocolate," which
found lead Patrolman Gary Lightbody going for the lush world of 
He also started writing stronger ballads, as "Run" will
attest.
appeared, the band began hitting the kind of heights U2 often does,
like "Take Back This City," Snow Patrol's hardest rocking single to
date. However, frontman doesn't have the mammoth ego of Bono, nor Chris
Martin's sometimes exasperating over-eagerness. 
and 
, Cat Stevens began to show the mental strains of stardom though the music on 
.
He started off with his usual meditative style with the Top 40 single
"Sitting" and letting out a joyful cry with "Can't Keep It In," but the
second half found him wishing he could get aboard a UFO and get away
from everything in "Freezing Steel." Finally, as he sings in the
war-torn walk through "Ruins," Stevens cries for the lost paradise of
Eden and wonders where we all went wrong.
,
it was obvious Stevens felt he could no longer relate to what he was
doing and that he believed himself to be turning more and more into an
outsider. "Catch Bull at Four" is the album that shows Cat as he
started trying to navigate that space.
is a semi-true tale about
how a man born Michael Peterson decided he needed money to support his
wife and new baby, so the 19 year old robbed a post office..and then
began his first jail term. Michael discovers his real calling is
violence as mantel to fame. Before long, he has a reputation as
brawler, a kind of anarchist inmate done up as circus strongman. In the
one period he actually gains freedom, Michael heads off to a
whorehouse, hooks up with trannies and prostitutes then becomes a prize
fighter who gets christened Charlie Bronson by his roguish
hustler/manager.
.
The band's debut was a decent modern rock album with spacey flourishes
and managed to gain attention for - frankly - not sucking. But it was
mostly a two man operation, with Jared playing and singing most
everything and his brother Shannon.
" comes of as the equal of 
or 
sticker. The first hit from that album, "Go All The Way," roared out
with loud, sweet guitars and Beach Boy harmony, setting up the future
for the band.
hits. They used lyrical teases instead of blatant come-ons to make
their songs cover more ground, like when Carmen chirps "Oh! I wanna be
with you! So Baaaaaaad!" or the winsome want of "Let's Pretend." The
band also were excellent mimics, with "Drivin' Around" a flawless 
concoction. 
. Regrouping led to the appropriately named 
and Carmen's last single masterpiece with The Raspberries. With the
plea for success that is the pocket symphony "Overnight Sensation,"
Carmen blended Brian Wilson's songwriting with Phil Spector production
to create one of power pop's perfect four minutes. About midway into
the single, Carmen and the band get sucked into a car radio and the
tinny speaker cranks out the boys as they chant "want a hit record,
yeah!" across the nation's airwaves. I can still occasionally get the
goosebumps when I hear this song.
had a fairly successful solo career and Wally Bryson went on to join power pop maestros (and cult faves) 
. But for a brief and fiery moment, The Raspberries made the kid of guilty pleasure music you didn't have to feel guilty about.
