My Amazon Reviews: The Dream Academy "The Morning Lasted All Day; A Retrospective"

Ah hey ma ma ma ma...
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Long overdue but well worth the wait, "The Morning Lasted All Day" finally collects a solid set of The Dream Academy's best from their three albums, a few B-sides and oddities and the brand new "Sunrising." Augmented with a comprehensive booklet written by Nick Laird-Clowes, exquisitely remastered with his supervision, this is about as good a Dream Academy anthology as a fan could hope for.

While it naturally is heavily weighted in favor of their dynamic debut, both "Remembrance Days" and "A Different Kind Of Weather" are given exposure. (I've always been of the mindset that "Weather," despite the fact that it didn't even chart in the US, has been vastly underrated.) The band's chamber-pop gets much of its otherworldliness from Kate St. John's oboe and other reed instruments flowing beneath Laird-Clowes' folkish guitars and vocal delivery. There's a lovely sort of soft focus to many of their songs that made the majority of them difficult to fit in during the synth-heavy 80's, leaving such contenders as "Indian Summer" and "Power To Believe" (included here both in its instrumental version as heard on the "Planes Trains and Automobiles" soundtrack, and the vocal version from "Remembrance Days") frozen out of the top 40.

The ethereal quality of their songs a times masked the presence of noteworthy contributors. Friend of the band and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour was a frequent collaborator and co-producer, Lindsay Buckingham co-producing and adding background vocals to "Indian Summer," and The Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr playing on "Ballad In 4/4." It takes away nothing from the band's presentation, even offering proof just how powerful The Dream Academy 'sound' was to all the stages of the band's recording history.

I have a few of my own favorites to recommend as a fan, one of them being the lovely version of John Lennon's "Love," as featured on "Weather." Actually using a drum-loop, Laird-Clowes brings an emphasis to Lennon's message (including a portion of "#9 Dream") that few covers of Lennon have done. The cover of The Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" is good for a smile, and I have always thought "Indian Summer" was a single cheated out of deserved hit status. Then there's "Sunrising," the first new Dream Academy song in 30 years. It's a welcome treat and fits in with the band's legacy, with Gilbert Gabriel's piano painting the mood (alas, St.John is not featured on it).

Even with that minor wish not coming true, I am very happy to have "The Morning Lasted All Day" to augment my original CD's of The Dream Academy. The remastering enables you to hear things that were tempered in the originals, and makes for a satisfying listening experience. Now if only the original albums could get the deluxe treatment....

     

My Amazon Reviews: Various Artists "I'll Scratch Yours - A Tribute to Peter Gabriel"

Mutual Scratching Society
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Although it took him three years to pull it together, Peter Gabriel at last put his "Scratch My Back - And I'll Scratch Yours" out as a whole piece. Initially designed to be a collaborative project, Gabriel gets 10 of his "Scratch My Back" artists to add their voices to a select Gabriel song, with varying results. (You may also quibble about Bryan Eno subbing for David Bowie, but it does up the collabs; the missing links are Neil Young and Radiohead.) If you don't already have "Scratch My Back," I highly recommend getting the limited edition two CD issue.

One of the things that held my rating back of the initial album was that Gabriel had set all his choices to orchestral arrangements (he did the same to himslef on "New Blood"), which kept the album's pace to a crawl. Fortunately for "I'll Scratch Yours," the collaborators had no such imposition. It varies the album considerably and offers a few surprises. For starters is the realization that anything Randy Newman touches sounds like Randy Newman, from the dry wit of the vocals to the piano playing, and he turns "Big Time" from the ironically pop MTV hit into the biting commentary that the lyrics had posited all along.

My other favorite here is Lou Reed turning "Solisbury Hill" from Gabriel's gathering of courage in a pastoral setting into a dingy echo laden guitar look into the mean streets of New York City (and may be one of Reed's last recordings). The criminally underrated Elbow take one of my all-time favorite Gabriel songs, "Mercy Street," and do an uncanny sound-alike version. Stephin Merrit (Magnetic Fields) stamps the paranoia out from underneath "Not One Of Us" and makes it sound like a bubbly synth-pop record from the 80's. And finally, Paul Simon turns "Biko," a song I thought I was tired of, into an acoustic folk anthem.

Those are the hits. There are a couple of misses; Brian Eno doesn't do anything to make "Mother Of Violence" interesting. Bon Iver tries as hard as he can to sound interesting, but remains a bore to listen to. David Byrne uses his falsetto on "I Don't Remember" to make you remember what nails on chalkboard sounds like. But that's only three real duds. The remainder of the songs, from the likes of Feist, Arcade Fire and Regina Spektor at least show that Gabriel hasn't lost his taste for new artists and that his songwriting transcends formats. Taken together, "Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours" is a good pair of bookends and a fine tribute to Gabriel's multi-decade career.

     

My Amazon Reviews: 10cc "The Very Best of 10cc"

It's Just a Silly Phase I'm Going Through.
4 Out Of 5 Stars

I have posited on other album reviews that I believe 10cc to be the kind of band Monty Python would have dreamed up if they'd decided to take on modern pop in the 70's, instead of the wonderfulness of The Rutles. Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were already experienced pop writers and performers in other peoples' bands before they joined forces as studio musicians in what was basically a bubblegum hit machine studio. From those beginnings, they became one of the most respected bands of the 70's, seeming to effortlessly blend elements of pop music with progressive rock all while maintaining an often dry wit and cheeky humor. This single "Very Best Of" disc gathers the best of their 45's from their first six studio albums and bonuses you the Godley and Creme hit "Cry."

The band's origins as writers for hire on on display for the songs from their debut, "Donna," "The Dean and I" and "Rubber Bullets." The first two are borderline parody in that they so closely approximate bubblegum singles that it's hard to believe that anything would come of merit in the future. "Rubber Bullets," while still aping the Jailhouse Rock genre, satirically upends the style by having the song delivered from the standpoint of the prison staff. ("I love to hear those convicts squeal, it's a shame these slugs ain't real.") If there was any indication of the brilliance to come, that was where you'd find it.

By "Sheet Music," the band was going full-steam. "Silly Love" and "The Wall Street Shuffle" threw so many styles in the blender that trying to explain the band was an impossibility, even if American audiences weren't catching on as yet. But by the next album, "The Original Soundtrack," that would change. The double bladed "I'm Not In Love" floated all the way to number two in 1975 and broke the band in the states. Sung from both sides of the story, the singer delicately kisses off a love affair - or is he? and that made the enigmatic song such a charmer. The goofy "Life Is a Minestrone" is also included, but the album is sold short.

Having finally broken the states, the band delivered their artiest album yet, with "How Dare You!" While "I'm Mandy Fly Me" and "Art For Art's Sake" were both brilliant singles (and "I'm Mandy" may have been one of the best 'mini-opera' songs of the decade), they missed the top 40, but are definitely among the band's best. That also was when creative tensions caused the rift between Godley/Creme and Stewart/Gouldman to reach a breaking point. Stewart and Gouldman decided to keep the name 10cc and soldier on with "Deceptive Bends." They were obviously eager to please, because the ultra catchy "The Things We Do For Love" became the band's second top ten single and "People In Love" (which tried very hard to find the clever spot "I'm Not In Love" achieved) squeaked to number 40.

Sadly, it seemed that each team needed the other more than they wanted to let on. "Bloody Tourists" tried to capture the old magic, but the main single, "Dreadlock Holiday," was the first time the humor sounded forced. "For You and I," the album's ballad, just couldn't quite match the majesty of earlier, similar songs. Further albums went to a different label, but it didn't much matter as they continued on a slide of diminishing returns. Godley and Creme became video pioneers, directing for the likes of Duran Duran and The Police. It's no surprise then, that their big hit as a duo, "Cry," rose on the charts on the back of an eye-popping video. It was one of the first videos to use the face-morphing technique that eventually became famous on Micheal Jackson's "Black and White."

What makes the addition of "Cry" such a delight is that it that it makes "The Very Best of 10cc" a true representation of the band's work. These were all delightful singles and, at their absolute best, 10cc rivaled any of the 70's hitmakers for style and creativity.