Stay Out of My Life

Five Star are one of those 80s bands that I’ve heard of and yet would never recognise should the 80s radio station play them.

I mean, I listened to almost 50 minutes of the album ‘Silk and Steel’ by Five Star and I probably couldn’t identify any of the songs on that album now.

I enjoyed the time listening to the album. I remember thinking ‘this album goes through all the popular pop song emotions – new love, almost break ups, bad break ups, love again, it’s a proper rollercoaster’.

It was an acceptable album and I wasn’t annoyed by it. High Praise for their best selling album.

Unless Five Star appears on another year list of albums, I won’t listen to them again.

Runway Blues

Today I listened to the current number 8 album ‘Starcatcher’ by Greta Van Fleet.

Greta Van Fleet is not a female singer. It’s an American rockband. However, they are apparently named after a real person who does not enjoy their music.

I really did enjoy the music. This was an excellent album. I listened to it twice.

Yesterday, I listened to this week’s episode of The Off Menu podcast. If I’d listened to it before I could have spoken about Graham Coxon when talking about Blur yesterday. I enjoyed Graham Coxon on that show, but still no to the album.

Ballads

Today I listened to the current number one album ‘The Ballad of Darren’ by Blur.

I liked some Blur back in the day. Some coffee and TV. Some Song 2.

I did not enjoy this album and it could be that it was too ballady and too slow.

Lightening never strikes twice

Today I was in 1986 listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I have listened to NC&TBS before from 2001 in 2021.

Last year, I decided I hated the first song and then was put in a fake happy trance by the end of the album.

This year, I liked the first song and then hated every other song on the album. It was very not enjoyable.

Ain’t My Crime

Today I listened to ‘Orgasmatron’ by Motorhead.

This was their first album on their own label after they had a disagreement with their previous label and thought they could do it better by themselves.

Motorhead are obviously a band I have heard of. I can’t trust anyone who doesn’t love ‘Ace of Spaces’.

‘Ace of Spaces’ was released before this album and I did not know any of the songs on this album. There were 9 tracks on this album – 5 on side one, 4 on side two – and the album is just over 35 minutes long.

I feel rock artists should do better and be longer!

Take a Chance

Yesterday we danced on the ceiling, however, today, we’re ‘Dancing Undercover’ with this 1986 album from Ratt.

Ratt were a glam rock band I’ve never heard of.

I had no problems with this album. It existed and didn’t make me think about anything.

I wanted to talk about something meaningful but I couldn’t come up with anything about Ceilings and Undercover. I’m sure it will come to me at some point.

Something about being proud of who you are and hiding who you are. About contexts where you are safe to be different and those where you’re in danger if you’re different.

Because it’s the 80s, probably some link to Footloose which is a film I’ve only sort of half-seen but is about what happens when there is a ban on personal expression of identity.

People should be able to dance on the ceiling! People shouldn’t have to dance undercover.

I wonder, as I look at the news at the moment, who are the people being forced undercover right now?

Say You, Say Me

Today I listened to Lionel Richie’s 1986 album ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’.

We all know the song ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’, we’re always dancing on the ceiling when we go to parties and discos. I also recognised the song ‘Say You, Say Me’.

However, there were a lot of singles on this album that I have not heard of.

It was a perfectly good album. It was 80s and dancey and acceptable.

Star Fleet

Today, I think this is cheating but I didn’t mean it to be. I decided to listen to the lowest new entry in the current chart today. I found it was Brian May’s ‘Star Fleet Project’ at number 35.

The reason why it is cheating is because the first three tracks were a re-issue of Brian May’s 1986 EP ‘Star Fleet Project’. Then after that it’s a couple of versions of ‘We Will Rock You’ and some live tracks and such.

‘We Will Rock You’ will never not be a good song.

I couldn’t listen to the whole 2 hours of this re-released and extended album. I was really not into it.

Also, this album has nothing to do with Star Trek!

Interestingly, on Amazon Music the song ‘Rock Star’ by Dappy and Brian May is listed as number two on the list of Brian May’s top songs. And I’m not going to argue. That’s also never going to be a good song.

Praise You

Today I listened to Rita Ora’s new album ‘You and I’ which is currently number 6 in the UK charts.

I like Rita Ora. I like much of her singles – never listened to an album. I enjoyed the time she was on the radio one breakfast show with Nick Grimshaw and she asked for a drink because she was ‘a bit perched’.

The third song on this album is a re-imagination of ‘Praise You’ by Fatboy Slim and this hit two different areas of my brain.

The first was ‘Is this a covers album?’ And then for the rest of the songs I was trying to work out if it was a cover or not. ‘Girl in the Mirror’ did not help me at all! I was like…’is this Michael Jackson? That’s a weird choice’. And then every other song – literally, every other song I thought was a cover. However, it turns out it’s not a covers album. It just sounds like that Eva Cassidy album where she sings good songs really slowly. This album sounds like a slow and emotional covers album. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

The second thought I had about the song ‘Praising You’. I was thinking about churches a lot today and about when churches go bad. Often that can be when the praise meant to be assigned to God, gets transferred to a person. The person believes they are the reason why things are happening. They believe that they deserve the praise. The people believe that there is something special about the person, that they are more important than anyone else and so they should be followed. This leads to abuse and misinterpretation and problems for everyone involved.

That was a pretty deep thought for such a bland album.

Alien Girl

Today I listened to the current number one album ‘Beautiful and Brutal Yard’ by J Hus.

The lyrics are dodgy in the way that much music in 2023 is dodgy but not in a 1986 way of asking why women you’re attracted to have ugly friends.

Musically, all the tracks sounded different to each other and I very much enjoyed this album, as long as I didn’t pay too much attention the lyrics.