Desperately Seeking A Deceitful Escape (Club)

Does anybody remember The Escape Club? They were a UK concern that had 2 US hit radio songs in the late 1980s / early 1990s that were eerily prophetic, and then they disappeared without a trace (thankfully, that, but they were replaced with much worse…). 

“Wild, Wild West.” (1988, #1) Ushered-in a new decade worshipping unabashed sensuality and rebellion (Ye old sex, drugs, & rock-and-roll trope. Yawn…). The checklist: casual sex, drugs, cop-bashing, rebellion, parades celebrating sin, etc. Sound familiar? Also, and I just remembered, the references to the number, 47, but that’s probably just a coincidence? The video featured disembodied, genderless arms and legs, which pointed to where this was all heading; I remember finding the video hard to watch. Here's an early single review. 

“I’ll Be There.” (1991, #8) Epitomized the God-ignoring, man-as-his-own-god, pseudo-spirituality of the modern era, with the dead protagonist promising to play the role of God for their still-living loved one: I’ll be there, watching you from above, I may have died, but I’ve gone nowhere. The video featured a drowned woman, who seemed to be desperately suggesting, “this is fine,” which is pretty much how sin works. I’m guessing Oprah enjoyed this one. Bonus "ugh" points for the album cover’s artsy depiction of male ejaculate. 

Tipper Gore, all is forgiven. 

“The Magazine,” by Rickie Lee Jones

Rickie Lee Jones was the talk of the town when her debut album exploded onto the scene in 1979, and deservedly so. Her 1981 follow-up album, Pirates, was equally strong and much heralded upon its initial release, even boasting a “Chuck E.’s In Love” caliber single, "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking," which was criminally-ignored by top 40 radio (that, apparently, much preferred the featherweight rubbish of “I Love A Rainy Night” and “9 to 5” to Jones’ smart pop masterworks), and sadly, the exceptional album, while reaching number 5 on the album charts and achieving “gold” status solely on the momentum of Jones’ popular debut, faded quickly into obscurity after just a few months. It remains a long-forgotten pop gem.

And Jones spent the remainder of 1981 and most of 1982 touring to promote Pirates while struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. By 1983, after a lack of “hit” singles from Pirates and fearing the fickle, record-buying public might forget about Jones altogether, Warner Brothers put out a “mini-album,” Girl At Her Volcano, in 1983, which featured covers of pop standards as well as a few live tracks and leftover outtakes from earlier album sessions. And to be honest, the scrapped-together album was actually quite good, still holding up 30 years later: a testament to Jones’ remarkable gifts. Moving to France for the remainder of that year, Jones kicked her addictions and got back to writing new songs for the next album, 1984’s sublime and regrettably overlooked, The Magazine.

Co-written and co-produced with James Newton Howard, who had previously worked on Elton John’s late 1970’s/early 1980’s albums and who would go on to broad acclaim composing film scores (e.g., The Prince Of Tides, The Sixth Sense, The Hunger Games, etc.), the sweeping concept of this album, at times, sounds like a movie score: a movie score to a quirky, personal, joyful, and sometimes painful movie - kind of like how life is. This stands to reason, as Jones has said that each album she records is like the soundtrack of her life during the time she’s making it. And while the lyrics may be a bit opaque at times, and the whimsical narratives may lead to a few dead ends, the catchy songs (“Gravity,” “Juke Box Fury,” “It Must Be Love,” and the single, “The Real End,” which landed on the lower end of the Hot 100 charts) and the pretty musical interludes (“Prelude To Gravity,” and the mysterious, moody “Rorschachs”) hang together well, shifting moods throughout and keeping the project wholly engaging.

This great album, too, was lost on pop radio that summer and fall, losing ground to the synthesized blips and beeps of horrid earworms, like the squeaky, “Break My Stride,” or the song that was popular solely because Michael Jackson sang on it and anything he touched that year was going to sell a million copies, “Somebody’s Watching Me,” and possibly the worst pop song ever, particularly because it hailed from one of pop music’s former geniuses, “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” And while the album was certainly of a piece with film scores of the day, pop fans that year were far more interested in throwaway blockbuster movie themes, like the cheesy, fight-for-your-right-to-dance-and-have-teenage-sex call to arms, “Footloose,” and the just plain stupid, “Ghostbusters.” But all of this is to say that overlooking Rickie Lee Jones in 1984 was a mistake, plain and simple, as so many missed out on this sumptuous, imaginative, playful, and tender album.

And bonus points for The Magazine for cajoling me into a making a brave leap early in my career. As a new professional in the mid-1990s, I suddenly found myself in the middle of an organization that I no longer recognized. A number of us were disoriented and discouraged, reeling from new leadership. I no longer felt welcome in a workplace that suddenly seemed unfriendly and unfamiliar. To stay would have been a discouraging chain of professional disappointments, but the thought of leaving was paralyzing. While practically intolerable, it felt safer, somehow, to just hang out, albeit unhappily. But the last refrain of Jones’, “Runaround,” haunted and seduced me that year: “Take a deep breath and break the chain, uh-oh, ooh-oh; take a deep breath and break the chain, uh-oh, ooh-oh; take a deep breath and break the chain…” And so I did, and I’ve never looked back. And that, my gentle readers, is the life changing power of music.

"Ancient Heart," by Tanita Tikiram

In 1988, two generations of talent united, one from the 1960’s / 1970's, and one from the 1980’s: Rod Argent, keyboardist and songwriter in the legendary 60’s band, The Zombies (see previous entry), who went on to become leader of the 70’s prog-rock band, Argent, scoring a 1972, #5 hit, “Hold Your Head Up,” paired up with Tanita Tikiram, an unknown, British ingénue with a chaffed, world-weary voice. The result was the magnificent and enigmatic album, Ancient Heart.

While a hit, internationally, and faring not-too-badly in the United States (reaching #59 in “Billboard” magazine, a respectable showing for the album not containing a hit single), Ancient Heart was, essentially, ignored by North American pop radio, marginalized by the blips, bleeps, hiccups, and squeals that comprised the landscape of the U.S. music market in 1988-89, which was at the time dominated by the likes of flavor-of-the-moment, girl-acts, like, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, and Paula Abdul, one of whom I actually saw in concert. Twice: in 1988 and in 1989. And I bought t-shirts. Both shows. Sigh… Why am I telling you this? Ok, so I while I won’t disclose which one of these three, pop-tarts my sister paid good money for us to go see (thanks, Sis!), I will share that the two concerts, truly, electrified my youth. Whatever. I’m not ashamed.

Well, anyway, it was my senior year in high school, 1989, and I bought Tikiram’s debut cassette, never having heard one note of music, just on the strength of magazine marketing. It’s true, silly as it sounds. The advertisement featured the oh-so-artsy album cover and described the songs as “hauntingly beautiful,” which was spot-on, as it turns out. But what the ad didn’t say was that Tikiram’s debut was also joyful, mysterious, sweet, wistful, melancholy, sometimes sexy, at all times melodic and as catchy as hell.

The album opener, “Good Tradition,” a rumination on family life, not, topically, unlike Thornton Wilder’s classic play, “Our Town,” dazzles with it’s brimming-with-joy drum rhythms and playful violin and horns. Sparkling, spry, and rejoicing, the song is an anomaly for this introspective, little album. It’s one of those tunes I find myself singing under my breath when I’m doing dishes, walking to work, or jogging with my wife, matching my gait to the beat of the music in my head. “Your mother smiles, the children play, and all the bad things happen miles away…” It’s stayed with me ever since I first heard it in the summer of 1989, and after over 20 years, it’s become like an old friend.

The sultry mood that carries the majority of the album is of a piece: quiet, studied, while thematically vague and peculiar. Songs like, “Cathedral Song,” and the startlingly intimate, “I Love You," and “Valentine Heart,” offer calm, muted tones, while "For All These Years" and the minor, MTV video hit (and perhaps her best-known song), “Twist In My Sobriety,” cast an eerie and beguiling shadow over the remainder of the album, which includes the haunting “He Likes The Sun” and the sorrowful, album closer, “Preyed Upon.”

Tikiram’s subsequent, early 1990’s releases were less impactful, artistically, save for a few songs from each collection (to wit, her second album, The Sweet Keeper, was overall, well…sweet, and the next album, Everybody’s Angel, is worth a listen, if nothing else for the beautiful, “Only The Ones We Love,” with ethereal backing vocals by Jennifer Warnes and for her remarkable evocation of Van Morrison, laced throughout the album), but each, successive album was met with less and less fanfare and notoriety. All but erased from the music scene by the mid-to-late 90’s, Tikiram released a “best of” collection at the turn of the century and is rumored to have started work this summer on a comeback album, to be released in the spring of 2011.

I’m listening to Ancient Heart as I write this, and the music sounds, to me, like no specific time period in popular music, especially not the late-1980’s when it was written and recorded. What also transcends time is that voice: sultry, savory, and smoky-flavored. Emanating from a then, 19 year-old; her voice belied her age, sounding like something from a finely-seasoned chanteuse, well beyond her teenage experiences. Lyrically, the songs on Ancient Heart are rhythmic and catchy, but nebulous and thick: trying to understanding their meaning is like running in a pool of water, exhausting and fruitless. Was it pop music? Was it world music? Was it Jazz? Yes, yes, and yes. Put simply, the sounds on Ancient Heart defy classification and feel timeless, as if recorded yesterday, or maybe a hundred years ago.

Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, by George Michael

Does “pop music” have a place on “must hear” album lists? As my gentle readers know, I often argue that it does, and George Michael’s work is a big part of the reason why rock critics today take pop music seriously, and his 1991 album, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, is "Exhibit A." While still teens in the UK, Michael and his musical partner, Andrew Ridgeley, formed the duo, “Wham!,” which helped set the template for early-80’s pop music, complete with the squeaky-clean, camera-ready smiles and neon-colored clothing that exuberantly exclaimed, “Choose Life!” Laugh-out-loud hilarious, it was, if unintentionally so, and nobody who wasn’t a teenage girl even admitted to liking these two dorks. I mean, seriously.

But, in fact, more than just teenaged girls picked up cassette copies of Wham!’s 1984, #1 album, Make It Big, which sold truck loads and contained now-classic pop nuggets like, “Everything She Wants,” (#1) “Careless Whisper,” (#1) “Freedom,” (# 3) and the #1 song that gave birth to the boy-bands that ruled radio in the late-80’s and 90’s, “Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go.” What was unexpected about these supposedly light, “disposable,” pop songs, however, was the deft, skillful songwriting and the sheer weight of the sinister subject matter: it was cheating girlfriends, cheating boyfriends, divorcing couples, lies, and lying-liars who held court in Michael’s jaundiced, musical world. Kinda sordid for a pop musician who appealed to millions of screaming teens, idn’t it?

In fact, Michael has made a career of writing pop hits about lurid, kinky subject matter, to wit, look up the lyrics to any of the following, bubbly Wham/Michael songs: “Credit Card Baby,” “The Edge Of Heaven,” “I Want Your Sex,” “Monkey,” “Father Figure,” “Fastlove,” and “Freek!” to name but a few. But the synthesized, pop sheen of Michael’s songs always obscured the vile, underworld he so often described, going completely unnoticed by the public, the fans, and the critics alike, ensuring that Wham! and George Michael were categorized as merely trifle, routinely pummeled in critical circles at the time, with one Rolling Stone critic dismissing Michael’s R&B-style vocals as, “prissy.” And the young musician was taking notes. Michael decided that being the alpha pop male of the moment wasn’t quite enough for him; he wanted all that AND to be taken seriously as an artiste. What he didn’t realize is, critics would have eventually come around to his brand of snap, crackle, and pop ear candy. The proof is in the pudding, as Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, and Kanye West reap the benefit of Michael’s party-pop, path finding. Note: yes, I said, Kanye West, who is much more of a piece with Michael than, say, Lil’ Wayne – admit it; you agree.

So, fast-forward to three years later; it’s 1987, and Michael, relinquishing all Wham-like, poster-friendly posing, grows a scruffy beard, puts on a leather jacket, buys a motor cycle (does he even drive it?), and releases the album that catapults him to 80’s, pop-god status, sharing rare air with the likes of Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson with the 20 million-selling album, Faith. With that album, Michael created the male, pop star blueprint still in place today (you’re welcome, Justins Timberlake and Beiber). And for most, Faith was Michael’s career zenith, but I disagree. While Faith was melodic, creative, oftentimes creepy, and overall, great fun, and while it certainly displayed an artist discovering the full potential of his voice and feet, his next album, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, finds him at the height of his powers, seamlessly blending musical ideas, styles, and motifs, while at times just showing off, and deservedly so.

The album opens with the first single, the plodding, over-wrought, pretty good, but worst-song-on-the-album, “Praying For Time.” The mundane video featured the song’s lyrics in bulky, white letters over a black screen. Oooh, he’s so solemn, singing about politics and stuff…ho-hum. While the single went to #1, largely due to fan excitement for a new George Michael song, album sales stalled, overall, selling a comparatively paltry 8 million, and Michael started to bicker with his record label, due to his refusing the proven advertising strategy of actually appearing in his videos.

A compromise was reached with the promotion clip for the second single from the album, the funky, feisty, “Freedom 90,” which featured a series of supermodels in steam-filled rooms, mouthing the words to Michael’s song, while paraphernalia from his poster boy-era burned in the background. While the video was a welcome relief from its abysmal predecessor and the single fared well (#8), it proved to be the only other single that made a significant dent on the pop charts: the only other that hit the upper half of the charts, “Waiting For That Day,” featured an inspired blending of the Rolling Stone’s classic, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” but barely reached the top 30 (#27).

And that’s too bad for pop fans, who, by skipping, Listen, Vol. 1, missed out on what stands as some of Michaels best musical moments, ever. “Something To Save,” one of the failed singles from the album, holds as one of Michael very best songs. Rare for a George Michael song, the themes of “Something To Save” revolve around open, honest communication and reciprocal love and compassion. Similarly, “Heal The Pain,” written in an up-tempo, slide-and-shuffle style, reminiscent of Paul McCarntney (and later re-recorded as a duet with him in 2008), imbues kindness and optimism into a three-minute pop song, again, unusual "light" for his dark genius. The slow-burning waltz, “Cowboys And Angels,” finds Michael back in familiar, sinister lyrical territory, and exquisitely so, while the should-have-been single, “Soul Free,” innovates with use of R&B, drum loop samples over a can’t-get-out-of-your-head chorus and some of Michael’s finest R&B crooning.

After Listen, Vol. 1 quietly and undeservedly faded into the sunset, an extended legal battle ensued between Michael and his record label, Sony/Epic, with the artist blaming the company for less-than-expected sales, claiming they failed to properly promote the album, and the company countering that poor sales were due to Michael’s own resistance to appear in his videos. The battle eventually killed the possibility of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 2, which was rumored to be more dance-oriented, un-socially conscious pop, and to have included his 1992 hit, “Too Funky,” (#10) as well as three other songs, which eventually appeared in conjunction with the AIDS benefit album, Red, Hot, & Dance, that same year, “Do You Really Want To Know,” “Happy,” and “Crazyman Dance,” the B-side to the aforementioned single.

And then six years of silence followed, a time period extended, no doubt, by the death of his longtime companion. Michael’s next studio album, the funereal, Older, was released in 1996 to a pop environment steeped in his brand of R&B-pop (i.e., Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby,” R. Kelly’s, “Down Low,” etc.), priming the album to be the biggest seller of the year, but instead, it quietly tip-toed onto the scene in the spring of that year, reaching a disappointing #6 on the U.S. album charts and boasting only two top-ten hits, “Jesus To A Child,” (#7) and “Fastlove,” (#8). The only other subsequent studio album to date, the aptly-titled, Patience, came eight years later, and while it offered glimmers of his immense gifts with the single, “Amazing,” it proved to be, overall, a disappointing affair.

And speaking of “affairs,” after the disappointing performance of Listen, Vol. 1, Michael’s hit-streak primarily included a series of very public, very embarrassing incidents involving sex, drugs, binge drinking, etc. In fact, it seemed as if he embodied the lyrics to many of his depraved, disco hits from two decades before. Worst of all, his immense talent and expertly-crafted pop music, which he so aptly sang, “…is the one good thing that I’ve got,” took a back seat to these bad-boy antics, leaving himself and his fans confounded or having moved-on in the wake of his clichéd, celebrity excesses. But as demonstrated by another wayward pop genius, Brian Wilson, who released his masterful, long-awaited, magnum-opus album, Smile, in 2004, over 30 years after it was shelved, sometimes the end result can be well-worth the wait. And I’m guessing I’m not alone in thinking George Michael’s got another great album in him. Call it “blind,” but I’m still holding out faith (ugh, sorry) for another extraordinary George Michael album.

"Shooting Rubber Bands At The Stars," by Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians

I remember a pointed conversation with a classmate in high school about Edie Brickell & the New Bohemian’s debut, Shooting Rubber Bands At The Stars. My friend owned the cassette and let me borrow it. At the time, I was most familiar with the line from the band’s 1988 hit single, “What I Am,” ubiquitous on top 40 radio at the time: “Choke me in the shallow water, before I get too deep.” I suspected the rest of the album would be filled with similar light-hearted, boho charm, and I was right: Rubber Bands features quirky rock and playful, hippy-dippy lyrics – an utterly joyful rumination on the intoxicating mix of thrill and terror that comes from being young, unencumbered, and navigating life for the first time.

Texas-born, Brickell’s career has been, in fact, a study on how life seems to work: a combination of talent, hard work, and hoped-for strokes of good fortune. At a bar one Saturday night while attending art school, Brickell was reluctantly cheered onto the stage to join the house band for a few numbers. Suddenly, she found herself fronting the New Bohemians. It wasn’t long after that the group wound up in a recording studio making their 1988 debut album. The dreamy aforementioned lead-single reached the upper end of the pop charts, propelling this word-of-mouth album to multi-million sales by the following fall.

I rushed back to school the next day to expound upon the sheer joy of listening to this great record. After hearing my review, my friend blinked a few times, frowned, and said, “Well I hate it.” I was stunned. Humph! She clearly didn’t understand this album. Looking back, it makes sense. My friend was studious and practical: an album titled after the fruitless activity of projecting plastic objects into the atmosphere would be of little value to one so pragmatic. And I have to admit, my friend even made me wonder if Rubber Bands would be a silly, flash-in-the-pan for me, too.

It’s been over twenty years later, and I can definitively say that she was completely wrong about this remarkable album. Far from a silly flash, it has, indeed, warranted repeated listens over the years: first on my copied cassette, then on my own purchased vinyl, which I lost in my senior year of college, bringing me to replace it with a CD copy a few years later, and now, Rubber Bands comes to me on my trusty, well-worn iPod. The album has not only remained fresh for me all these years, but has continued to grow more endearing as the last two decades have quickly slipped by. Rubber Bands was the perfect, left-turn album for that cheesy moment in late-80’s pop music history, when top 40 radio was dominated by the likes of Paula Abdul’s mousy, made-for-MTV dance numbers and Milli Vanilli’s sterile, also made-for-MTV, fake-model posing. (Author’s note: Kids, MTV used to play music 24 hours a day. True story. Look it up). Brickell’s lilting, country-girl voice on Rubber Bands was a breath of fresh air, and in it’s own way, the album broke new pop territory.

The music on Rubber Bands is airy, malleable, and vibrant, like it’s suspended on air (or rubber bands?). It’s soft and relaxing throughout, yet crisp and punchy in the right places, taking the listener, in some moments, to the backyard dance, while in others revealing quirky observations of the world around us: charming and captivating, beguiling and mysterious. The themes on the album, written mostly by Brickell, run the gamut of what you would expect from a young, twentysomething idealist: friendship (“Circle”), love (“Love Like We Do,” “Nothing,” and “Now”), self-discovery (“What I Am,” “Beat The Time,” “She”), romance (“Air of December” and “Keep Coming Back”), and utopian mediations on how life works (“The Wheel”).

The album closes, not with a crescendo, but more quietly, with the sweet, whispered lullaby, “I Do.” This charming little album closer finds Brickell accompanied only by a solitary, acoustic guitar, singing to a new friend, one who clearly and completely understands her. “It’s not emotion that I feel for you,” she sings, “It’s not devotion that I want. I want someone to follow, who doesn’t lead the way. I want someone to listen, who won’t repeat what I say.” Finding such a friend is one of life’s rare and surprising gifts: just like this album.

"Hearts and Bones," by Paul Simon

Paul Simon is a marvel. He has written and performed legendary song after legendary song over the past 40-plus years, while putting out startlingly few actual solo albums in the process: only ten original albums in that timeframe, including two soundtrack albums. That’s approximately one album every four years…way too few for such an iconic and consistently significant musician. Paul Simon’s albums continue to be compelling and progressive, moving forward without getting lost in embarrassing fads and experimentalization.

From these precious few albums, many Simon songs have worked their way into the pantheon of rock and roll classics. First, there’s the unequalled output from his partnership with Art Garfunkel, and beyond that, there’s his remarkable run of hits from the 1970’s, including, “Mother And Child Reunion,” “Loves Me Like A Rock,” “Still Crazy After All These Years,” and the tongue-in-cheek break-up song, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.” And for those who were paying attention, there was Simon’s thrilling mid-80’s “comeback,” Graceland, which featured the top 40 hit, “You Can Call Me Al,” ubiquitous in the spring and summer of 1987, due in part, no doubt, to the silly Chevy Chase cameo in the video, followed by the amazing and almost as big, “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes.” Sadly, though, few remember one of Simon’s very best albums, 1983’s riveting and poignant, Hearts and Bones. It’s overlooked partly, because it came after his 1970’s solo heyday and before his aforementioned mid-80’s world music resurgence. It was also ignored because it came out the year Thriller ruled the world and forever changed the tide of pop music, closing the coffin on too many 1970’s pop icons.

The overarching theme of Hearts and Bones is all love, all the time, and in the Simon tradition, the album approaches the topic from a melancholy perspective. For example, Simon’s heart is literally allergic to the women he loves in “Allergies,” the lead track and the only near top-40 hit from the album. Next, Simon mournfully ponders the past and future of love with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Carrie Fisher, in the heartsick title track, and later in the album, he thinks way too much about shaping perfect love in the companion songs, “Think Too Much (a) and (b),” where he sings, “But maybe I think too much, and I ought to just hold her, stop trying to mold her…” The former was released as a single in early 1984 and failed miserably in the wake of heinous radio hits from that year, like “Flashdance” (What A Feeling!), “Ghostbusters,” and “Islands In The Stream.”

In other places, Hearts and Bones looks into its crystal ball to forecast living and loving in the new millennium, like on “When Numbers Get Serious,” where Simon foretells the pending internet age of quick results, online dating, and web-based, virtual relationships with extraordinary accuracy. “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War” is a beautiful tribute to both the abstract artist, Rene' Magritte, and Simon’s beloved vocal groups of the doo-wop era: The Penguins, The Moonglows, etc. My favorite song on this classic Simon album, however, is the haunting, “The Late-Great Johnny Ace,” which discusses the (then) recent and horrific death of John Lennon, juxtaposing the tragedy with the death of early rocker, Johnny Ace, by self-inflicted gun shot to the head. Simon introduced the song at the Central Park concert in 1981 and was nearly assaulted on stage near the end of the song, apparently by an angered/crazed Lennon fan, who was quickly pulled away from Simon just inches before the attack: a strange response to a song, where Simon’s genuine love for Lennon is palpably displayed. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say...

Originally, Paul Simon had other intentions for this magnificent album about love and loss. It was initially meant to repair an old friendship, reportedly to be the long-awaited Simon and Garfunkel reunion album (which is never going to actually happen, by the way; it's not, so stop hoping for it already...) to follow their highly acclaimed reunion concerts two years before. Early on, the album was also going to be titled, “Think To Much,” but after thinking too much, old conflicts resurfaced between the duo, and they parted ways once again. Simon erased Garfunkel’s vocals, turned further inward, and made a stunningly personal album which autopsied friendships, current events, the future, and love affairs that ultimately come to regretful ends, finally and fittingly naming this one Hearts and Bones.

"Homebrew," by Neneh Cherry

Neneh Cherry stormed America’s shores in 1989 with her nimble, eclectic, hip-hop-meets-outer-space debut, Raw Like Sushi. That album's three-minute, bump-and-grind marvels, “Buffalo Stance” and “Kisses On The Wind,” charting at #3 and #8, respectively, elevated radio waves to higher ground in the final summer of that neon-filled, Voodoo Economics-lovin’ decade. But Cherry’s music wasn’t just refreshing, nestled alongside 1989 radio slop like “Girl You Know It’s True” and “Bat Dance,” it was revelatory.

And as refreshing as Raw Like Sushi was, Homebrew, Cherry’s magnificent follow-up, is a staggering leap forward. Cherry takes the jazz / trip-hop improvisations from the first album and injects them here with rock guitars, hypnotic beats, and mischievous, dance floor sass. To wit, “Sassy,” the album’s opener, is accompanied by a vacuum-powered drumbeat and sprinkled with playful piano fills. The brilliant lead song features hip-hop / jazz MC, Guru (Gang Starr), who pokes fun at Cherry’s Mama Bear swagger and trumpets the artist’s explosive return. “Fellas got to give me the most respect, cause you know I don't like to waste my time, so don't give me that - I'm laying low! I sizzle slow!” Cherry brags, leading into the song’s hook, a whispered, repetitious, “so sassy…”

Focusing less on rap this time around, Homebrew retains Cherry’s favorite themes: family, children, and motherhood, and the album leans more on the trance-induced template of Sushi’s haunting, “Manchild,” to set the mood. Cuts like “Move With Me (my personal favorite),” “Peace In Mind,” and the album’s haunting-yet-hopeful closer, “Red Paint,” expand “Manchild’s” musical palette of lacerated drums and spine-chilling, slow motion atmospherics. In fact, over half of the album riffs on this sonic style that remains startlingly fresh almost 20 years later.

The only song I always skip on this remarkable album is Cherry's much-touted duet with REM's Michael Stipe, "Trout." Rock critics, seemingly compelled to favor the track, often write things like, "this unlikely duet about teaching sex education in schools is risky, but it works somehow." Wrong. It doesn't work. The song is irritating, ill-conceived, and preachy (and I agree with its politics!). "Trout" is a pimple on a model and the only head-scratcher on Homebrew.

But although Cherry’s commercial success essentially stalled with Sushi, her influence continues to grow, with sampling and collaborations with and by other artists, ranging from the Gorillaz, Youssou N'Dour, and Groove Armada to the 2006 acoustic styled duet, “Long Way Round,” with her brother, Eagle-Eye (“Save Tonight”) Cherry. Cherry’s 1996 follow-up to Homebrew, the sluggish and envelop-pushing Man, was deemed too un-commercial and experimental for American audiences and was never released outside Europe. These days, Cherry can be heard in the side project, “CirKus,” along with her daughter and husband, and Cherry fans eagerly await a new studio effort, promised, promised, promised...

"Blue," by Double

The sub-genre of smooth jazz hit new commercial peaks in the early 1980’s. A momentum fueled, no doubt, by 1970’s crossover artists like George Benson, Patti Austin, and Al Jarreau. Not only did smooth jazz proliferate to the point of newly established radio stations for the style, but smooth jazz artists also became regular fixtures on the pop charts in the early to mid 1980’s. Some of these artists established themselves widely and held an enduring shelf life in the pop world, like Sade (“Smooth Operator”) and Simply Red (“Holding Back the Years”), while others either quickly faded back to jazz-only stations, like Anita Baker ("Sweet Love") and Kenny G (Hmm, don't remember any of his songs), or disappeared entirely. Double is in the last category.

Mistakenly dubbed “a quartet” in the People Magazine review (due to the clever album cover pictured above, where the duo appears twice: get it? “Double?”), Double was actually a Swiss duo, consisting of vocalist and lead guitar player, Kurt Maloo, and Felix Haug on drums and keyboards. I first heard the duo’s top-20 hit, “Captain Of Her Heart,” in my freshman year of high school: it sounded so sophisticated and jet-set cool. In fact, there was nothing to not like about this classic single. Culled from this 1985 debut album, the song’s distinctive piano riff, melancholy lyric, and the casual, off-the-cuff vocal style of Kurt Maloo fit right in with the contemporary jazz/pop of that time, and it’s an enchanting little song - one of the most memorable of the era.

The remaining album is a surprising combination of 80’s synthesizers, light techno beats, jazz, and pop that still holds up remarkably well, over 20 years later. Although the up-tempo songs retain their mid-80’s appeal, the enduring strength of Blue is found in the slower, jazzier songs, like “Rangoon Moon,” and “Tomorrow,” which closes the album. “Tomorrow’s” clicky, shuffle-along drumbeat, lilting tenor saxophone, and meandering, lighter-than-air chorus floats out of your speakers like ether – a perfect finale for this tragically under-valued and long-forgotten album of the 80’s.

The follow-up single from the album, “Woman Of The World” sounded just as urbane and mysterious as “Captain,” and I love it to this day, but it just didn’t catch on. A stilted second album, Dou3le, followed two years later, but by then, everyone was walking like Egyptians, fighting for their rights to party, or freaking out about Michael Jackson’s so-so new album (Bad) with little patience for sifting through the duo’s often difficult and techno-heavy follow-up. After their follow-up effort failed, Double was dropped from their record label and spent the 90’s pursuing solo careers with little success. In 2004, Haug died of a heart attack, and in 2009, Maloo released a solo album, Summer Of Better Times, similar in style to Blue, just released in the U.S. in the summer of 2013.