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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Don Henley's "You Can't Make Love"

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:33:19 +0000

Although Eagles legend Don Henley has probably endured in the nearly three decades since its release more than a few titters and barbs from folks expecting this song to be about erectile dysfunction or similar middle-age male struggles, it's actually a great pop song with a strong romantic conceit typical of the artist. As a deep album track from Henley's 1984 smash sophomore solo LP Building the Perfect Beast, this tune received far too little attention during the '80s. Overshadowed by that record's generally deserving hit singles, this is a song that almost perfectly encapsulates Henley's transition from a major member of The Eagles, one of country rock's most important bands, to a solo artist interested in tweaking and perfecting the modern pop song.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Whitney Houston's "All at Once"

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:35:48 +0000

For a superstar as bright as Whitney Houston from the very start of her solo career, it's a bit more difficult to locate a truly forgotten gem than it is for typical pop music artists. After all, any song from an album as huge as her self-titled 1985 debut earned its share of radio airplay and general listenership by virtue of the rapid ascent of that LP to multi-platinum status. If I needed proof of this, I certainly got it tonight when I sampled "All at Once," a modest but melodic piano ballad that my wife instantly recognized from one of the first albums she owned and treasured as a preteen. Still, regardless of whether or not this track qualifies as a significantly neglected pop song for the ages, it serves ably as a way for me to extend my tribute to Houston in the wake of not only her sudden death on February 11 but also the media's continuing scramble to speculate about just how big a role drugs and alcohol may have played in her sad demise. I'll leave everyone else to that rather crass enterprise; in the meantime, I'll do what I hope I do best and just focus on the music.

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Stunning Death of Whitney Houston Silences a Powerful Pop Music Voice

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:12:45 +0000

Not since the seemingly abrupt death of music superstar Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009 (which many found less surprising in retrospect) has a pop music death shocked and saddened music fans like tonight's announcement of the passing of top-selling pop diva Whitney Houston. Never a huge fan of either artist - both of whom dominated parts of the '80s to remarkable levels - I am nonetheless stunned and shaken by this recent news. Whitney Houston was quite simply one of pop music's most successful crossover superstars between 1985 and 1995, her peak years as a recording artist, concert performer and film actress. Therefore, her very public decline as an entertainer over the last 15 years has been sad to observe on many levels. Nevertheless, I never dreamed I'd be seeing a headline like this, despite the wide knowledge of Houston's admitted struggles with substance abuse.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Robin Trower's "Ready for the Taking"

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:19:24 +0000

Fortunately, '70s rock was relatively well populated with moderately heavy guitar rock bands featuring soulful lead singers. However, far fewer of these such artists continued to record long enough to be intact when the '80s arrived. Revered veteran guitarist Robin Trower turned out to be a welcome exception to this pop music generality, as his band produced consistently on the strength of both Trower's pulsating, heavily distorted playing style and the gravelly, rumbling vocals of Scottish bass player Jim Dewar. This lineup of the band established itself as one of '70s rock's most potent power trios, and although Trower traversed the rest of the '80s with different bandmates - including Cream legend Jack Bruce and another underrated Scottish-born lead singer in Davey Pattison - Trower remained a key if seldom spotlighted '80s music figure.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Dwight Twilley's "Touchin' the Wind"

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:13:25 +0000

Tulsa, Oklahoma native Dwight Twilley served as one of the leading lights of the power pop revival of the mid '70s in America, which almost guarantees that his music never reached as many ears as it should have. When Twilley went solo at the end of the '70s, he somehow became even more obscure, releasing records that radio wouldn't touch and the industry wouldn't promote. Even the advent of new wave and college rock during the early '80s couldn't help Twilley's 1982 release, Scuba Divers, an album that featured refreshing acoustic arrangements and a guitar-centered Beatles fixation. Nevertheless, the synthesizer-obsessed new wave needed Twilley's throwback mentality far more than anyone ever acknowledged at the time.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Arthur Lee's "Bend Down"

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:04:21 +0000

Strictly speaking, this song from the late great Arthur Lee, frontman of the legendary L.A. psychedelic rock band Love, does not qualify as '80s music in the most tidy sense of the term. After all, though originally released on Lee's self-titled 1981 solo LP, the song emerged from various but scattered solo activities during the '70s. When the album was released, few music listeners were even aware Lee was still active in the middle of the new wave era, if they knew who he was at all. This kind of obscurity has always been unjust to the legacy of Lee and his original bandmates during Love's late-'60s heyday, but unfortunately pop music has always held little room for music legends to get their music heard years removed from their popular impact. Nevertheless, if a record comes out any time during the '80s, it's fair game for the lofty and searching reach of this regular feature.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Burton Cummings' "Heavenly Blue"

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:45:02 +0000

During the late '60s and early '70s, Burton Cummings served memorably as lead vocalist and a chief songwriter in The Guess Who, one of Canada's most popular and successful classic rock bands. Then, when that band dissolved in 1975, Cummings launched a solo career that paid immediate dividends, especially in his homeland. Even so, the singer-songwriter's solo efforts had steadily decreasing impact in the U.S. leading up to the release of his 1980 LP Woman Love, over which Cummings was decidedly displeased. Nevertheless, the album contained several strong compositions, even if the overuse of synthesizers betrayed the major-label concessions Cummings was apparently forced to make to get it distributed.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Jamie Sheriff's "Waitress in a Diner"

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:22:52 +0000

Readers who have visited this site previously have probably caught wind of my significant admiration for "What About Me," an '80s pop song from the Australian band Moving Pictures that became a modest American hit in both 1982 and 1989. I genuinely enjoy the pronounced melodrama of this track, but more than anything else the piano-based melody remains one of the most haunting '80s tunes I can remember. But I'm actually not here particularly to spotlight this song yet again; instead, I'm strongly reminded of it by another early-'80s ballad - also drenched in piano - that has caught my ear this week.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Gogmagog's "Living in a F*!#ing Time Warp"

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:30:55 +0000

Have I mentioned before in this space how much I love the serendipity involved in the search for and discovery of worthy but forgotten pop and rock songs from the past? I'm sure I have, of course, as this is a concept that largely inspired this weekly feature in the first place. For that reason, I won't belabor that point, other than to describe the wonderfully surprising way I happened upon this week's selection.

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This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Yazoo's "Only You"

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:05:38 +0000

At the risk of making this week's installment seem even more complicated than it already is, this superb synth pop track - which features one of the finest keyboard riffs and melodic hooks of the era - actually qualifies as a "forgotten gem" only in the United States. U.K. duo Yazoo - consisting of founding Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke and singer Alison Moyet - was forced to take on the similar but truncated moniker Yaz when an ultimately fleeting American band called Yazoo threatened the pair with substantial legal action. Of course, this name controversy may have had absolutely nothing to do with why this tune climbed to No. 2 on the U.K. pop charts in 1982 even as it stalled far short of the U.S. Billboard Top 40. Even so, there's no reasonable explanation for the massive disparity of mainstream success for this track in the two largest English-speaking pop music markets.

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