Hurricane #1 were born in the same year that Ride decided to disband and go their separate ways. Signing to Creation records in 1996, they released the EP Step Into My World which reach the heady heights of 29 in the UK single chart which at the time was still a feat.To me Step Into My World is a classic Slice of Britpop
Releasing two more singles Just Another Illusion and Chain Reaction to good reviews and having gushing reviews about their live performances on their own tour and supporting the band 3 Colours Red things were looking good for the band. In late September 1997 they released their self-titled album Hurricane #1 to very good reviews including Q magazine naming it as one of the best albums of 1997. It’s been strongly referenced that the sound was not influenced by Oasis but actually inspired by them which you can hear on some tracks. This may be true but the band was far superior in their song writing (Thanks to Bell) and the pure musicianship displayed by the band and Andy Bells guitar playing. With sounds ranging from 70's wah-wah rock to double beats and songs fringing on the side of shoegazing this album had everything for a guitar music fan of the 90's.
Standout album tracks include Let go Of The Dream with its late night drunken sing-a-long chorus and rolling lead guitar sitting subtly behind the band to Mother Superior with its wah-wah opening to the slightly Oasis sounding vocal baggy beats. We find the closing track Stand In Line sounding like something Noel Gallagher would kill to have written. Close your eyes and you would think you were listening to Oasis but with Balls
Six years after earning his first blockbuster, Peter Gabriel finally delivered Us, his sequel to So. Clearly, that great span of time indicates that Gabriel was obsessive in crafting the album, and Us bears the sound of endless hours in the studio. It's not just that the production is pristine, clean, and immaculate, it's that the music is, with only a handful of exceptions (namely, the "Sledgehammer" rewrite "Steam" and the fellatio ode "Kiss That Frog"), remarkably subtle and shaded. It's also not a coincidence that Us is, as Gabriel says in his liner notes, "about relationships," since the exquisitely textured music lets him expose his soul, albeit in a typically obtuse way. Since the music is so muted, it's no surprise that the album failed to capture a mass audience the way So did, but it's foolish to expect anyone but serious fans to unravel an album this deliberate. Gabriel is as adventurous as ever, yet he is relentlessly sober about his experiments, burying exotic sounds and percussion underneath crawling tempos measured atmospherics -- this is tastefully two-toned music, assembled by a consummate craftsman who became too immersed in detail to make anything but an insular, introspective work. Some gems are easier to unearth than others -- "Digging in the Dirt" has an insistent pulse, "Blood of Eden" and "Come Talk to Me" are quite beautiful, "Secret World" is quietly anthemic -- yet, given enough time, the record's understated approach and reflection becomes its most attractive element
VH1's sadly short-lived series Storytellers was ideal for an old charmer like David Bowie, giving him an intimate platform to spin stories both old and new. When he appeared on the show on August 23, 1999, he was a few months away from releasing Hours..., an album where he comfortably came to terms with his past, so it fits that he's looking back fondly here, telling stories about the Mannish Boys and Iggy Pop, sliding the new tunes "Thursday's Child" and "Seven" in between "Life on Mars?" and "Drive-In Saturday," plus "Can't Help Thinking About Me," a single he released with the Lower Third in 1965. These are all good, relaxed, unplugged readings, but the chief attraction of VH1 Storytellers is, appropriately enough, those stories Bowie tells, as they not only offer a glimpse into the creation of these songs, they do what great stories should do: they entertain. [VH1 Storytellers is available as a CD/DVD package, with the CD containing a mere eight songs and the DVD containing a full program of 12 tunes, adding "Always Crashing in the Same Car" and Tin Machine's "I Can't Read" into the mix.]
Bowie teams up with Nile Rogers ex of Chic and creates one of the ultimate commercial albums of the entire 1980s. With ultra-contemporary and impressive production for the day, with Nile Rogers seemingly given a mission by the Bowie team to pack as many hooks into each song as he could. It's a shame that the album fails to maintain its momentum throughout, but with three massive blockbusters to open, that's hardly surprising. 'Modern Love', 'China Girl' and the title track all became worldwide bestsellers and 'Lets Dance' moved David Bowie firmly into rocks mainstream, a position that even with Ziggy, he'd never quite occupied before. Long-term fans bemoaned the lack of strangeness contained on 'Let's Dance' and wanted to keep Bowie out-there and obtuse. He won a legion of new fans. Many listeners were just pleased to have a decent entertaining album to listen to. 'Let's Dance' certainly doesn't really merit any deep analysis at any rate. It is what it is. Nile used classic arranging and production tricks when faced with a song such as 'China Girl'. Eg, you better make sure the music appropriately evokes the songs lryic and title. Similarly, with a song such as 'Let's Dance', you better make sure you can dance to it! Besides the music and contributions of musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan on stellar guitar, 'Let's Dance' contains some fine Bowie vocals throughout, his voice deeper than during his seventies days and really reaching fine heights during the fine and entertaining 'Cat People', for example. Still, back to those three stellar singles. 'China Girl' may well have been previously given by Bowie to Iggy Pop to record, yet this version adds all those shiny Nile Rodgers moments such as an utterly distinctive and suitably chinese sounding opening riff. 'Modern Love' has fabulous jerky and bendy sounding guitar to open before proceeding with pounding drums that continue pretty much throughout the song. Trumpets decorate the chorus, and there you are. Another hit!
All of the singles from this album sported expensive and appropriately 80s videos which were almost as memorable as the songs themselves
18 Tracks which include 1) The Prettiest Star - Ian McCulloch 2) Starman - Culture Club 3) Fall in Love With Me - Guy Chadwick 4) The Gospel According to Tony Day - Edwyn Collins 5) Life on Mars - The Divine Comedy 6) All the Young Dudes - Alejandro Escovedo 7) The Man Who Sold the World - Midge Ure 8) Boys Keep Swinging - Associates 9) Cracked Actor - Big Country 10) Funtime - Peter Murphy 11) John, I'm Only Dancing - The Polecats 12) Heroes - Blondie 13) Rebel Rebel - Sigue Sigue Sputnik 14) Fame - Duran Duran 15) Ziggy Stardust - The Gourds 16) Space Oddity - The Langley Schools Music Project 17) Panic in Detroit - Christian Death 18) Rock'n'Roll Suicide - Black Box Recorder
This album is a terrific 12-track compilation of the Australian duo's early- and mid-'80s singles. The Divinyls' Essential includes such songs as "Pleasure and Pain," "Temperamental," "Back to the Wall," and "Boys in Town," offering a good overview of their pre-"I Touch Myself" records.
New York City figured so prominently in Lou Reed's music for so long that it's surprising it took him until 1989 to make an album simply called New York, a set of 14 scenes and sketches that represents the strongest, best-realized set of songs of Reed's solo career. While Reed's 1982 comeback, The Blue Mask, sometimes found him reaching for effects, New York's accumulated details and deft caricatures hit bull's-eye after bull's-eye for 57 minutes, and do so with an easy stride and striking lyrical facility. New York also found Reed writing about the larger world rather than personal concerns for a change, and in the beautiful, decaying heart of New York City, he found plenty to talk about -- the devastating impact of AIDS in "Halloween Parade," the vicious circle of child abuse "Endless Cycle," the plight of the homeless in "Xmas in February" -- and even on the songs where he pointedly mounts a soapbox, Reed does so with an intelligence and smart-assed wit that makes him sound opinionated rather than preachy -- like a New Yorker. And when Reed does look into his own life, it's with humor and perception; "Beginning of a Great Adventure" is a hilarious meditation on the possibilities of parenthood, and "Dime Store Mystery" is a moving elegy to his former patron Andy Warhol. Reed also unveiled a new band on this set, and while guitarist Mike Rathke didn't challenge Reed the way Robert Quine did, Reed wasn't needing much prodding to play at the peak of his form, and Ron Wasserman proved Reed's superb taste in bass players had not failed him. Produced with subtle intelligence and a minimum of flash, New York is a masterpiece of literate, adult rock & roll, and the finest album of Reed's solo career.
