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Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 16/08/81 : Hi Infidelity - REO Speedwagon My initial thought on seeing this week's offering was "I didn't expect to see them in the 80s" - but then it occurred to me I had no idea when we might be seeing them. Wikipedia tells me that they were active from '67-'24 but this is likely to be the only time we meet them - it's also only their second ever mention, after noting they chose not to record "Danger Zone" for the Top Gun soundtrack. Well, it's not dreadful in terms of musical skill but whilst it may be 1981, for me this belongs squarely in the mid 70s - they do know how to put a decent melody together but it's all super cheesy with an awful lot amount of repetition (they're really not scared to reuse any ideas they have). However, I do have give them credit for  "Keep On Loving You" which just has such a rousing chorus that I can forgive it any sins (and it actually ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 23/10/26 : Dopamine Chamber - Fontaines D.C. Running a bit late because of a lovely break in Madris, this is our fourth visit with FDC and I've generally quite liked their stuff, so I'm interested enough to listen to this. Yeah, this is a pretty strong effort. It's interesting that I'm currently listening to albums from '81 because there are strong 80s vibes on this - the first couple of tracks are very OMD-ish and after that it goes a bit darker a la Cure. It feels to be an album with depths so it's hard to know quite what to say about it after just the one listen, but it certainly feels like it would benefit from further visits. It was also interesting to see Rosalia pop up on "Where Is Gone?" with her and Grian's voices working well together - for some weird reason I got Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue vibes (this is not a bad thing btw). It's also got quite the album cover! We are, of ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 23/08/81 : Secret Combination - Randy Crawford Only our third ever mention for Randy (with the previous one being her appearance in the top five last week). I know I know some of her tracks, but couldn't tell you what they are - I'm expecting to like it enough though. Ah yes, I obviously recognised "You Might Need Somebody" which is a great track - originally by Turley Richards (who I've never heard of) but I actually prefer Shola Ama's version. I was also vaguely aware of "Rainy Night In Georgia" - originally by Tony Joe White, but popularised by Brook Benton (and I've never heard of either of them). The rest of the album is in a very similar vein - it's all very Gladys Knight-ish so I imagine the lovely Mrs Reed is a fan. I can't say I go quite that far but she's got a nice voice, it's all well done and it's nice to see another lady this year (they've been a bit lack...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 30/08/81 : Duran Duran -  Duran Duran Well, this is a pleasant surprise that's popped out of nowhere - I've not noticed it in the charts until this week. I remember liking it, but I think I've only ever listened to it a couple of times and certainly not in many years, so it will be interesting to see how history has treated it. It opens up with "Girls On Film" which, with its great camera clicking intro, really isn't a poor way to start - and then follows that up with "Planet Earth". Which are obviously the two quality tracks on the album, but there's more variety and the quality doesn't dip as much across the rest of the album as you might expect. It obviously owes several debts to artists who were around at the end of the 70s, but it's also the 80s very much announcing they were here - yes, it's no  Rio , but it's an interesting first step on their journey which I enjoyed re...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 06/09/81 : Time - ELO Our fourth visit with ELO and so far I've liked their '70s offerings but found their '83 album to be very bland - so my expectations are somewhere in the middle. Well, it's certainly not bland - I can see that some people might level accusations of "too same-y" at it because the tracks mostly share the same electro-prog-pop vibe (there are strong Jean-Michel Jarre vibes), but I think it gets away with it by having enough other stuff in there and it's certainly got a reasonable amount of skill involved. What I'm less sure about is whether I actually liked it - I don't think I did on first listen, but I can see I might get into it if I gave it a few chances (which I obviously won't) particularly because I recognised and liked "Hold On Tight". It was an interesting listen though which I was pleased to catch up with. We're at #3 in the charts this week on the...

Another trip overseas! 04/07/26 : Moussette  The big family holiday this year was taken in Canada, which resulted in much excitement amongst the family parkrunners because Canada Day is July 1st and this counts as a special day when they're allowed to put on additional events - which was doubly exciting because it was a Wednesday and so counts towards the daily challenge (the only chances here to get non-Saturdays are Xmas and New Years Day, which rudely always fall on the same day of the week). However, we were in Montreal at the time and the closest parkrun which was actually happening was in Ottawa which is 200km away and I'm not sure the family non-parkrunners would have been too happy about us disappearing for the day just to tick off a Wednesday, so it seems like we're going to have wait until 2030 for a Wednesday parkrun. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait that long for a Canadian parkrun because a mere three days later we were in Ottawa on a Saturday so could c...