It makes me sad for the lonely people

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

25/02/90 : Journeyman - Eric Clapton

We all know Clapton is God, but it's not really like God is known for his decent songs now, is it?  I believe this is supposed to be a bearable album but I can't help but suspect it's going to be a load of pretty dull tracks featuring some decent guitar playing needlessly shoe-horned into them.  And no, I've never owned it (7/45).

Well, I think "pretty dull" would be unfair - I'd generously allow that they all hit the heights of at least "perfectly serviceable".  And the guitar playing is indeed decent and rarely feels needlessly shoe-horned in - so all is OK, right?  Yeah, I'd say "OK" is where we are - if this didn't have Eric's name attached to it then it would go absolutely nowhere, but it does and so there we are.  And I've completely forgotten all of it already.  It's interesting to compare this with Chris Rea's offering because it comes a very distant second in terms of general cohesion and craft - and there's also a very decent argument to be had as to which album features the best guitarwork.  It's a cool album cover though.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his 16th week of a surprisingly long 30 week run, with it peaking at #2 in its 14th and 15th week and the rest of the top five were Phil Collins, Lisa Stansfield, Technotronic and Chris Rea.  And you'll never guess who the highest new entry is - yes, it's Iron Maiden (#10), closely followed by Lloyd Cole (#11).

Wikipedia surprises me by telling me that "Bad Love" won a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, which seems quite bizarre - what was the competition exactly?  There's very little else of interest here, but I absolutely agree with Robert Christgau when he says "What did you expect him to call it – Hack? ...he has no record-making knack. So he farms out the songs, sings them competently enough, and marks them with his guitar".  Commercially, it did waaaay better than I remembered with it making the top ten in quite a few countries - it "only" got to #16 in the US but managed to sell TWO MILLION copies over there.  Just wow!

"Customers also listened to" Derek And The Dominos, Cream, Stevie Winwood and JJ Cale - artists I've had varying degrees of success with when I've bumped into them over the years.  As is very much the case with Eric, but this is disappointingly unconfrontational - it's perfectly fine but nothing more than that.

18/02/90 - A very enjoyable revisit
04/03/90 - Just a bit too earnest

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