When you push, you make me crazy

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

30/03/86 : Dirty Work - The Rolling Stones 

Our TWELFTH visit with the old geezers, bringing them level with Frank as the second most visited artists (still some way behind Elvis on fifteen). The 80s was probably the time I was most perplexed about The Stones - who were these old guys producing very average music that everyone seemed to love? It will be interesting to see whether my increased exposure to their back catalogue improves my view.

Overall, I'd say it does. This mostly harks back to their earlier stuff with some nice bluesy/rocky stuff in there, without sounding too dated or like they've being trying to hard to make it contemporary (unlike the album cover). I liked "Harlem Shuffle" more than I remembered doing so and "Winning Ugly" and "Sleep Tonight" also jumped out at me as fine tracks. "Too Rude" also jumped out at me for sounding like UB40 - it's not completely dreadful, but it's not at all what I was expecting. Overall, I'd say I quite enjoyed this and I can imagine the hardcore Stones fans were very pleased with it.

We're at #4 with a new entry on the chart this week on the start of a decent enough ten week run, with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Hits 4, Dire Straits, Pet Shop Boys (a new entry - I recently learned that Neil Tennant is 70, making him only seven years younger than Ronnie Wood) and Whitney Houston. The next highest new entry was Street Sounds Edition 16 (disappointingly at #17!) but I feel I also have to mention a very curious album at #8 which is The Hymns Album from The Huddersfield Choral Society - apparently their Choral Album also charted later in the year!

Wikipedia tells us this is their eighteenth album and was recorded at a time when Mick and Keith weren't speaking to each other, which made things somewhat tricky! There are a few interesting guest artists though - Bobby Womack and Jimmy Page pop up on guitar and Kirsty MacColl, Jimmy Cliff, Patty Scialfa and Tom Waits do some backing vocals. Critically, the reaction was a bit mixed with some feeling that the tension affected things, although everyone agreed it was a nasty album cover. Commercially it did pretty well making the top five in most places and getting to #1 in The Netherlands and Switzerland and #4 in the US. 

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - well, that's a bit of a surprise. I can imagine that not too many people love the 80s version of the Stones, but for me this album was considerably more enjoyable than I was expecting.

23/03/86 - An interesting listen
06/04/86 - Too much of a good thing