They say that to really free your body, you gotta free your mind

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

02/10/88 : New Jersey - Bon Jovi


Our sixth (really?!?) visit with Jon and the boys and with the exception of Slippery When Wet, I've not been all that impressed. As the follow-up to SWW, I feel this probably stands the strongest chance of being bearable but I can't say my expectations are sky-high.

It starts with two singles "Lay Your Hands On Me" and "Bad Medicine" which were both considerably heavier than I was expecting - but it's generally got a similar feel to SWW, although with a bit more variety. Whilst not really being my cup of tea (particularly for 57 minutes, when it often takes itself very seriously - the deluxe version is over two hours long!), it was all done well enough and perfectly listenable (and way better than their later albums). It all feels quite cleverly orchestrated to be acceptable for both teenage boys and girls - and it seems like that plan worked pretty well. 

We're at #1 in the charts this week on their second week of a 26 week run, with it having been at #1 in its first week as well. The rest of the top five were Level 42, Jean-Michel Jarre (a new entry), a compilation called Rap Trax! (which I will not be seeking out) and Womack & Womack with the next highest new entry being Big Country's Peace In Our Time (#9) which is an album I quite like - but for some reason I never listen to it.

Wikipedia has more on the album than I managed to say (121 milliPeppers) and it tells us that it's their fourth album and named after one of the US states (I'm not entirely sure which one though). Most of the rest of it is about how the band were under pressure to deliver a successful follow-up to SWW, but there is an interesting bit of trivia in there which tells us this was the first US album to be officially released in the USSR on the Soviet state-owned record label Melodiya - I bet you didn't know that! Critically, the reviews were middling to poor, but the customers didn't care, buying it in droves with it getting to #1 in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the US, where it spent four weeks at the top and sold seven million copies.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for £1.50 but a white label USSR label copy will set you back £75 - that does at least feel like it's gonna be pretty rare. This album was better than I was expecting without being anything particularly special, but I can understand it pushed the buttons of the people it was aimed at.

25/09/88 - Fine, I guess
09/10/88 - Lacking in variety

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

I have never believed that we should just stick to football

Image
The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews... Dear England : The Olivier Theatre  Well, this is different from the usual review in several ways - I wasn't on my own (because I was accompanied by the lovely Mrs Reed) and I was in the posh seats (because I was accompanied by the lovely Mrs Reed). Somewhat surprisingly, given the high football content, this was her choice - it originally ran a couple of years ago to great reviews, but has come back updated to take into account the last European Championships.  It was also a trip to a new theatre - I'd previously been to the Lyttleton Theatre at the National, but this was my first trip to the main theatre there. And very impressive it was too as we walked down to our very well positioned, comfortable and spacious seats (Mrs Reed does need her leg room).  The stage looked impressive too - but it gave very little clue as to what we were going to get.  As the lights went down, the top ring rose to display the Old...
Read more

Woo-woo-woo

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts. 25/02/79 : Equinoxe -  Jean-Michel Jarre Our third visit with JMJ and he's gone up in my opinion with every visit so far - here's hoping that continues. Hmmm - no. Except for some bits of "Equinoxe, Pt 4" this was all rather dull - he was relying too much on synthesisers being, as Giorgio Moroder put it "zee sound of zee future". Maybe everyone back in '79 just went "wow man - this is so froody" (that's how they spoke, right?), but today it just sounds a very repetitive load of nothing. And I've absolutely no idea why "Equinoxe, Pt 8" has some oom-pah music in the middle of it. All in all, very disappointing. We're at #11 in the charts this week on his twelfth week of a 21 week run and this was as high as it got, also in its ninth and tenth weeks. The top five this week were  Blondie ,  Bee Gees ,   Elvis Costello , a compilation called Action Replay and the Cliff Ric...
Read more