Prince takes a nice ballad from 1988’s Lovesexy and remixes it into a ten minute groove adventure. The man was like that in the 80s. Everything he touched turned a brighter, more rewarding shade of purple, even his own already brilliant stuff. And then came that dumb Batman soundtrack, which may have been good for his bank account, but not much else.
Upon leaving the then cool sort of cutting edge underground band known as Genesis in early 1975, Peter Gabriel embarked on period of serious reinvention. His second solo album found none other than Robert Fripp in the producer’s chair and Mr. Gabriel very much ready for whatever weirdness the coming decade (the 1980s) might have to throw his way. Indeed, a song such as White Shadow suggests that he’d be doing a bunch of the throwing.
Neil Diamond had it all by 1973. Millions of adoring fans, great hair, even a grudging sort of critical respectability in the wake of those recent live shows at the Greek Theater in L.A. So what does the man do with it all? He dives deep, he reaches high, he gives his all to a soundtrack for an awful movie based on a really dumb book about a seagull. Yet even in falling Icarus-like, Mr. Diamond soars “… as a page that aches for a word, which speaks on a theme that is timeless.”
In which Neil Young gets deadly serious in the wake of various deaths in and around the band (Crazy Horse) and weighs in with a public service announcement on the topic of smoking a little marijuana and going for a long drive if the times get too troubling. Because there’s nothing like a rear view mirror to put things further behind you than they really are. Which is kind of the opposite of Roll Another Number, which was already two years old before anybody ever heard it, the album in question having been held back for being just too grim.
The band known as Japan may have started out as a second rate (late to the game) glam outfit more famous for looking good than sounding good, but by the time the time they called it quits (for the first time), they were making a music that was entirely their own, as elegant as it was mysterious. Which perhaps speaks to Life Without Buildings being relegated to a limited edition flexi-disc and b-side, until finally showing up on 1984’s Exorcising Ghosts, one of the better compilation albums of any era.
Imagine was the big deal John Lennon song of the moment (all that pie-in-the-sky god-free utoptianism). But I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama was selling a harder, louder 1971 truth. Because the Vietnam War just kept dragging on, and even if it did end soon, everybody knew there’d be another one coming along soon to keep all the young boys busy tearing each other apart, so they wouldn’t have time to wise up, turn on the old men whose corrupt souls kept conjuring the f***ing things.
Randophonic 
