Mid-paced, with a heartfelt string arrangement, this is a warm and tender song that you can't not like. And, along with the totally different version by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (q.v.), it makes up half of my all-time favourite pair in which the same song has been done by two artists. IMHO not even "Woodstock" or "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" come close ...
from Golden Grass (Dunhill) available on CD - Grass Roots Anthology 1965-1975 Vol. 1 (Rhino)
22 Dec 04 ·ronin: What's not to like about this whole album? Warren Entner's voice was the hook that drew me in, but harder numbers like "Where Were You When I Needed You?" and "Things I Should Have Said" are more to my taste. "Feelings" and "Hot Bright Lights" merit mention. Even "Bella Linda" with the sappy violins is a gem.
Fast and furious, with incendiary guitars, this one is a radically different version of the P F Sloan track covered by the Grass Roots (q.v.), and it's half of my favourite pair of song-that-was-covered-by-two-artists-differently. They didn't have much else, although "Transparent Day" is pretty good, but the third LP is just bad country-flavoured pop to my ears.
from West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Vol. 1 (Reprise), available on CD (Reprise)
Another fast and furious assault with incendiary guitars! There's really not much more to say than that. They have a number of other great songs, like "The Well-Fed Point of View" (also on this LP, their third and best) the single "This Nelson Rockefeller" (which is on the compilation "That's All Very Well But"), and a handful on their first LP "I Am A Wallet". Their second LP had the best title, "The Enraged Will Inherit The Earth", but the weakest material.
The "MP" in the title means Member of Parliament, from which you can guess that McCarthy wrote mostly political songs. They were together from about 1985 to 1990, at which time they split up (Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier went on to form Stereolab, of which I have a couple of CDs that so far do little for me).
from Banking, Violence and the Inner Life Today, available on CD (Midnight Music)
The song with the heavenly lilt! It gets into a groove and chugs along merrily, with those lilting guitars in the background and some lovely light fretwork in the bridges and at the end. Excellent!
This is the final track off their 1982 LP "Heartache", which is the Most Underrated LP Of All Time, and one of the three or four best of the 1980s!! The song actually sounds quite a bit like David Bowie's "Let's Dance" (which it preceded by about 18 months, in case anybody wants to raise plagiarism issues), only serious instead of stupid.
It's one of the more subdued tracks on the LP, which I would characterize as being most like the livelier end of Simple Minds (say "Sparkle In The Rain" or "Once Upon A Time"-era), but with a powerful lead singer who is probably closest to Jay Black of '60s hitmakers Jay and the Americans, or maybe Gary Puckett of the Union Gap (I am not knocking Jim Kerr's vocals by the way).
The full track listing for this wonderful LP: Time After Time, Living In A Heartache, Madelaine, L'Image Craquee, Spirits; The World, Dancing Inside You, Major Major, Too Late To Fly The Flag, Standing In The Rain. Produced by Mick Glossop.
