Category: Pop/Rock

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Afternoon Soundtrack

George Michael – Listen Without Prejudice (1990)

George Michael – Patience (2004)

Both are severely underrated albums.

When I think of George Michael, I think of Faith (1987) and him getting busted in a Los Angeles park toilet. Sorry, but that’s where my mind goes (and the number of times I narrowly avoided a similar fate as a young man – DON’T ACT ALL SHOCKED AND SURPRISED, I never claimed to be an angel).

Faith is one of my go-to high fidelity recordings. By that I mean the recording itself—along with the performance—is the type of disc I would take to an audio salon to audition equipment. It’s intimate. It’s expansive. You can almost hear every breath as he sings.

But I realized today that his 1990 followup, Listen Without Prejudice shares many of those qualities. I find myself just getting lost in Cowboys and Angels. As we used to say, it just plays me.

Patience (2004) feels different from the other two, but it stands proudly on its own right—and retains the impeccable sonic qualities of its brethren. Amazing and Flawless (Go To The City) are two cuts that make we want to get up off my tired, sagging ass and dance.

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Released 42 Years Ago Today

Prince: Purple Rain (1984)

One of my grails is to own this on purple vinyl, but sadly prices on the resale market remain astronomical.

Cheaper than last year, but selling for way more money than I’m willing to spend on a piece of vinyl…

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Released 50—FIFTY—Years Ago Today

Damn, I’m old.

Alan Parsons Project: Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976)

And thus began my love affair with the music of APP…

I first heard this at my buddy Gary’s house the summer immediately following our high school graduation. He had, in my mind, an absolutely killer system: a Kenwood KR-7400 receiver, Infinity 1001A Speakers, and a Technics SL-1400 turntable. I remember sitting there just mesmerized as this album played.

Gary and I had been friends since grade school. I remember him being a brilliant kid and we shared the same dry sense of humor as we moved into high school. We stayed in contact for years after graduation. He worked in high school as a stock boy for one of the local supermarket chains, and as I understand it, he went on—following the American dream of old—of rising up in the ranks, eventually becoming store—and later regional—manager.

We lost touch after I moved to Tucson in ’85. Though a mutual friend we briefly reconnected via email a couple years ago, exchanging photos and a brief outline of what had happened in our lives over the past 40-odd years. I never heard back from him after the second round of emails, but he seemed uninterested in rekindling our friendship. I have a feeling that in the intervening years he—like so fucking many of my absolute best friends from that period—had found religion and/or taken a political hard right and judged my lifestyle unacceptable. (There’s a reason you can never go home again.) But I’ll always be grateful to him for introducing me to the Alan Parsons Project.

*There are a couple different dates on the internet as to when this album was officially released, but I’m going with this one.

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Early Afternoon Listening

Alan Parsons Project: Ammonia Avenue (1984)

While this wasn’t the first album I bought on CD, it was among the first half dozen for sure and was the one I most vividly remember playing the fuck out of after I got it.  Don’t Answer Me and Pipeline at angelic, make-your-ears-bleed volume. That front-and-center sax riff in Pipeline…chef’s kiss. That’s all I can say.

One of these days I need to make a compilation Minidisc of nothing but the instrumental cuts from APP’s albums.

Pet Shop Boys: Please (1986)

The soundtrack of my life for the first few months I lived in San Francisco.

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Released 48 Years Ago Today

Giorgio & Chris: Love’s in You, Love’s in Me (1978)

Never one of my favorites, but looked back upon fondly, especially Burning the Midnight Oil.

I get the totally unsubstantiated feeling that Giorgio was fucking Chris at the time and was hoping to make her the next Donna Summer. Unfortunately, Chris didn’t possess the vocal talent of Summer and this is why I think this was a one-off album…

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