Külföldi torrent oldalak Libble | LiB This Week's Musicologist Pick

Re: Libble.me

Idézet:
This week's musicologist pick

A new pick from Smug1, this will be freeleech for a month:

Secret Affair - Behind Closed Doors
Kép

It's Lost Classic time again this month, still one of my all time favorites even after 30 years - smug1

Was there ever an album as unexpected as ''Behind Closed Doors'' ? As audacious ? As vibrant ? As completely one of the best-things-you'd-ever-heard ? Just when people thought they'd got Secret Affair sussed, worked them out right down their two-tone tonic smiles, Ian Page would - right out of left-field - magic up something just that bit extra special. And ''Behind Closed Doors'' is just that bit extra special! At the end of 1979 Secret Affair should have been fairly pleased with themselves. Formed singer Ian Page and guitarist Dave Cairns after the demise of the CBS signed New Hearts, they had only played their first gig in January 1979 as support to THE JAM, but by August they were on the cover of every music magazine in the UK and riding high in the charts with ''Time For Action'', while the critically acclaimed ''Glory Boys'' became one of the defining albums of the year.
With that kind of attention you could have forgiven the band for a touch of complacency, but even before the release of ''Glory Boys'', the difficult second album was already front of mind. Having gained notoriety while spearheading the British Mod Revival, the band were sharp enough to realise they would have to have something pretty impressive up their sleeves to survive the backlash from a music press rather more enamoured with the Two Tone movement......

It's understandable that numbers of unwary buyers thought there had been some mistake; the sleeve claimed this was a Secret Affair record, but surely this couldn't be the same band that gave the world Glory Boys? Actually, it could. The group had seen which way the wind was blowing, or more accurately, felt the first stings of the mod backlash, and had reacted accordingly. The result was Behind Closed Doors, singer Ian Page's vision for the band's future. The grand idea was to make the album a showcase of both Affair's musical abilities and to expand beyond their mod sound of yore. Gone were all references to their Motown heroes, and while hints of British beat did shine through, they were so transmuted as to barely qualify for the label. As for punk, not even a tinge of that remained, no matter how hard one searched through the grooves. If anything, Doors was the antithesis of all things punk, and one final kick in the dying genre's head. Instead, listeners were presented with an album that heralded the '80s, in all its glory and excesses, a good two years before the rest of the rock world caught up. Amazingly, the band accomplished this transformation all on their own. Page not only produced the record, but also arranged the strings, whose lush tones spilled across many of the tracks. In retrospect, it's amazing Doors didn't slam to the top of the charts, at least in America. Packed with ten pop/rockers, littered with Springsteen-esque brass (now augmented by new member Dave Winthrop's sax), rocky guitars, occasional flashes of British Invasions past, fleshed out by a grand piano and synths, and all accentuated by the slick production, it was perfect for the U.S. market. Sadly It sank without a trace in the US, and barely stumbled into the U.K. Top 50 -- a classic case of too much, too good, too soon.