D.L. Byron - This Day And Age (1980) Flac

An obscure but absolutely essential example of late-'70s/early-'80s power pop, D.L. Byron's This Day and Age easily ranks with the best work of contemporaries like Pezband, Graham Parker, and the Jam. On this, his debut album and only officially released full-length record for Arista, Byron rages through a set of first-rate original compositions (in later years Byron became a successful hit songwriter for other artists) with the flailing guitar fury of a prototypical angry young man. While some artists fitting this description tend to get bogged down in politics, Byron remains true to the power pop credo of "girls, girls, girls" and delivers one biting examination of failed (or failing) romantic relationships after another. The energy level on This Day and Age remains high throughout the album's ten songs, due in part to the top-notch rhythm section, which includes some then-members of Billy Joel's touring band. Legendary producer Jimmy Iovine keeps the sound simple, crisp and up front, wisely avoiding many of the tricks that make other albums from this period sound so dated. Those listeners only familiar with D.L. Byron's much mellower 1998 comeback album Exploding Plastic Inevitable may find This Day and Age a bit too punk rock, but any lover of pure power pop should make every effort possible to find this stunning high point of the genre.

Wonderful power pop album from the beginning of the eighties. I love this kind of power pop. Here, a real good songwriter in  a traditional style, there, on the other hand a slight new wave style of the arrangements and (imho) a quite proper production. For me his best album. Have fun
Bis bald
             Frank    Flac      

Candy - Whatever Happened To Fun... (1985) Flac

Candy was a quartet of young L.A. power-popsters from the '80's hair-band era, whose members included guitarist Gilby Clarke (later of Guns N' Roses and Rock Star Supernova) and vocalist/pianist Kyle Vincent (who is now a solo artist). Candy's chief songwriter was bassist Jonathan Daniel, who later formed Electric Angels with drummer John Schubert. Although Candy existed from 1981 until 1987, they released only one album, Whatever Happened To Fun..., in 1985. Candy didn't achieve much widespread success in their day, but they have acquired a posthumous following. Their album is currently out of print in the U.S., but it was reissued on CD in the U.K. on the Rock Candy label in 2012.(rarebird.net)

excerpt from the back cover: Signing a record deal with the powerful PolyGram operation, the sole album was recorded at Criteria studio in Miami with producer Jimmy Ienner (Raspberries, Bay City Rollers) and set out an impressive stall fusing a flamboyant mixture of power pop and glam rock. Issued in 1985, the album sold not a jot at the time, yet has subsequently become an in demand item amongst aficionados of the 80's LA glam scene and not without a good reason.

Oki doki, glam mixed with power pop is what you get with Candy. And this is really a great 80's pop record. Hope you will enjoy.
 Frank
Flac 

Luke Haines - Outsider/in The Collection 2012 (2 disc edition) mp3@320

The slightly naff title of this budget two-disc Luke Haines compilation suggests that following the success of the old grouch’s very funny books, the time has come for a reappraisal of his music by the mainstream. I couldn’t agree more. The Auteurs are possibly the most what-if British group of their era. Imagine if Blur had tanked after Modern Life Is Rubbish or Suede folded after Bernard Butler left. Okay, the Auteurs made it to three albums – How I Learned To Love The Bootboys being a Haines solo effort in all but name – but there’s definitely a sense of unfinished business to their oeuvre. Fed into the increasingly desperate hype machine of the early Nineties weekly music press too early to properly catch the wave that became Britpop, by the time that wave crested, Haines’s muse had steered so far from the shipping lanes of commercial acceptability that it seemed as if she were deliberately trying to sabotage his chances of opting for early retirement. Unsurprisingly, from our vantage point 15 years later the Steve Albini-produced After Murder Park and the eponymous Baader-Meinhof album stand among Haines’s best work, but it was around ’96-’97 that most commentators not unreasonably wrote him off as forever destined to wear the cult hood.
And so here we are, give or take a Black Box Recorder (for the second time unrepresented on a Haines compilation). If you’re already a fan then you don’t need either this review or its accompanying album, so I’ll address the former to an imaginary reader who – like myself three years ago – has grinned her way through the hilarious savagery of Bad Vibes and wants to find out whether Haines can walk the walk as well as he talks the talk. In a world that still – inexplicably – lacks a straightforward one-disc Auteurs best-of, the only competition Outsider / In faces is Hut/EMI’s three-disc Luke Haines Is Dead extravaganza (2005), still available for slightly more than twice the new compilation’s modest asking price. In terms of raw quantity, the new one represents better value (18p per track as opposed to 22p, or roughly 5p per minute versus 7p, fellow autists). And in one sense the quality’s not an issue: I’ve yet to catch up with a couple of his post-Auteurs albums, but – silly remixes aside – all the evidence I’ve heard suggests that Haines doesn’t 'do' weak tracks, which simplifies the compiler’s task considerably.

In another qualitative sense, though, I’d suggest that the Haines-curious opt for Luke Haines Is Dead. While both compilations have the 'hits' (or lack of them) amply covered, LHID tends to go for alternate versions: single mixes, radio sessions, you know the kind of thing. The doozy of these is the April ’94 live Radio One Evening Session broadcast, whose versions of 'The Upper Classes', 'Chinese Bakery' and 'New French Girlfriend' piss gleefully all over their studio counterparts, and there’s plenty else to go at. The average Auteurs B-side, for example, is better than many acts’ entire output. Now, in the parallel universe where the Haines-curious gives whichever compilation a cursory listen and thinks 'well, there you go, Luke Haines: not bad, quite interesting' before getting back with the Killers, this wouldn’t make an awful lot of difference to anything. But in yer actual extant universe – the one in which few songwriters rival Haines for melodic and lyrical invention or lack of stylistic complacency – it’s only a matter of time before she sets about acquiring his entire back catalogue, so she may as well save the 'canonical' versions for later and hear them in the context of their parent albums. Oh, and LHID has considerably wittier sleeve notes from Haines, whatever you think of the Paul Morley-on-autopilot ones here.
Lest anybody mistake this for a (sorry) lukewarm review, I’ll break with DiS etiquette and 'award' Outsider / In a whopping nine gold stars, for emphasis, the missing one serving to indicate that where Haines compilations are concerned there is such a thing as even more superlative.(Chris Trout/dronedinsound.com)

Luke Haines is an artist i like very much. I like the lyrics (most) and love the sound. For a lot people it's not really ''pop'' i think. Anyway, from the 34 tracks here 20 are with the Auteurs. This is a really cool collection and i hope you like it, too.
Cheers
           Frank
mp3@320

A New World Record 1977 !!!

The Electric Light Orchestra - Out Of The Blue (1977) Flac

The last ELO album to make a major impact on popular music, Out of the Blue was of a piece with its lavishly produced predecessor, A New World Record, but it's a much more mixed bag as an album. For starters, it was a double LP, a format that has proved daunting to all but a handful of rock artists, and was no less so here. The songs were flowing fast and freely from Jeff Lynne at the time, however, and well more than half of what is here is very solid, at least as songs if not necessarily as recordings. "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and "Turn to Stone" are among the best songs in the group's output, and much of the rest is very entertaining. The heavy sound of the orchestra, however, as well as the layer upon layer of vocal overdubs, often seem out of place. All in all, the group was trying too hard to generate a substantial-sounding double LP, complete with a suite, "Concerto for a Rainy Day." The latter is the nadir of the album, an effort at conceptual rock that seemed archaic even in 1977. Another chunk is filled up with what might best be called art rock mood music ("The Whale"), before you finally get to the relief of a basic rocker like "Birmingham Blues." Even here, the group couldn't leave well enough alone -- rather than ending it on that note, they had to finish the album with "Wild West Hero," a piece of ersatz movie music that adds nothing to what you've heard over the previous 65 minutes. In its defense, Out of the Blue was massively popular and did become the centerpiece of a huge worldwide tour that earned the group status as a major live attraction for a time. [Out of the Blue was reissued in 2007 as a 30th Anniversary Edition with new photos, liner notes, and three bonus tracks, including "The Quick and the Daft," "Latitude 88 North," and a home demo of "Wild West Hero."]

This is the double disc edition of 1986. I love nearly all the works of Jeff Lynne so it will give more stuff in the future. I have add some nice ELO wallpapers in the artwork from artist Martin Driver. Really nice.
Kind regards
                    Frank
Flac