Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums 13) Busted (1990) Flac

Surely, Cheap Trick didn’t intend for the title of Busted, their 1990 sequel to their surprise 1988 commercial comeback Lap of Luxury, to be as prophetic as that of its predecessor, but this vacant, radio-ready rocker finds the group at an unquestionable nadir. It’s not just the sound -- although the shimmering skyscraper production admittedly does the group no favors, neutering Roy Wood’s “Rock N Roll Tonight,” turning its swing into a stiff martial march -- it’s the paucity of material that is so dispiriting, the group either turning in pastiches of their trademarks or surrendering completely to the whims of studio hacks, whose tunefulness eclipses that of Nielsen and Zander, this time around. Like The Doctor before it -- the only album to rival this as the band’s worst -- Busted captures every bad sonic hallmark of its year; it’s as cavernous as that 1986 disaster, thanks in large part to the gargantuan rhythm section, but at least it’s warmer and less reliant on cold synths than that garish misfire, which does make it an easier listen. Even so, the pounding arena rock of Busted remains a bumpy ride because the hollow sound only magnifies the hollowness of the band’s songs.(allmusic.com)

That's it. After Busted  the Epic chapter was over in 1990.
I hope you or you...or maybe you had a little fun with the Epic Series. I think everyone have it's favorites from the Trick catalogue. In this sense
Cheers
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Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums 12) - Lap of Luxury (1988)

Cheap Trick's comeback album is by no means a return to the creativity and vitality of their glory days. But even though Lap of Luxury is largely formulaic, the band's strongest collection of material in some time fills that late-'80s pop-metal formula quite well. Combining grandly romantic power ballads ("Ghost Town") with catchy hard rockers ("Never Had a Lot to Lose"), Lap of Luxury consistently delivers strong hooks and well-crafted songs, proving that Cheap Trick were still capable of outdoing many of the bands they helped inspire. The album produced two Top Five singles in a cover of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and the band's first number one hit, "The Flame."(allmusic.com)

Comeback album for eight years painful missing (to me) Tom Petersson. Anyway the band needed more time to get back to nearly old strength. And this time lays back then in the future. They had two top five singles but The Flame was just a ballad like many others. But as i say their time came a few years later again...(imho) :-)

Cheers
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Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums - 11) The Doctor (1986) Flac

If any one record sums up all the ludicrous indulgence of ‘80s record-making it’s The Doctor, Cheap Trick’s utterly botched ninth album. The band managed to navigate new wave with the assistance of Todd Rundgren, and even scored a slick AOR hit in 1985 with “Tonight It’s You,” but all their commercial instincts soured on The Doctor just as Rick Nielsen entered into a significant songwriting slump. Of the two problems, the former is the hardest to bear, as the very sound of The Doctor is egregiously unpleasant. Cluttered with cacophonic electronic drums and clanking with cheap overdriven synths, the record is cavernous and hollow, every instrument echoing endlessly in a fathomless digital stage. As sonic archaeology, this holds some interest, as it contains every bad record production idea of the mid-‘80s -- it’s as garish and ugly as its record cover -- but even then the relentless march is wearying, as it's married to an exceedingly weak set of songs. Whenever Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander have a good idea -- the cheerful sleaze of “Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere),” the slow grind of “Take Me to The Top” -- the song is bludgeoned by Tony Platt’s production, making The Doctor a memorably unpleasant album.(allmusic. com)

Enjoy it,
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Fotomaker - Vis' A' Vis' 1978 (2005 Wounded Bird) Flac & mp3

After the first very well received album by critics and the audience the band released the Vis' A' Vis' album in 1978.It was not the success the band had expected. It have not the complete strength of the first album but anyway it is an album with some good songs on it.

Enjoy,
         SB1       New Flac Link        mp3@320 

Thanks to Javier for this contribution!

At Request: Game Theory - Real Nighttime (1985) (2015 Omnivore) Flac

Released in 1985, Real Nighttime wasn't Game Theory's first album -- they'd self-released the home-recorded Blaze of Glory in 1982, and a pair of EPs had been fashioned into the 1984 LP Dead Center -- but it was the first record that truly fulfilled Scott Miller's ideas and ambitions for his music. With Real Nighttime, Miller and his bandmates had a bigger budget to work with, as well as a talented and sympatico producer, Mitch Easter, who tightened up the music and helped Miller work out the angles of his sweet-and-noisy smart pop. While Easter's studiocraft helped Game Theory improve their game, Real Nighttime more importantly contained the best and most cohesive set of songs Miller had written to date, and this loose song cycle following a young man's journey from romantic bliss ("24") to soul-crushing disappointment ("I Turned Her Away") plays like the indie pop answer to Pet Sounds. Like that album, Real Nighttime gave Game Theory a great canvas for experimentation; the ominous clouds of slide guitar on their cover of Alex Chilton's "You Can't Have Me," the caffeinated guitars and drums of "Friend of the Family," and the interplay of fuzztone and Farfisa on "Rayon Drive" showed Game Theory were learning new ways to color their surroundings, especially as the more aggressive numbers turned around quieter pieces like "If and When It Falls Apart" and "I Mean It This Time." And while Miller was clearly the leader of this band, the outstanding percussion work from Dave Gill, the evocative keyboards from Nan Becker, and the solid, propulsive bass of Fred Juhos played an invaluable role in making these songs work. Game Theory made good records right out of the starting gate, but Real Nighttime was where they proved they could make truly great ones, and it's not just one of the band's finest works, it's a watershed work in '80s paisley underground pop.(allmusic.com)

Can't say anything about the album because to me nearly everything what Scott Miller with his musicians did back then, is great for me. Also Real Nighttime. Wonderful wave arrangements with enough power pop in the songs. Maybe in the eighties Miller was the most modern pop musician in power pop style. No other understand like Miller to blend parts of the common power pop with the new pop styles of the time back in the early till mid eighties (Costello was more in new wave at that time like many others). The pop music lost an important influence with his untimely death.
Hope you will enjoy
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Rachel Sweet - B.A.B.Y.; The Best Of Rachel Sweet (2001) Flac and mp3

It's very easy to remember Rachel Sweet as little more than a juvenile novelty within the Stiff Records canon, one more in a long line of headline-grabbing oddities who vanished from the radar around the same time as people stopped caring what the label itself was up to. To do so, however, serves up a dreadful injustice, to Sweet of course, but also to anyone who actually sits down to listen to Sweet's Stiff Records output and discovers there a treasure trove of excellence.

Her Fool Around debut album, in particular, was a masterpiece, a country-new wave hybrid a decade ahead of its time, and littered with some sensational performances -- "Who Does Lisa Like" is only the most obvious, the almost shockingly mature "Wildwood Saloon" only the most surprising. Of course there were a few obligatory bubblegum boppers in there, but when the novelty factor gets too grating, it's the songs ("Cuckoo Clock," "Girl with a Synthesizer") that jar, not the singer. Sweet's second album, Protect the Innocent, was less enthralling, although a lovely cover of the Velvet Underground's "New Age" and a strange take on the Damned's "New Rose" both thrill, while Sweet also unleashed a positively beautiful take on the oldie "I Go to Pieces."

All of which lines B.A.B.Y. up as an excellent collection, and a fitting tribute to a singer who should never have been allowed to fade away as she did. At her best, she really was one of the best.(allmusic.com.)

Rachel Sweet was great in the four years from 1978 till 1982. I must confess that i don't know later stuff ( i.e. the album ''The Look'' , released without calling her name on the album).

If you don't know Rachel Sweet give her a try.

Cheers  SB1   New Flac link           mp3@320

The Hollies At Abbey Road 1973 - 1989 (Remastered 1998) Flac

If this 20-song, 78-minute compilation is less compelling than its two predecessors, it's only because it represents a period in the Hollies' history in which the group lost its decade-long grip on the pop charts, even as they retained their fan base. The producers have interspersed the key hits and B-sides with what they regard as important album tracks and throw in a handful of previously unissued songs for a good cross-section of what is probably, for many of us, the least familiar period in the group's history of recording. The first track, "The Day That Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGee," was an attempt to emulate the sound of their earlier hit "Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)," which succeeded only part way, reaching the Top 30 in England. "Transatlantic Westbound Jet," a rare Bobby Elliott/Terry Sylvester collaboration, in this version featuring Allan Clarke on lead vocals, and the bouncy (and previously unissued) rocker "Iceberg" lead us to the group's last major international hit, "The Air That I Breathe."

The album and B-side tracks that follow are enjoyable enough, the Calypso-flavored "Layin' to the Music" being the best of the cuts leading into "4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)," which is followed by a delightful rumba-style rock number, "Come Down to the Shore," which sees its first release on this CD, although they never succeeded remotely the way "The Air That I Breathe" did. Another superb (and previously lost) outtake, "Samuel," makes its debut here as well, featuring some newly-recorded Tony Hicks guitar parts. An unusually large portion of the rest of the disc is devoted to tracks off of the Five Three One-Double Seven O Four album from 1979, but these pale next to the radiant harmonies and overall exuberance of the group's 1981 reunion with co-founder Graham Nash on "Take My Love and Run," which deserved a lot more chart action than it ever saw. As late as the mid-1980s, as this compilation shows, the group was creating brilliant pop/rock, and it's worth getting to "Too Many Hearts Get Broken," "Find Me a Family," and "No Rules." The sound is state of the art, and the annotation is informative and entertaining.

The first Hollies - At Abbey Road 1963 - 1966 you will also find here on the blog.
Enjoy
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Classic Album: Chris Bell - I Am The Cosmos (2009 Rhino HandMade Records, Deluxe Edition) Flac

Unreleased for over 15 years, I Am the Cosmos is nevertheless an enduring testament to the brilliance of Chris Bell; lyrically poignant and melodically stunning, this lone solo album is proof positive of his underappreciated pop mastery. While cuts like "Get Away," "I Got Kinda Lost," and "Fight at the Table" recall the glowing, energetic power pop of Bell's earlier work, the majority of the songs on I Am the Cosmos are more reflective and deeply personal; the title track is a harrowingly schizophrenic tale of romantic despair, while other cuts like the lurching "Better Save Yourself" and the lovely "Look Up" are infused with a spiritual power largely missing from his Big Star material.

The album's highlight, "You and Your Sister" -- which features backing vocals from none other than Bell's Big Star mate Alex Chilton -- is simply one of the great unknown love songs in the pop canon, a luminous and fragile ballad almost otherworldly in its beauty.(allm,usic.com)

At first: I will post tomorrow the mp3 version, too. About the album is nothing more to say. Too much people had everything told about it and Chris Bell. You better listen to it! It's with full Rhino artwork. They have done a very good job together with the people (Chris' brother, the people and friends from Chris by Ardent) who was involved in the realisation of this expanded double disc set.
If you like it you can buy it here.

Have fun
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You need both mp3 links, too!                         mp3@320 2                                         Disc 2 Flac

The Flac links will expire 2017-04-20          

Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums - Album 10) Standing On The Edge (1985) Flac

Standing on the Edge's only highlight comes from the silvery-sounding "Tonight It's You," which peaked just outside the Top 40 at number 44 in the fall of 1985. Like 1983's Next Position Please, Standing on the Edge finds the band without any pizzazz or rock & roll exuberance. The tracks are dull and colorless, with only the single sporting any signs of enthusiasm from any of the band's members. Sleepers like "This Time Around," "How About You," and the ridiculous "Wild Wild Women" are subpar considering what Cheap Trick's capabilities are. Both Zander and Nielsen lack the cohesion that they usually have, and the writing comes off as weak and disregarded. Although Todd Rundgren tried his hardest to get 1983's Next Position Please off the ground, Cheap Trick opted for producer Jack Douglas this time around, whose efforts fared quite the same. It wasn't until 1988's Lap of Luxury that Cheap Trick was finally back on track, scoring their first number one hit with the dreamy-sounding ballad "The Flame."(allmusic.com)

Today only two albums of the Trick.  The last three albums follow tomorrow.
Cheers
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Cheap Trick - The Complete Epic Albums - Album 9) Next Position Please 1983 [2006 Authorized Version] Flac

Cheap Trick attempted to ride the new wave on 1982’s One on One, but wound up with a wipe-out, so they recovered by hiring Todd Rundgren, one of the few ‘70s album-rockers who proved that he knew how to negotiate the treacherous waters of the early ‘80s, for 1983’s Next Position Please. Rundgren wielded a heavy hand during his production, pushing Cheap Trick toward making a record that could easily be mistaken for a Utopia record -- so much so, the Todd composition, “Heaven’s Falling,” slips onto the second side without calling attention to itself. The bright surfaces with the guitars and keyboards melding so tightly with the vocal harmonies they’re inseparable, produce a sound that is uncannily reminiscent of Oops! Wrong Planet, but Rundgren also helps keep an eye on quality control, letting Robin Zander’s terrific “I Can’t Take It” open the album, coaxing the band to cover the Motors’ “Dancing the Night Away,” and editing Rick Nielsen’s best set of songs since Heaven Tonight. Next Position Please is still very much a new wave-era Cheap Trick album -- this is shiny surfaces, not kicks to the gut -- but it’s the best of the lot, and one of their best-ever albums.

Disc 10, Next Position Please from 1983 is a good album with a lot of good songs.
Have fun
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Psychedelic Pop from 1969: Apple - An Apple A Day 1969 (1994 Repertoire Records) Flac

 Psychedelic Pop from Apple. An Apple a Day was released in 1969. This is the Repertoire release from 1994 with four bonus tracks.

Enjoy
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Game Theory - Lolita Nation: Flac links added!

Hello, i added at request today for the Lolita Nation album (that you can find here on the blog)  by Game Theory the Flac links (for only two days!). If you interested in this fantastic masterpiece in Flac format, hurry up. You find the links in the Lolita nation 320 post.

Cheers
           Frank