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Gerry Rafferty Night Owl 1 - Days Gone Down (Still Got That Light) On his second release for United Artists, Gerry Rafferty focuses an equal amount of attention on his lyrics and on the sincerity of the song's moods to create one his strongest and most heartfelt albums. Delicate, touching, and extremely poignant, Rafferty blankets all of Night Owl's tracks with a late-night/early-morning earnestness that is highly effective throughout. Although he managed to do just that with 1978's City to City, Night Owl generates a stronger intimacy and a genuine romantic feel through Rafferty's guitar playing and the way in which his lyrics are sung. The sentimental softness of "Days Gone Down," the controlled exuberance in "Get It Right Next Time," and the pathos which is instilled for the lonely wanderer in "Night Owl" all add to the album's solemn yet moving atmosphere. Rafferty continues this mood with tracks such as "Why Won't You Talk to Me," "Family Tree," and "It's Gonna Be a Long Night," giving the traditional singer/songwriter style some enchantment and allure through his vocal subtlety. In the U.K. the album broke into the Top Ten, and in the United States it sold 500,000 copies, earning Rafferty a gold disc. "Night Owl," "Days Gone Down," and "Get It Right Next Time" all cracked the Top 30
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Dire Straits Communique 2 - Single Handed Sailor Rushed out less than nine months after the surprise success of Dire Straits' self-titled debut album, the group's sophomore effort, Communiqué, seemed little more than a carbon copy of its predecessor with less compelling material. Mark Knopfler and co. had established a sound (derived largely from J.J. Cale) of laid-back shuffles and intricate, bluesy guitar playing, and Communiqué provided more examples of it. But there was no track as focused as "Sultans of Swing," even if "Lady Writer" (a lesser singles chart entry on both sides of the Atlantic) nearly duplicated its sound. As a result, Communiqué sold immediately to Dire Straits' established audience, but no more, and it did not fare as well critically as its predecessor or its follow-up.
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Survivor Survivor 3 - Youngblood The album lightly impacted the charts, managing a placement of #169 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the Spring of 1980. However, the opening track "Somewhere In America" was a regional hit in the Chicago area, and the song "Youngblood", with its dramatic guitar intro, proved to be something of a blueprint for the band's smash hit of two years later, "Eye of the Tiger". An additional song recorded for the album, "Rockin' into the Night", was rejected by Nevison as "too Southern"; it was given to .38 Special who turned the song into a hit. The original Survivor recording finally became available in 2004 on the compilation Ultimate Survivor. The single "Rebel Girl" was recorded about a year after the album sessions, though the Japanese release of the album on CD includes it as song number six. The 2010 reissue on Rock Candy Records appends the song as a bonus track.
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KISS Dynasty 4 - 2000 Man Dynasty marked the first time that the original four members of Kiss didn't all appear together for the entire album -- session drummer Anton Fig subbed for Peter Criss due to the latter's erratic behavior and injuries sustained in a serious car crash. And even though it was a platinum-plus smash, Dynasty marked the beginning of Kiss' unfocused period, which would ultimately end in a nosedive of the band's popularity, as well as Criss and Ace Frehley leaving the band by 1982. In latter-day interviews, the band admitted that they started to listen to outsiders about what direction the music should go around the time of Dynasty. And since small children were a large part of Kiss' audience by 1979 (due to merchandising and the God-awful TV movie Kiss Meets the Phantom), the band began backing away from heavy metal and embracing pop.
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Van Halen II 5 - Outta Love Again In almost every way, Van Halen II feels like its predecessor, even if there are subtle differences. First, there's only one cover this time around -- Betty Everett's "You're No Good," surely learned from Linda Ronstadt -- and this feels both heavier and lighter than the debut. Heavier in that this sounds big and powerful, driven by mastodon riffs that aim straight of the gut. Lighter in that there's a nimbleness to the attack, in that there are pop hooks to the best songs, in that the group sounds emboldened by their success so they're swaggering with a confidence that's alluring. If the classic ratio is slightly lighter than on the debut, there are no bad songs and the best moments here -- two bona fide party anthems in "Dance the Night Away" and "Beautiful Girls," songs that embody everything the band was about -- are lighter, funnier than anything on the debut, showcases for both Diamond Dave's knowing shuck and jive and Eddie's phenomenal gift, so natural it seems to just flow out of him. At this point, it's hard not to marvel at these two frontmen, and hard not to be sucked into the vortex of some of the grandest hard rock ever made. |