No-Skip Albums: "Empire" by Queensryche

My final no-skip album is from the progressive metal band Queensryche with their 1990 release Empire, which was their biggest commercial success, with the album reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 200 on the strength of their monster #1 single, "Silent Lucidity."

College friend (and lifelong partner in snark) Michael Tucker and I saw the band perform live in St. Louis on their tour in support of this album. As much as I like their earlier concept album Operation: Mindcrime, Empire is not just more accomplished musically, it's a more personal and accessible album. The songs have more to do with relationships, and the overall attitude is much more positive than the gloomy, ultimately futile mission of the protagonist in O:M.

Queensryche is one of the few "progressive metal" bands in existence, combining the artistic and musical sophistication of such prog-rock bands like Rush and Yes with the guitar- and percussion-driven instrumentation of heavy metal. I think they perfected the genre with this album. As before, the combination of Geoff Tate's vocals with Chris DeGarmo's songwriting and guitar is what sets the band apart and makes this album so memorable.

The personal nature of songs makes this album particularly appealing to me. The opening song, "Best I Can" is about a young man paralyzed in an accident who is determined to walk again. "The Thin Line," "Jet City Woman," and "Another Rainy Night" are all about the challenges of making a relationship work. "Empire" is about the struggle of inner-city residents in the face of the violence associated with a powerful drug empire.

The magnus opus, however, is "Silent Lucidity," a song about lucid dreaming, which is the ability to actively control one's dreams while within the dream world. Many books have been written about this ability, but as far as I know, it's the only song about it. It's without a doubt one of the most beautiful songs recorded in popular music, and it's no surprise it was their #1 hit.

No-Skip Albums: "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1" by George Michael

I know many of you at this point are thinking, "Has he lost his mind? George Michael? The Wham! guy? This is a joke, right?" Absolutely not, although I certainly thought so before I listened to the CD that stands as the penultimate work of my ten no-skip albums, George Michael's 1990 masterpiece, "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1."

I went through the whole thing with Wham! in the 1980s, from digging their earworm-infested pop ("Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," and don't deny that you listened to it over and over again) and soulful ballads ("Careless Whisper," still a great song). But by the nineties, the group had broken up, with Andrew Ridgeley forgotten and George Michael a punchline.

Then something miraculous happened—Michael, in an attempt to be taken more seriously as a songwriter, wrote one of the best albums of the past thirty years. Every song on this CD is just amazing. Michael's voice is as strong as ever (don't believe me? He's the only singer who ever came close to matching Freddy Mercury's strength when he performed "Someone to Love" at the Mercury tribute concert), but it's the songs themselves that are a true revelation.

Sure, you've probably heard "Freedom 90," the biggest hit single from the album. It's the rest of the songs that reveal the true artist living underneath the pop star exterior. In retrospect, it was still considered career suicide to come out as a gay man in 1990. With the (not at all surprising) truth about Michael's homosexuality now in the open, the songs on this CD are a plea for understanding and acceptance. The biggest tragedy of his too-early death, other than the loss of a human being who was an incredible talent, was that he won't have the change to present us with a volume two.

Just look at the titles of the tracks: Praying for Time; Freedom 90; They Won't Go When I Go; Something to Save; Cowboys and Angels; Waiting for that Day; Mother's Pride; Heal the Pain; Soul Free; Waiting. George was telling us something for sure; we just weren't ready to listen.

Well, listen (without prejudice) now:

No-Skip Albums: "Violator" by Depeche Mode

Note: This post originally appeared in June 2015 as my #4 pick for Favorite CDs of All-Time.

As I reflect on this list, it occurs to me that a more honest title should be "Best CDs from my time in graduate school," since 1990-1992 is the era of release for most of these albums. Perhaps none captures the bliss of this era for me more than tonight's #4 pick, "Violator" by Depeche Mode.

This is the second appearance by the British alterna-synth quartet, and far and away my favorite album of their career. "Violator" was their first top ten album in the U.S., making it as far as #7 on the Billboard charts. It's sold more than 3 million copies to date in the U.S. alone. Listening to the tracks is almost like going back in time.

Grad school was a kind of magic time for me in a lot of ways. I had successfully completed journalism school at Mizzou, but instead of jumping into the profession, I wanted to get a master's degree in English to work toward my eventual goal to become a novelist. Grad school gave me a limited number of fun and interesting classes, a teaching appointment, and ample free time to write and hang out with my friends, who were all still in college during my first year.

To make things a bit more interesting, I also had a girlfriend for a few months, something that hadn't happened since my junior year of high school. I had, quite literally, zero dates during my undergrad years in college. In retrospect, no romantic attachments are certainly conducive to making good grades, which I did. But grad school was different. I was dating, my apartment roommate (Wags) was dating, we had mutual friends who were dating. Result: we hosted dinner parties.

I had learned a little Italian cooking from another friend (and previous year's roommate), so I started working on big pasta dishes—mostaccioli, stuffed manicotti, lasagna. "Violator" was on the CD player whenever I cooked. "World in My Eyes" played during prep. The sauce started with "Sweetest Perfection" and simmered through "Personal Jesus" and "Halo." By the time "Enjoy the Silence" began to play, I put it all together, and put it in the oven by the end of "Policy of Truth."

Our girlfriends and our guests all enjoyed the meals, and I enjoyed feeling like I might actually make a semi-decent grownup. I still like to cook Italian for special occasions, sometimes with friends, usually with the family I have with the wife I met three years after I left grad school. "Violator" is on my iPhone instead of on my CD player, but it still makes for a great cooking album. Here's my favorite song off the album—bon appetit!

No-Skip Albums: "Watermark" by Enya

If I were counting down my most frequently played CDs, this would easily be at number one. As it is, it charts at #12 on my top 21 favorite CDs in my collection. It's the Irish new-age artist Enya with her 1988 classic "Watermark." Even if you think you've never heard of Enya, chances are you've heard her music in a movie, on a commercial, or in an office or elevator.

I first discovered Enya (real name: Eithne Ní Bhraonáin; yeah, let's go with "Enya") as I did much of the music on this list...on MTV with her biggest single, "Orinoco Flow." It was unusual because 1988 was the age of Madonna and Van Halen; what was this strange Irish lady with this weird song doing on MTV? As it turns out, her album made it as high as #25 on the Billboard Hot 200.

I think it was college roommate Mark Grossman who first bought a copy of the CD, and it became regular background music for marathon study sessions as well as study break games of Pente. I don't know when I bought my own copy, but I've had it forever and have played it maybe more than a thousand times.

The music is just wonderful. Most of the songs are quiet and low-key; even the more upbeat songs won't really raise your pulse rate much. She uses mainly keyboards with some backing percussion and the occasional Irish pipes. Her voice is ethereal and beautiful, like a faerie from the mists of Irish legends. Some of the songs are sung in her native Irish, and this only intensifies the other-worldliness of the music. Other songs are in English, some are instrumental, and one is in Latin. Not exactly your mainstream pop album.

I love this album and listen to it constantly for one primary reason: it's my background music for when I write my Llanfyllin novels. Both books, Dylan's Treasure (finished in 2005) and The Spring of Llanfyllin (publishing this October) are set in my imaginary medieval version of Wales, and the female protagonist of the books is Irish. Enya's album is the perfect soundtrack for these stories, and when I'm writing, chances are this is playing on the stereo.

Here's the song that started it all, but you really should listen to the whole album; it's an amazing experience that has never stopped for me for more than 25 years.

No-Skip Albums: "Kick" by INXS

One of the great missing joys of today's Internet culture is joining a record club. Whether it was RCA, BMG, or Columbia, Gen-Xers remember the thrill of choosing 12 albums and getting them all for ONE CENT! Shipping was extra, but in the Eighties, it was about $2.95. You were only obligated to buy one or two overpriced (read: $16.99) albums at full price over the next 1-2 years, but when you're a teenager, a year seems like a decade. After you fulfilled your contract, you could cancel and start the process all over again.

One of the albums I chose in one of my record club initial offerings was picked as filler to round out my 12 choices; it was Listen Like Thieves by the Australian alt-rock band INXS, which I pronounced "inks" at the time. I had heard a couple of singles off the album, and there was nothing else that tickled my fancy at the time, so I took a flyer. It is a marvelous album, worth a full listen in its own right, but not a no-skipper, and certainly not as great as the masterpiece I actually came to discuss today.

Released in 1987, my sophomore year in college and when I met two of my lifelong friends, Wags and Tuck, Kick is the apex of INXS's career. Their follow-up album, X, produced four singles, but they never replicated their success of the Eighties, and dynamic frontman Michael Hutchence was found dead of an apparent suicide, though the circumstances of his death have been shrouded in controversy to this day.

The entire Kick album is almost completely populated by hit singles, and unlike my favorite Tears for Fears album, which only features eight songs, this is a full twelve songs stacked, and not one of them is a dud or one I wouldn't listen to.

Each side sounds like a greatest hits compilation from the late Eighties: Side One—"Guns in the Sky," "New Sensation (Billboard #3)," "Devil Inside (#2)," "Need You Tonight/Mediate (#1)," "The Loved One." Side Two: "Wild Life," Never Tear Us Apart (#7)," "Mystify," "Kick," "Calling All Nations," "Tiny Daggers."

I was fortunate enough to see INXS twice on their Kick tour, first in Columbia, then a second time in St. Louis. Without a doubt, Michael Hutchence was the most dynamic, magnetic, charismatic front man I've ever seen perform live. In both shows, he was in absolute control of the entire arena, and the energy carried over into the entire band. Not one member of the band stood still for even a moment, not even their drummer, who frequently jumped into the air in the midst of songs! Both shows had a joyous party atmosphere, with the St. Louis show ending their second encore with fireworks and an arena-wide confetti drop. You could have had a terrible, awful, no-good, very bad day and still walked out of that concert with a blissed-out grin all over your face.

I still hear their music from time to time, but INXS (pronounced "In Excess," just in case you didn't realize it) would be one of my first picks in a discussion about "overlooked and/or underrated" bands from the Eighties. It would have been nice had they been able to sustain their success and energy for a few more albums, but if there is anything at all that we learn from music, it's that nothing lasts forever. This album, however, should last forever as a testament to a truly great and fun rock band.

No-Skip Albums: "5150" by Van Halen

For better or worse, much of the music I like from the early Eighties is due in large part to MTV, which was a ubiquitous presence in the lives of teenagers. As far as growing up in Poplar Bluff, even more rural and remote 40 years ago compared to today, it was the only outlet beyond country music radio or fossilized classic rock/AOR programming.

I became a Van Halen fan mainly due to the airplay their "1984" album generated on MTV. That album was a finalist for the ten I ultimately chose for this latest blog project, but there are a couple of tracks on side two that are eminently skippable. It was MTV that put VH's lead singer David Lee Roth's solo videos on maximum rotation, which was probably yet another rift in the band that led to Diamond Dave's departure (and subsequent slide into trivial obscurity for 20+ years).

It was also MTV where I first heard the announcement that Van Halen had selected the Red Rocker, Sammy Hagar, as their new lead singer. I already owned three Hagar albums at this point (one of which led off this blog project), so I was a much bigger fan of Sammy than I was of Van Halen. For me, this was a dream union, the ultimate merger of rock's greatest guitarist with one of its most entertaining singers.

Oh, the anticipation for the release of their first album in 1986. MTV teased us with early band interviews, but the music itself remained as top secret as the USSR's nuclear holdings. I bugged Eddie Boster at our local music store, "Salt of the Earth," for weeks for confirmation of a release date. Finally, on March 24, 1986, the album dropped. I can't remember for sure if Boster had a copy available on that day exactly, but I do know that the day he did, I was there when the doors opened to buy my own copy, which is the same album I own to this day.

I have to confess, I was not initially impressed with their first single, "Why Can't This Be Love?". It didn't sound like Van Halen or Sammy Hagar, which was, of course, the point—it was something completely new. It didn't take long, however, to warm up to the new sound, and as the album kept getting played, I was completely hooked with the new sound.

Side one opens with "Good Enough," a gritty rock tune, followed by "Why Can't This Be Love?", which features much more keyboard (an Eddie Van Halen decision) than their previous works. The third song, "Get Up," is another rocker, followed by back-to-back monster singles to close out side one, "Dreams," and "Summer Nights."

Side two begins as side one ended, with two huge singles that became signature staples of the Van Hagar era, "Best of Both Worlds," and "Love Walks In." The title track hits third, followed by "Inside" as the closer.

Not that anyone heeds boundaries on the Internet, but I don't offer this pick as yet another forum for the Dave vs. Sammy debate. The band made some great albums with unforgettable songs with both singers. Dave chose to leave, so I've never understood the hate directed at Sammy by Dave fans. I own all four of the Van Hagar albums, and they're all strong efforts (which makes their ultimate split even sadder for me, as well as the Van Halen brothers ongoing animosity toward Sammy and former bassist Michael Anthony). Their premiere effort, however, stands out as the most unskippable of all the possible picks for me.

Ten No-Skip Albums: "Songs from the Big Chair" by Tears for Fears

After years of agonizing, clarifying, quantifying, and plain old waffling, it is time for me to make a commitment. Yes, I love R.E.M. as a band, and their classic album Automatic for the People is one of the best collections of music ever recorded. The same must be said for The Cure and my two favorites of their albums, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Wish. But now I must make a clear statement: Tears for Fears is my favorite band of all-time, and their 1985 release Songs from the Big Chair is likewise my favorite album of all-time. And unlike the three competing albums previously cited, this masterpiece bears no skippable tracks.

The lyrical content of Songs from the Big Chair, as well as the name of the band itself, is deeply influenced by the writings of psychologist Arthur Janov and the practice of primal scream therapy, a means of exposing and releasing long-suppressed trauma and painful memories, especially from childhood. Central bandmates Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith both admit to having unhappy childhoods, and both men were deeply attracted to Janov's ideas. They explored these deep hurts of the psyche in their first album, The Hurting, but they brought these concepts to full maturity with the genius of SftBC.

Side one of the album begins with the first single, "Shout," which serves as the thematic anthem for the entire work. The lyrics are directly connected to the concept of primal scream therapy and the benefits they found in its practice: "Shout, shout, let it all out; these are the things I can do without...."
Found toward the end of the song is one of the most devastating lyrics I've ever heard: "And when you've taken down your guard / If I could change your mind / I'd really love to break your heart / I'd really love to break your heart." My friends and I used to ride around in 1985 with this song at maximum volume on the car stereo, singing at top volume as if we were in a therapy session ourselves. I don't want to be remiss in mentioning Roland's extraordinary guitar work in this song as well. His personality and outspokenness has often overshadowed his skills as a guitarist.

The second track is "The Working Hour," unknown to radio listeners but a classic song to real TFF fans. This song features amazing saxophone work amidst soaring synthesizers. The lyrics again emphasize dealing with past emotional hurts: "Find out / find out / what this fear is about." The third song is instantly recognizable as one of their most popular and familiar tunes, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." Recently covered by Weezer on their Teal Album, Roland and Curt dropped in on Jimmy Kimmel Live to play live with Weezer for this song.

Side one ends with "Mother's Talk," a hard-driving new wave rock song that combines synthesizers with a thundering bass and drum pattern that sounds like a relentless march into a fearful future. Therapy is once again in the foreground, with the lyrics emphasizing the importance of dealing with the past: "When the wind blows / When the mother's talk / When the wind blows / Only we can work it out."

Those four songs alone would make this album a classic, but we still have four more on side two, which opens with the lyrical ballad "I Believe." This song is stripped down, mostly Roland singing over subtle drums and piano chords about letting go of our tears and stop keeping our emotions all bottled up. As the song develops, a plaintive saxophone calls out from time to time. As it reaches the end, a synthesizer chord begins to build, then hangs on at the last note, bringing us in direct transition to the next two songs (which are really one extraordinary song).

"Broken" and "Head Over Heels" are listed as two tracks (and were released as separate singles), but they work together as a matching pair. "Broken" bursts in on the final chord from "I Believe" with pounding drums and a screaming guitar instrumental. The melody from "Head Over Heels" coda "In my mind's eye / One little boy, one little man / Funny how time flies" plays out in faster time and a less melodic key, setting the scene for what's to follow.

"Broken" is the bookend to "Shout," the angrier expression of the primal scream experience, as seen in these lyrics: "Between the searching and the need to work it out / I stop believing everything will be alright / Broken...we are broken." Then Roland sings the "Head Over Heels" coda listed in the previous paragraph, coming to a heavy ritard after "Funny how," then drawing out "time...flies..."; then the familiar piano intro to "Head Over Heels" begins. Watch the video below...it sounds so much better than I could ever explain with words.

[The following paragraph comes from my blog for my 100 Favorite Songs from earlier this year; "Head Over Heels" is my #2 song on that list. I'm also including the original video, a wonderful clip in itself.]

I never would have guessed when I started this process that ["Head Over Heels"] would have ended up so high, much less ranked ahead of my other TFF favorites. But the more I listened to it, the more I felt like I was rediscovering something amazing for the first time. Every aspect of the song is typically wonderful for Roland and Curt—the vocals, the guitar work, the mix of old beats with new synths—but what I find most appealing is the five chord guitar riff that happens in the chorus at "...find out" and "something happens" (first appearing at 1:16 and 1:21). That's such a small thing, but so brilliant. I also love the "la-la-la" vocals over the piano theme that leads to the outro. I don't think I'm going out on a limb to claim this as not only my favorite TFF song but also the best thing they've ever done.

[New stuff...] On the album (but not on the single), "Head Over Heels" holds out the now-familiar "Time Flies..." line, only this time, it's a reprise of "Broken" tagged onto the end of the song. It says so much about the complexity and depth of thought that Roland and Curt put into this album that its darkest song encompasses the beginning and the end of its most positive song. It's absolutely brilliant, and I think if I had to re-rank my Top 100, it might just edge out my previous #1 ("Just Like Heaven," by The Cure, in case you missed it).

The final track is "Listen," a mostly instrumental ballad that acts as a transition from their musical therapy session back into the reality of everyday life, but there is as much thought and care put into this final track as anything else. It's an emotional necessity after the ride we've been on so far. I've listened to this entire album more times than I could possible calculate, and the wonder of it all is that it has never grown stale for even one time. I discover something new every time I encounter it.

Ten No-Skip Albums: "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" by Sting

In the early heyday of MTV, British New Wave giants The Police released Synchronicity, a monster album that spawned several huge hit singles and their accompanying videos. I was already a fan, having previously owned their Ghost in the Machine album, so their explosive success in the early Eighties seemed to be a harbinger of many more great things to come.

Alas, it was not to be, as the band was rife with internal personality conflicts, and in 1985, lead singer and bassist Sting (nee Gordon Sumner) announced the release of his first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. It was to be a jazz-influenced album that featured established jazz musician such as saxophonist Branford Marsalis and Omar Hakim on drums. I bought the album upon its release with great anticipation.

Yeah, I hated it. I'm not much of a jazz fan at all. I appreciate the virtuosity of jazz musicians, but that style of music has never moved my heart and soul the way other music so often does. This didn't sound like anything The Police had ever done, and with my teenage immaturity, I had expected to get the version of Sting featured on MTV, not the artist he was striving to be.

Obviously, my attitude has shifted, since this is on my no-skip list now. MTV gave heavy airplay to the singles from the album, and with each subsequent listen, my affinity for the songs began to grow. As I opened myself up to listening to the whole album, I started to understand what Sting was doing with his music, and I saw how the jazz arrangements and instrumentation worked together. By the time I was in college, this was a regular favorite on the turntable. Today, I consider it a seminal classic in his career.

The album opens with the first single, "If You Love Somebody (Set Them Free)," a lyrical declaration of his own freedom from his previous band. It's an up-tempo song with a wonderful saxophone part. Next is "Love is the Seventh Wave," a calypso-influenced tune (remember, The Police began as a neo-ska band) that does something characteristic of jazz in that it self-references an earlier work; in this case, a lyrical snippet of The Police's "Every Breath You Take" as a clever coda at the end of the song.

Track three is the dark Cold War plea "Russians," reflective of our collective fear of global nuclear war with the USSR. It's heavy on synthesizers, and Sting's lyrics echo similar apocalyptic poetry. Track four is "Children's Crusade"; one of the most interesting things about this song is that it is set in 3/4 time (like a waltz), which is unusual for pop music. Side one closes with "Shadows in the Rain," which begins with vocals over a smoking drum rhythm, then kicks into high gear with all the musicians jamming like it's after midnight in a back-alley jazz club.

Side two opens with "We Work the Black Seam," a mid-tempo ballad with an environmental warning about the consequences of our industrial civilization. Next up is "Consider Me Gone," a song that fades in with vocals over bass and drum, a dark a mysterious song to the end. The third song is the title track, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles," a straight-up Be-Bop Jazz instrumental that primarily focus on piano. The penultimate song is "Moon Over Bourbon Street," a ballad that sounds like it belongs right in the midst of that familiar New Orleans address.

The album closes with one of Sting's best singles ever, "Fortress Around Your Heart." This was the song that grew on me the fastest and inspired me to keep listening to the album until it achieved its place among my favorite works in my collection. I love this album because it is the beginning of the transition from Sting as The Police's lead singer to Sting as a thoughtful and influential artist and song writer. He is one of the rare artists whose solo work exceeds his earlier band-based music. I've enjoyed most of what he's done since, but his first is one I listen to without a single skipped track, which is more amazing to me since after my first listen, I wanted to skip the whole album!

Ten No-Skip Albums: "Pyromania" by Def Leppard

I can still remember the first time I heard the monster hit single "Rock of Ages" from Def Leppard's breakthrough 1983 album Pyromania. I was visiting family friends in Oklahoma City, who had MTV on their local cable service. I had heard several peers buzzing about this song, but this was the first listen. I was, of course, immediately hooked, and since that day, Def Leppard has consistently been one of my favorite bands.

This is the archetype for Eighties pop-metal music, with its nonsensical but catchy lyrics, soaring vocal harmonies, virtuoso guitar solos, and the electric charisma of lead singer Joe Elliott. They had the added bonus of being a British band, which always made music an extra level of cool for me.

Pyromania opens with the arena-rock anthem "Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)," your standard demand from young people everywhere to play rock music incessantly; it's at the heart of teenage rebellion everywhere, all the time. Next comes probably the best song on the album, "Photograph," which still sounds as good today as it did throughout 1983.

The next three tracks are lesser known to casual fans, but "Stagefright," the third track, is a hard-driving rock song that emphasizes their metal-tinged roots. Next is "Too Late for Love," a dark single where both instrumental and vocal musicianship is featured. Side one (vinyl, children) wraps up with "Die Hard the Hunter," a rare track where the lyrics are important, this time urging mental health care for combat veterans as well as criticizing the sickening lack of such services available.

Side two begins with two of the band's all-time greatest songs, "Foolin'," which is, for me, the highest charter on my person Top 100 Favorite Songs (as I blogged earlier this year), followed by the previously mentioned "Rock of Ages," which remains one of their signature songs and is featured in just about every live performance they've ever done.

Side two wraps up with three lesser-known but still rock-solid (pun intended) tracks: "Comin' Under Fire," another dark love song; "Action Not Words," which turns B-movie filmmaking into a sexual double-entendre; and finally, "Billy's Got a Gun," a six-minute hard rock tune that sounds sadly prophetic about our current cultural condundrum with angry young men and the violence they commit.

Pyromania is not simply Def Leppard's best album, it's one of the greatest albums of the Eighties. And for those of you wondering if their follow-up album, Hysteria, will show up later on the list, I have to disappoint you. That album features the single "Love Bites," the one Def Leppard song I absolutely skip every time it comes around. Not every album can be perfect, but Pyromania comes damn close.

Ten No-Skip Albums: "Standing Hampton" by Sammy Hagar

I was a huge devotee of Sammy Hagar's solo work in the early Eighties, but no other of his albums reaches the pinnacle for me as does 1981's Standing Hampton. It features some of his best-known solo hits, two of them opening the album on side one with "I'll Fall In Love Again" and "There's Only One Way to Rock."

Sammy makes fun music to listen to. There's always a playful edge, usually emerging out of a combination of his gravelly rock-shout voice, energetic guitar, and obvious but fun double-entendres about sex, highlighted in the next two tracks on side one (1981 twelve-inch vinyl, baby!), "Baby's On Fire" and "Can't Get Loose."

Side One concludes with "Heavy Metal," a great song in its own right but one that's also featured heavily in the R-rated animated film of the same name. For a kid raised on Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, and Tom & Jerry, the sex, violence, and profanity of this movie was both startling and exciting. It was must-see TV on HBO after the parents went to sleep; you couldn't get caught dead watching this with their knowledge!

Side Two begins with three songs with a heavier emphasis on the genuine emotion of love without all the previous winks and nudges, "Baby It's You," "Surrender," and "Inside Lookin' In." All that sincerity is soundly swept away with "Sweet Hitchhiker," a ridiculous adolescent male fantasy about picking up a beautiful female hitchhiker so they can "take a ride." In case you didn't already know, the Eighties were not real big on political correctness, especially when it came to sexuality. It's in poor taste for 2019, but in 1981, it was a goofy teenage fantasy.

The final track of the album is a great cover of the Janis Joplin classic "Piece of My Heart," a perfect blend of Sammy's throaty vocals with the bright Eighties rock of Sammy and his band. It's exactly the kind of cover tune you'd expect to hear during the encore of a live show. It's a fitting end to a fun favorite of mine from the time of mullets and MTV.

WARNING! VIDEO NSFW!