The Godfathers were fronted by the Coyne Brothers, Peter (vocals) and Chris (bass and vocals) with Kris Dollimore and Mike Gibson offering the snarling guitars and George Mazur rounding out the band on drums. The Coyne’s were kinda like the Noel and Liam Gallagher of their time, albeit without the same level of animosity.

Strangely this album, and the band, achieved more recognition in the US and Australia than they did in the UK, where their guitar driven rock wouldn’t come into favour until the likes of Oasis appeared on the scene. Ironic really.

Birth School Work Death holds up reasonably well, almost 25 years later. The title track remains a ripper, from its defining sentiment to the hard chugging rhythm and the chanted title line. None of the other songs quite reach the heights of the title track, with the frenetic Cause I Said So coming closest. S.T.B. and the album’s closer Love Is Dead are two other songs that capture the band in full flight.

There are some songs that echo bands like the Psychedelic Furs and others that could possibly draw some inspiration from the likes of the Boomtown Rats and The Stranglers and the more electric stylings of Bowie and even Gary Numan.

Producer Vic Maile does a good job in keeping the sound largely raw and angsty, although he allows the band to meander into some psychedelic guitar tunings on some songs, most notably (and appropriately) When Am I Coming Down.

There’s no doubt that Birth School Work Death deserved a broader audience than it received at the time. Interestingly the band does reform occasionally, but there shows tend to be in American cities rather than in their homeland. The album is worth pulling out of storage if you still have it hidden away, or finding a copy somewhere out there in the digital frontier.

Although several Wall Of Voodoo members contribute Prieboy had clearly moved on from the band and even though the first song is a cover of Canned Heat’s On The Road Again, this album is very much Prieboy creating his own alternative universe.

It’s a film noir James Ellroy flavoured universe filled with fringe characters and shadowy situations. What allows Prieboy to get away with traversing this territory is an innate sense of humour and a musical palate that keeps the music urgent and interesting rather than becoming maudlin. It is arguably self-indulgent but I’d argue its not because he always seeks to entertain his listeners as much as he entertains himself.

One highlight that is on the darker side but not suffering because of it is Prieboys version of Tomorrow Wendy. The Prieboy penned song had already been a hit of sorts for Concrete Blonde and that bands singer Johnette Napolitano returns a favour here by duetting with Prieboy. As much as I love the Concrete Blonde version this album contains the definitive reading of the song – Prieboy’s vocal is incredibly seductive in its delivery of the sad subject matter.

More upbeat are songs like Montezuma Was A Man Of Faith, Nearer To Morning and  the almost vaudevillian Man Talk which utilizes the same chattering typewriter  percussive style that featured on a few Wall Of Voodoo songs. The song reaches an absurd epic conclusion.

It leads into the almost country/choral (now that’s a combination you never expected to find) feel of Loving The Highway Man.

Prieboy of course went on the write a rock opera based on the rise of Axl Rose (called White Trash Wins Lotto) and he kind of foreshadows this with the outrageous pastiche entitled The New York Debut Of An LA Artist (Jazz Crowd). Joliet also offers an operetta approach that sounds a little like what Rufus Wainwright might have had he been floating around the wrong part of town in the LA underground in the early 90’s.

Naturally Upon My Wicked Son wasn’t a big commercial hit in its day but it certainly stands up now as an impressive and brilliantly constructed piece of work. Ironically for Prieboy a not dissimilar approach to music about a decade later led to Beck being lauded as a pioneer.

Andy Prieboy deserves to be remembered as an artist of genuine value and this as a fine example of his craft.

The rock song that set the tone for the album was of course Barracuda, an angry, rock guitar driven anthem that featured one of the great female rock vocal performances – probably of all time. Ann Wilson absolutely soars on this song and it pretty much establishes her credentials as a vocalist for all time.

It emerged later that the song was written as Wilson’s response to her realisation that their record label had been spreading titillating rumours that her and sister Nancy were in fact lesbian lovers. It’s little wonder that the song is as viciously venomous as it comes across.

The other killer rock song on the album is Kick It Out, a free spirited spiralling song that Wilson inhabits with great gusto.

But it’s the soft songs that gave Heart their added dimensions that won them a dedicated fanbase. As twee as it sounds now the idea of a mandolin instrumental (Sylvan Song) leading into a meandering romantic tale of a medieval archer wandering through the woods (Dream of The Archer) worked back beautifully in 1977. Combined with the cover shot of the two gorgeous sisters in gypsy-like period costume, it certainly worked for me!

Ballads like Love Alive and the delicate, yet aching Cry To Me were equally great vehicles for Ann’s superb vocal talents. She had an extraordinary ability to sound vulnerable and incredibly powerful simultaneously and even today she probably doesn’t get the recognition her talents deserve. Her free-styling on the largely instrumental Go On Cry (which closes the record in an almost concept album way) is another indication of her chops.

Nancy’s vocal on Treat Me Well isn’t as strident but she adds another layer to this album and as the guitar playing sister she added another dimension rather than both being purely vocalists.

Heart went on to make several more really strong albums in this vein (such as Dog & Butterfly and Bebe Le Strange) before taking a more chart oriented approach but it was Little Queen that showed that they had the depth of talent to launch a long career from the platform provided by Dreamboat Annie.

Little Queen still sounds great today.

Indeed no producer, other than the band, is credited and the production such as it is a notably thin and raw. But what is unmistakable is the wanton brilliance of the playing and the jagged elegance of the songwriting.

Categorized as “punk” or “new wave” the music is, in fact, neither. Like The Clash, The Police merged a hard edged rockabilly with reggae and ska but ended up sounding like none of the above. Add to this Sting’s vaguely existentialist lyrics and you have a new band that immediately transcended the limitations of an easy categorization.

Listening to the album now there’s no doubt that the sonic quality of the recording is lacking but that is part of its charm.

Outlandos d’ Amour contains at least half a dozen classic tracks – the opening triumvirate of Next To You, So Lonely and Roxanne is just staggering. The first is breathtaking in its urgency and obsession while the latter is a beautifully rendered but hopeless plea to the subject of the singers affections. Sandwiched between the two is So Lonely – clearly one of the great “punk” statements of alienation.

On Side 2 the opening salvo of Cant Stand Losing You, Truth Hits Everybody and Born In the 50’s is almost the equal of Side 1. Cant Stand Losing You is  another brilliant song of emotional angst and wry humour (‘your brother’s gonna kill me and he’s six foot ten’). On this song the reggae flavour comes through strongly whereas on Truth Hits Everybody its back to rapid fire punk rock. Born In The 50’s is a clever generational anthem that was an extremely brave point to make on a debut album in 1978.

The unsung hero here is Stuart Copeland. His loose limbed drumming is just phenomenal and it’s him that sets this band apart from its contemporaries. While Sting went on to sing better and Andy Summers went on to provide more lauded guitar work, the adventurous playing of Copeland was the unpredictable factor that made this album a high water mark of post-punk rock trios.

There was no knowing that The Police were going to evolve into  massive stadium rock monsters when you first heard Outlandos d’Amour – but there was no doubt that they were a vital new force.

Even if the album contained a spoken word poem about the love of an inflatable doll!

They obviously had a bit going for them even if it wasn’t ultimately achieved through this band.

The bands Wikipedia entry offers a bit of surprising information.

“Dan Zanes went on to a solo career and success recording children’s music in his band Dan Zanes and Friends and music videos, made popular by heavy airplay on the Disney Channel. In 2007, his album “Catch That Train!” received a Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children.

Brother Warren Zanes went on to earn two Master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Arts. He is also the Vice President of Education at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Tom Lloyd went back to college and earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley before earning a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1999.

In 2003, Woody Giessmann founded Right Turn, a program offering assistance to artists in recovery from drug addiction and other mental health issues.”

All that is great and interesting but how does Boston, Mass, sound today.

Short answer : pretty bloody good.

Tom Petty was apparently a fan of this band and its clear the feeling was mutual – although the Del Fuegos are clearly a lot dirtier and less polished than Petty had become by the same stage the influence still comes through. The album was produced by Mitchell Froom who was the ideal producer of that time and he leaves the bands raw throaty swagger pretty much untouched. He adds a few organ lines himself which dont exactly dispel the Petty references but they add a little flavour to the guitar based sound.

Zanes is a cracking vocalist – for someone who made a later career as a childrens entertainer he sure made a good impression at being a whisky soaked bar band singer and his voice is what makes these songs of “local pain and sometimes gain” ring true.  He sings of strugglers on the local scene trying to find a reason to believe and while he’s not the first or the last to mine this subject matter, he does it well.

But it’s not until a little song hidden deep on Side Two that he strikes emotional paydirt. Night On The Town is an absolute gem. Zanes is found pleading for some meaning in the midst of the post teen party scene and when he “feels the nightime sighing” you cant help but relate. Everyone has been there at one time or another. It’s such a low key, unobtrusive little song but even now listening to it 25 years later its just as good as I remembered it. Night On The Town is the undoubted high point of a cool, under-rated indie band.

The key to this album was that Johansen found a great collaborator in Blondie Chaplin (The Band, The Beach Boys, Rolling Stones), who co-wrote most of these songs and played guitar across the album.  The album contains an inner sleeve photo of Chaplin on acoustic guitar and Johansen playing a little squeezebox that seems to capture the basic nature of the songwriting, even though the album is completely electric.

There’s a sense of urgency about these songs and they seem to benefit from a thin production that makes the album sound like a live band playing without the benefit of multiple overdubs.

The album wasn’t a huge commercial success but it contains some of Johansen’s most distinctive performances and surprisingly gave a couple of pointers to his later incarnation as Buster Poindexter. Side One closes with Marquesa De Sade, which adapts a hint of latin and calypso to the punky flavour of the rest of the album.

The title track is a barnstormer of party-pop indulgence and its matched by equally decadent sounding songs such as Bohemian Love Pad and She Loves Strangers. But it’s the bitter and biting Johansen that works best and You Fool You and My Obsession are classics within this sub-genre.

The second side of this album loses a little of its punk rock edge. There’s a little bit of reggae in Side Two’s Party Tonight and on Rollin’ Job but it’s a style that only just suits him and certainly doesn’t match his more edgy songs.

But Johansen still manages to conjure up some magic on Side Two via the closer – a seemingly standard ballad named Heart of Gold. Despite its clichéd title when Johansen intones “You think I’m a whore/But I got a heart of gold/And I need protection from the cold/I’ve been bought and I’ve been sold/And I need protection from the cold.” – you cant help but believe him. It’s a great vocal performance and together with all of Side One and the title track makes Here Comes The Night a wonderful genuine rock n’ roll record from one of its relatively unsung heroes.

Syd Straw

The album was produced by Straw with a couple of production collaborators including  none other than  Van Dyke Parks and Daniel Lanois. She performed songs written or co-written by Peter Holsapple, Michael Stipe, Jody Harris and Peter Blegvad, and the musicians on the album were the veritable whos who including Greg Leisz, Marshall Crenshaw, Richard Thompson, John Doe, Don Was, Dave Alvin, Ben Tench, Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner and the aforementioned Stipe, Holsapple, Parks, Lanois, Harris and Blegvad.

How it didn’t become one of the stand-out albums of the decade defies logic.

Listening to the album now it’s still very, very good, but maybe not as strange as it sounded at the time.

Straw herself is an endearing vocalist, but in retrospect she was more deeply likeable than desperately unique. Not that being a “deeply likeable” singer is in any way anything short of a major compliment!

Straw had been a backing vocalist and had come to the attention of the “cool kids” when she was recruited by Anton Fier for his Golden Palominos project. Interestingly the strongest song on Surprise is still Future 40’s (String of Pearls) which features contributions from Fier and fellow Palomino Michael Stipe. It’s a countrified alterna-pop song and it still sounds triumphant 20 years later.

What did set Surprise apart was the lyrical approach Straw took. There was nothing ‘pop’ about he words and even now the lyrics bear close attention, thought and interpretation. She comes across as literate and challenging, but not deliberately obscure. It’s an album that derives great benefit from listening with the lyric sheet close at hand. It’s music that sounds great in the background but it offers a lot more value than background music.

There is a couple of wild card songs on here. Her performance of the Stephen Foster, traditional folk song Hard Times is intriguing. The Unanswered Question is almost up there with Future 40’s until it takes a couple of mystifying tangents. Think Too Hard opens the album and it’s a delicious guitar pop-rock song. Its joined by another on Side 2 – the wonderful Racing To The Ruins. And the quirky Sphinx ultimately delights after winning a close battle with a conflicting opinion that is a little too silly.

Syd Straw went on to do another reasonably well  received album War and Peace (well it took her seven years!) before disappearing from recording until 2008 when she released Pink Velour on her own label. She performs sporadically, has acted a little and moved to a small town in Vermont where she lives happily as a creative dabbler.

But Surprise was her most ambitious and fully realised album.

The Happy Club had a song called Attitude Chicken.

The Happy Club arrived to far less fanfare in 1992. It was the second of two albums – the first being The Vegetarians Of Love, when it appeared that Geldof had come to terms with both his position as a voice on the world stage and the absurdity of that role in view of his former persona as an Irish punk rocker with a penchant for theatricality and street-wise melodrama.

He’d some to terms with it and declared it to be pretty much irrelevant to the music that he wanted to make. So he put on a black suit decorated with bright yellow sunflowers and made The Happy Club.

It was to be probably the best musical statement of his career and an album that, with its predecessor, provided the backbone for some fantastic, liberated live shows.

Despite its title and the mood of some of  the songs the album wasn’t entirely upbeat and frivolous. Songs like The Soft Soil and The Song Of The Emergent Nationalist are downright sombre but not in a sour way. They are thoughtful, resilient and significant songs but they are not what makes this album as enjoyable as it is.

No, that role is reserved for songs like the title track where Geldof and Karl Wallinger co-write a buoyant little ditty that owes more than a nod to Ray Davies. Hole To Fill is the albums showstopper – again it’s a rollicking pub folk song – that actively dismantles the Saint Bob persona. Equally Room 19 (sub-titled Sha La La La Lee), a song inspired by a communist mind washing room, is an upbeat, almost bubble gum pop tune.

Then of course is the aforementioned Attitude Chicken. I’m still not sure exactly what its about, and perhaps that’s for the best, but it is a hilarious and raucous piece of pointed nonsense that you cant help but love.

Add to these Too Late God, a barn storming square dancing knees up about a mid-life crisis and the acknowledged Dylanesque The Roads of Germany and you have an album that covers a lot of ground openly, honestly and completely without self-consciousness.

And for a guy who had spent the best part of the prior decade living in the shadow of his own other self, well, you can almost hear the relief oozing out of every song.

In some ways this was the album that led Chisel out of the wilderness and into our collective lounge room. Sure, songs like Khe Sanh and Goodbye (Astrid Goodbye) had made an impact a the album Breakfast At Sweethearts had shown Don Walker to a be a superior songwriter but it was East that made Cold Chisel a phenomenon.

East featured songs written by every member of the band with surprisingly the biggest chart hit being My Baby penned by bassist Phil Small and sung by Ian Moss.

There’s four songs on the first side of this album that would all fit into a mix tape of best loved Australian songs – Standing On The Outside, Choir Girl, My Baby and Rising Sun are all instant classics and they are joined on Side 2 by the equally iconic Cheap Wine.

But the depth of East doesn’t stop with those classics of the genre. East also boasts the ambitious and impressive Tomorrow, the brutal Star Hotel and the incorrigible Ita which remains one of the cheekiest songs written in Australian music. It also offers Four Walls which is close to Australia’s best prison ballad.

Mark Opitz does a great job producing this album. He gives the songs room to breath and while they are polished sufficiently to get them on the radio they unmistakably like a band playing. The rawness of songs like Star Hotel and Standing On The Outside and My Turn To Cry remains intact while there is some delicious moments of guitar playing from Ian Moss that further highlight that this was a band who had musical chops coming out of their ears.

Lyrically the album is outstanding, painting a portrait of suburban Australia that was real and not at all stylised. From TAB’s to Newcastles pubs, to beaches to lounge rooms Walker (and to their credit the other writers) all rise to the occasion and describe an existence that was instantly familiar and didn’t seek to pretend.

It’s little wonder that the album struck a chord with the Australian public.

It turns out that Whitley was not an overnight sensation at all – while this album was his first in the mainstream he had been plying his trade for almost a decade around Europe being loosely based in Belgium.

But there was no doubting this was an American album. The Texan Whitley recorded the album in New Orleans with producer Malcolm Burn himself a craftsman schooled in the Daniel Lanois style of atmospherics. The sound is based around the sound of the National Steel guitar and Whitley’s vocals which manage the dual achievements of sounding desert dry and gorgeously seductive at the same time. He manages an almost funkster-like falsetto groove on some songs while maintaining the heart of a bluesman.

This album managed to pre-date the whole alt-country movement and was a pioneering work in both style and spirit. It’s not surprising that Whitley found an audience in both the camps of traditional blues followers and the fanbase of alternative art rock bands like Sonic Youth.

Whitley’s songs are populated with characters seeking redemption but also seeking a place to lay their head. They are not outlaws and renegades as such but you get the sense that if they were pushed far enough something might just crack with ugly consequences. In fact when one of his protagonists does in fact end up in Leavensworth it’s telling that he states “I do not count no days”.

In the world of Living With The Law it seems sex and praying are treated as equally essential and equally futile pursuits but both are undertaken because they are available where much else is not.

This is an album that is clearing greater as a whole than as a sum of its parts but having said that there are some songs on here that are unforgettable in isolation. Amongst these are Big Sky Country which feels like it sounds and sounds like it should. Others like the title track, Dust Radio and Kick The Stones have memorable hooks that make them stand out but perhaps the best track it the slowly creeping and angular Long Way Around that is hidden down the back of the album but is an example of the riches found when you scratch the surface of this work.

Chris Whitely went on to make another ten or so albums and explore quite a few more sonic landscapes before his death from lung cancer in 2005, but none quite had the impact of Living With The Law. He should be remembered as a significant artist and this as a great album.