Day 0483 - Non-stop Erotic Cabaret

Soft Cell "Non-stop Erotic Cabaret" (1981)

My favourite part from the blurb about this one in the book is where it said that the band ended up breaking up when, after a bad review, vocalist Marc Almond marched into the office of the critic and set upon him with a bullwhip.   It just screams the kind of twisted sass that you'd associate with a band who made a career out of singing about the seedy sex-market underbelly of the UK.

It's an interesting album  with a very 80s vibe.  The band are a duo with one of them on vocals and the other creating the music, largely just using a drum machine and synthesisers.  There are hints of sleazy jazz moods.  As far as the lyrical sleaze, it feels almost a tad naive in places; like a virgin trying to bluff everyone that he has totally got laid a bunch of times (no matter what that flasher jacket and sleazy porn-star mo might suggest).


The track most people will know from this one is "Tainted Love".





Really looking forward to the next little run of albums.  There are a few artists that I've been meaning to check out and just have never got around to.

Day 0281 - Let's Get it On

Marvin Gaye "Let's Get it on" (1973) - got it

Marvin follows up his hugely successful, deeply political "What's Goin' On" with his deeply sexual "Let's Get it On".

Though the politics had gone, this is still not a totally laid-back affair, with Marvin at times desperate and pleading in his desire.  This albums has elements of the 'song suite' approach that Marvin had used on his previous album and would use again on 'Here My Dear'; but unlike the previous release, he doesn't reuse the same musical ideas/themes quite as much, there's a bit more variety, with the Get it On theme only reappearing later in the album.

I read a semi-autobiography on Gaye a while back, and apparently the woman who would go on to be his next wife walked into the studio just before he recorded the title track.  One of his musicians said that with her in the room, his vocals went from 80% to 100%!  That genuine lust and need (along with some loose, burning seductive grooves and slinky bass-lines) make this a benchmark bedroom album.

Day 0120 - Cheap Thrills

Big Brother and the Holding Company "Cheap Thrills" (1968) - got it

 

Big Brother and the Holding Company were an established, largely instrumental band when they got Janis Joplin on board.  She recorded two albums with them (this is the second) before spitting to get her solo career underway. 

It's hard to know whether this would be the timeless classic it is without Joplin's voice.  The band and the music are great.  Their version of 'Summertime' in particular is delicate and haunting, but Janis just lifts it further. Likewise, 'Ball and chain' is screaming otherworldly blues, but it just feels that bit wilder with Janis moving from a croon to a throat-bleeding wail over it.

As always with members of the 27 club, you have to wonder what Janis could have done, had she lived a longer life.