Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons - The Very Best of

YOURZ

Jo Jo Zep, along with a few other Aussie bands, were a big favourite when I was in my last couple of years of high school.  Not favoured enough to buy anything of theirs, mind you (couldn't have my Kiss, Cheap Trick, AC/DC and Cold Chisel friends knowing I also liked them - damn peer group pressure!)  But they were regularly featured on Countdown and other Aussie rock shows at the time and also big hits at local Blue Light Discos.

The thing I liked about them was not only were they writing great, catchy, ska-tinged songs (at least for the first few big singles) but they were quality musicians and part of a larger group of Australian musicians and songwriters who were setting new standards (this does include Chisel, who had the incredilbe songwriting talents of Don Walker).

Tracks like Hit & Run, Shape I'm In and Puppet On A String were not only infectious, but great to dance to as well, back when I did actually shake my tail feather.  These were like our answer to all the great British punk and ska music being made at the time but without the crap clothes and spittle.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

MINE

I just realised there's yet another way I'm like Lisa Simpson - I love the saxophone (or as her dad would say, the sax-a-ma-phone).  And the sound of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons is centred around frontman Joe Camilleri's saxophone stylings.  I've seen the band, way back when in Melbourne, maybe even on a double bill with Paul Kelly and the Dots - but my memory of the early 80s is getting a bit sketchy in parts these days.  (YourZ sez: must have been either 80 or 81 as the band were kaput after that).

Listening to the album (which isn't the one pictured but has most of the same songs on it) I just felt, well, 20 again.  The band's sound moves from vaguely 50s doo-wop through a more rockabilly style - and my favourite song, Taxi Mary, has a real Latin beat.

I also loved Camilleri's follow-up band the Black Sorrows and listening to this CD has just made me more hungry for our household to finally bite the bullet and get a real live turntable - so I can listen to the original Zep album I had - Screaming Targets - and to the three or more Black Sorrows albums that are gathering dust.

By the way, I differ from Lisa in that I'm not an 8-year-old yellow vegetarian cartoon character with a brother and sister who likes to play the blues.  Otherwise, we're pretty close.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

For more information: http://www.joecamilleri.com.au/

ABBA - The Singles The First Ten Years

YOURZ

Mine has been snickering about the chance I might have to review Abba ever since we started this project.  And lo, the bloody pointy stick, damn its pointy stickedness, finally decided to help increase her snicker to a full belly laugh.

Abba were everywhere when I was a teenager.  They were on the front cover of magazines and newspapers, on the television and all over the radio.  They were so popular that as a young high school student, it was a prerequisite to name which Abba chick you'd 'do' (not that any of us really understood what 'do'-ing was all about). 

More importantly, Abba lived in my house.  My sister professed to be their biggest fan and would play them over and over. And over.  And over!  Given their popularity in Australia, it also meant they were never too far from my cultural consciousness, no matter how hard I tried to ignore them.  It seemed cruel that fate (if you believe in it) dictated my sister like this band and not Kiss or Cheap Trick.  And now fate, it seems, is probably laughing its arse off because Mine shares this love.  See, fate, this is why I have a hard time believing in you! 

Oh, and for the record, I was in the Agnetha camp.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT, preferably into a bottomless abyss where it will never be seen again

MINE

It's a bit hard for me to admit this, but I'm getting a bit sick of Abba.  (YourZ sez: oh happy happy, joy joy!  Can we throw it out then?)  Not that I'll ever get rid of this album, but the cream of it has been sitting on my gymPod ever since I got it, more than a year ago.  Plus I've also got Erasure's version of some songs - from ABBAesque - on the Shuffle so the Swedish group's work tends to run by my ears more frequently than just about anybody else.

Then there's the ridiculous success of Mamma Mia! which I have to admit I saw in the theatre.  I enjoyed the songs, but found the whole storyline (if you can call it that) vapid.  I've avoided seeing the movie.  I actually like Meryl Streep and don't want my regard to be crushed.

As it happens, I wasn't an Abba fan when the band was at its peak, although several of my then-friends were.  Of course the songs entered my consciousness due to the sheer weight of repetition, and as a piano player I recall trying to make the sheet music to Ring Ring sound like it did on the radio.  I failed.

But about 10 years later, I decided I quite liked Abba.  Because nothing fills a dance floor faster than Dancing Queen, and I discovered about then that the dance floor was my favourite place in the world to be.  So I bought this CD - yes, I've had it that long!  It's really great for doing housework to, and is one of the CDs that helps me cook (YourZ sez: so you say but I've never seen a single strudel!).  A classic.

VERDICT:TURN IT UP (YourZ sez: aaaahhhh COME ON, you tease!)

For more information: http://www.abbasite.com/

(Mine says: and for those of you who are counting, this is our 100th review!  Yay us!)

Queen - Greatest Hits II

MINE

In our collection, there's a disturbing amount of Queen.  And there's a reason for this.  In my previous incarnation as a creator of radio programming, I once put together a series of vignettes for the Queen's Birthday holiday here in Australia.  This involved sections of interviews with the various members of Queen plus other celebrities, all taking about Queen songs, to be played in front of a Queen song.  And in order to do this, I rang up the record company distributing their music, and received - free - their entire back catalogue of greatest hits.

So it's not entirely strange that the pointy stick hit on Queen.  What is strange is that I've kept all of this.  Especially this one, which has only a few songs to recommend it.  I really disturbed myself by singing along to I Want It All  and I Want To Break Free - but I've always loved Radio Ga Ga.  Go figure.  Anyhoo, time to keep the songs we like, and dump the rest.  I'm sure there'll be no argument from YourZ.  Although the Live At Wembley CD is pretty good.

VERDICT:THROW IT OUT

YOURZ

There's no mistaking that voice, being one of the most recognisable in the world.  Ah Freddy, I can't help wonder what you'd be singing today

Freddy built his career on his operatic range and grand sweeping gestures, which so suited the stadium rock the rest of Queen built behind him.  They've been part of my life since I first heard Night At The Opera in the late 70s, a favourite album of my best friend at the time.  While I would try to get him to share my love of Status Quo, Deep Purple, Zeppelin, Kiss and Cheap Trick, he would try to do the same with Queen (and Nazareth, if I remember rightly).  But it never really took.

Don't get me wrong, though.  I really like Queen a lot.  I've just never owned any of their albums.  What I have owned, over the years, is a succession of the same edition of Queens Greatest Hits (isn't there an old joke about if you leave a cassette in a glove box long enough it will morph into Queens Greatest Hits?). (Mine says: either Ben Elton or Douglas Adams came up with that, can't remember).  As Mine has pointed out, we have a lot of Queen in the collection.  The bugger is the pointy stick landed on this one, instead of Greatest Hits I, which has what I consider to be their best songs.

Oh yes, this does have Under Pressure, with that bass line (ice ice baby...) and Radio Gaga, which apparently inspired Lady Gaga's name, if you believe the hype.  It also has I Want To Break Free, which caused my friends and I no end of amusement when it first came out not because of the campy video that accompanied it but for the overwhelming presence of Freddy's lisp.  Just picture the scene, if you will, of the rest of Queen sitting around in the studio, trying not to laugh as he sings 'I want to bwake fwee, I want to bwake fwee...' and see if you don't laugh too.  Puerile, I know, but I've never said I wasn't.

Anyway, I agree with Mine on this one.  I don't recognise most of the songs on this collection and there's far too much bad 80s reverb on the drums of most of these tracks for my liking.  Let's get rid of the chaff and keep the wheat.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

For more information: http://www.queenonline.com/

In our collection we also have: Greatest Hits, Greatest Hits III, Made in Heaven and Live At Wembley '86