STING – Well, I have always been a bit ambivalent about Sting. I liked The Police, but not enough to buy their albums and I have only sporadically bought Sting’s solo stuff. The Dream Of The Blue Turtles (1985) was his solo debut, and pretty good it is too. A nice variety of songs, best are ‘If You Love Somebody Let Them Go’, ‘Russians’ with its ever more important anti-war sentiment and ‘Consider Me Gone’. For whatever reason I didn’t buy any others until 1999’s Brand New Day. Quite a jazzy feel to the record, and an Arabian sound on a couple of tracks, most notably ‘Desert Rose’ add a bit of variety. Something about Sting makes me feel he is trying just a bit too hard. While the album is okay it doesn’t move me really. I also (foolishly) bought Songs From The Labrynth (2009). Well…it is a pretty authentic classical song and poetry cycle from the 1600’s. A bit of a curates egg, good in places – buy quite honestly you tire of the lute and old melodies pretty quickly. Pretentious – yeah. I also have a greatest hits – Fields Of Gold – which only takes us up to 1994 (far enough, methinks). A very good selection – best are the title track, ‘They Dance Alone’, ‘Englishman in New York’ and ‘Demolition Man’. Maybe this is all you really need of Sting
Joss Stone – nice voice, nice songs very bluesy and soulful – but, it did nothing for me really – not my genre I am afraid.
Stranglers – just a greatest hits album…excellent hit songs of the late 70s – Peaches (memories of this on the last holiday with Joy before we split up), ‘Golden brown’ and ‘Always The Sun’. A nice blast from the past.
Syd Straw – Never heard of her? Nor had I until I picked up a couple of CD singles- then I was slightly hooked. Very nice voice and idiosyncratic songs. Of course she never made it; another talent chewed up by the record industry. Anyway – just 2 major releases – first was Surprise (1989). Some really good songs – ‘Think Too Hard’, ‘Heart Of Darkness’ and ‘Racing To The Ruins’. Another album came out in 1996 – War and Peace. Well, not quite so good really. A nice voice but the songs seem a bit too run of the mill. Best are – ‘The Toughest Girl in The World’ and ‘All Things Change’.
The Strawberry Statement – a film from the very early 70’s which was quite revolutionary at the time, a sort of hippy dream. It featured some great music interspersed with aome classical stuff like ‘Also Sprach Zarathrustra’ – best are Buffy singing ‘The Circle Game’ and 3 songs by Neil young and one by CSNY. This CD brings back fond memories of when I was just starting on my musical adventure and discovering many artists who would go on to be my very favourites ever.
The Strokes – They say you should never buy a book by the cover, the same should be true of an album. The cover of the strokes album was a girls bare bottom. Oh well. Actually the record Is This It (2001)wasn’t too bad. It was their debut and meant to shock of course. A sort of garage, post punk sound which I soon tired of really. Best songs ‘Last nite’ and ‘New York City girls’.
Supertramp – were one of those bands that came from England and took the World by storm for a short time, only to fade and die and now nobody really likes them. A quite individual sound and somewhat amusing songs – I have Retrospectacle – a greatest hits double compilation, which is quite enough I think. Some very good old songs – ‘Dreamer’, ‘Right, Bloody Well Right’ and ‘From Now On’ on disc 1 and ‘Logical’ and ‘Breakfast In America’ from disc 2. But listening to some of this stuff for the first time in years – it was very repetitive, piano driven and high voices, almost disco-ish.
