By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

EUROPE – THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (1986)

For an album that would spawn five single releases including two that made the Top 10 chart, you’d think Europe’s most commercially successful album would get a little more respect. Instead, The Final Countdown seems to get dumped on a lot. Hell, the album’s own Wikipedia page has a whole section on some of the crappy reviews it got then and even more modern day reviews.

I remember reading a concert review in the Boston Herald many years ago where Europe was the opening act (for Bon Jovi I think) where the reviewer summed them up as a 2nd rate Bon Jovi which made them a 4th rate act.

WOW!

I like a lot of this album so I don’t see why it gets all this invective thrown at it. I’ve written about Europe three previous times in The Cassette Chronicles series so this week I decided it was time to weigh in on the band’s most successful release.

This was the band’s 3rd studio album and the first one to feature drummer Ian Haughland and keyboardist Mic Michaeli (who co-wrote the ballad “Carrie”).

I mentioned that there were five singles from the album but what was interesting to me was how the three biggest ones were the first three tracks on The Final Countdown.

The title track opens up the album and it remains Europe’s signature track. With the opening intro trumpeting out of your speakers with a now instantly identifiable musical salvo and the science fiction style lyrics, I can’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t be taken in by this song. And over the ensuing decades since the song was released, the track has been used in a variety of other mediums (including as an anthem for sporting events). While it did end up getting wildly overplayed back in the day, I maintain that this is still one of the best remembered tracks from the entire 80s metal heyday.

The song “Rock The Night” is one of those “get your butts out of your seats” fist pumping anthemic rockers. While I’ve heard the song any number of times over the years, I have to admit that every time I hear it I still get a surge of adrenaline flowing through my veins. It may have only reached the Top 30 as a single but I think the song still rocks!

The final song in the opening trio doubles as Europe’s most commercially successful single. And I don’t think anyone will be all that surprised that it is the power ballad “Carrie”. It hit #3 on the singles chart. Given that we’re talking about 1986, a power ballad being the biggest hit for a band isn’t all that surprising. I know that the song was a pretty popular one with me back in the day. But as it was also overplayed, it became a song that I dreaded hearing for a good long while. I still like the song overall but it isn’t a stretch to imagine the repetition of the song title and the increasing level of overwrought vocal performance from singer Joey Tempest as the song plays through increasingly annoying.

That kind of annoyance is pretty quickly dispersed when you get to the song “Danger on the Track”. A straight up rocker from start to finish, I loved the way it gets your blood pumping. And the keyboards in the song get some solo time in the spotlight. Your mileage may vary when it comes to a strong keyboard sound but I thought they fit perfectly with how they were composed for this track.

I’m sure it was before the time that The Final Countdown album was released but at some point in my younger days like many others, I had a fascination with ninjas. Between the movies in theaters and the one season show The Master starring Lee Van Cleef and Sho Kosugi, I loved the whole mystique of these covert assassins. I even remember going to Dwyer’s magazine store in North Dartmouth, MA and buying various issues of what I believe was called Ninja magazine. So the Side One closing track “Ninja” always made me think of those movies and magazines even when I first heard the track. Much like “Danger on the Track”, this song is a fast burning rocker.

The opening song on Side Two is “Cherokee” which is another song that got released as a single. This means there was a video produced as well. I have no memory of ever seeing the video but when I looked up information about the song, it was noted that the video was stunningly inaccurate in terms of historical fact. Not that I would’ve expected Europe or whoever put the video concept together to put forth the detail historical research that Iron Maiden or Sabaton would put into their songs but I have a feeling if this video was made today, you would hear the caterwauling from miles away.

What makes the timing of this article so perfect in regards to “Cherokee” is that I was reading a book that used the Cherokee people and the Trail of Tears (mentioned in the song as well) as part of the plot. The book is called Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie and I was reading it as part of the Mystery Book Club that I co-run at my local library. When I pulled the album so I could write this article I read the track listing, saw “Cherokee” and thought, “hmm…how’s that for timing?”

For the song “Time Has Come”, the track starts off with a softer delivery in its intro. Light music and a restrained vocal from Tempest. But you can feel the intensity building up quickly and as the track hits the first chorus, the band comes on in full. This turns the track towards a far more rocking tempo. I like the way the band hits as it gets heavier sounding. I know this is more of an album track in the overall scheme of things but I find that each time I give the album a full listen, I enjoy the song a lot.

“Heart of Stone” is a really cool rocker as well. What I like the most is how the chorus flows. It might be one of the best choruses of any of the songs on the album. “On The Loose” also finds Europe going full bore, rocking out with a blazing speed. I liked the way the guitar solo came off as a bit of frenzied chaos.

The album closes out with the song “Love Chaser”. It is another uptempo track but not quite as fast playing as the previous two songs. It was released as a single but apparently only in Japan.

Clearly I have a different opinion about this album than any of those other “name” reviewers quoted on the album’s Wikipedia page. I’ve always liked Europe even if there may have been a song here or there that didn’t quite do it for me. But in the case of The Final Countdown album, there’s nary a negative thought for me to express. The album is of its era, but since I happen to have grown up during that era, is it really all that much of a shock that I would love the album?

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Final Countdown album went all the way to #8 on the Billboard album charts. It would go on to sell more than three million copies. It was just as successful in a number of countries around the world.

The album has been given at least two reissues. The first one came in 2001 from Sony Records and featured 3 live bonus tracks (I own this version of the CD). In 2019, Rock Candy Records reissued the album with three more bonus cuts added onto the release. Originally, I had owned the album on a cassette I had dubbed from a friend’s official copy.

Guitarist John Norum left the band shortly before the band was to head out on tour. He was replaced by Kee Marcello. He would not appear on another Europe album until he rejoined the band for the 2004 album Start from the Dark.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

CHEAP TRICK – DREAM POLICE (1979)

It was a random choice that led to me writing about Cheap Trick’s fourth studio album Dream Police this week. I was trying to pick an album and I just walked over to the case hanging on the wall and did a blind draw.

But the interesting thing for me in picking the album is that 2024 is the 45th anniversary of the Dream Police release. I wish I could be so lucky in all my blind picks.

The album was done in the early part of 1979 but with the band still riding high off of the surprise success of the live album At Budokan, it got held until later in the year.

In all, the Dream Police amply demonstrates that Cheap Trick wasn’t just “getting lucky” with their delayed success. I say this because the album is chock full of some incredible songs with great performances all around from singer Robin Zander, guitarist Rick Nielsen, bassist Tom Petersson and drummer Bun E. Carlos.

Having written about Cheap Trick twice already in this series, it should come as no surprise that I consider myself a rather big fan of the band. Maybe I don’t reach the fandom heights of my friend Dave (a CT FANATIC…in a good way). But I know when a new Cheap Trick album is announced, I am very excited to add it to my collection.

That said, I found myself somewhat amused by the fact that I like this album and yet I’m still turned off by a couple of tracks that just grate on my ears (and nerves).

But we’ll get to that later.

The first side of the Dream Police album opens with the title track. It’s a song that finds everything you might know about Cheap Trick (killer music fueled by hard driving guitar work, great melodies that get  you hooked and some really harmonious vocals that are instantly memorable and highly addictive) combining to serve up what has become one of the band’s biggest hit songs. There’s an all-out frenetic pace to the music and, when you take the lyrics at straight up face value, some intensely paranoid sounding lyrics.

The song “Way of the World” follows that up with more energetic rock and roll. The melody here has an undeniable hook that quickly endears the track to the listener.

Now, I have pretty much all of Cheap Trick’s albums and while I do listen to them as I rotate through my music collection, I sometimes forget what songs are on any given album (save the biggest hits, of course). So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself rocking out to the song “The House Is Rockin’ (With Domestic Problems)”. There’s a furious and fiery delivery to the music and a fierceness to Robin Zander’s vocals. What really struck me almost as if I was discovering it for the first time was the ballsy guitar soloing from Rick Nielsen. I caught myself thinking, “This freaking rocks!” at the time I was giving this album another listen before sitting down to write the article.

On Side Two, Bun E. Carlos lays down some crashing thunder with the drumming on the opening track “I’ll Be with You Tonight”. A straight up rocker from start to finish and highly enjoyable. But I loved how I really heard what the drums were doing on the song this time around.

While “Voices” does have a couple brief moments where the music gets a bit of a rising flourish, for the most part, the track employs more of a midtempo pace. Zander’s vocals are a lot softer in their delivery too. It’s a nice brief respite from the more in-your-face rocker tracks but the song kicks butt in its own way.

Cheap Trick then follows that song up with a couple of smoking hot rockers. “Writing on the Wall” is a straight on burner number. Meanwhile, “I Know What I Want” has a killer vibe to it. The vocal delivery is dramatically different and not just because it is bassist Tom Petersson on lead vocals for the track. I loved the way the delivery of the vocals were shaded so that there was an edge to them that I’d forgotten about.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve had nothing but nice things to say so far. So you may be wondering what it was that I don’t really like about the Dream Police album.

I hesitate to say this because it will probably make me a pariah should I ever get the chance to meet the band and someone in their camp reads this article, but I really don’t care much for “Need Your Love”. Okay, maybe that’s not entirely accurate though. See I do like the song a bit. The guitar playing is superb and the way the music rises to the challenge at the end does at least endear the song to me a bit. But that endless repetition of the song title in the lyrics tends to grate pretty hard on my nerves. The song is more than seven minutes long and it just annoys by the end of the vocal track.

Of course, by way of comparison “Need Your Love” is a strong track compared to “Gonna Raise Hell”. The song is over nine minutes long and it feels interminably longer than that. To describe this one as annoying is being generous. It’s almost like Cheap Trick just forgot to stop playing and the tape just kept recording until it ran out.

Yep, despite my immense love for the band and risking being banned from meeting the band someday, I really just don’t like “Gonna Raise Hell” at all.

But you can’t like everything, right? With that small bit of negative reaction aside, I just love the rest of the Dream Police album a whole lot. Forty-five years on, the album continually gets your blood pumping and shows the band at just one of their high peaks of creativity!

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Dream Police album has been certified platinum at last check. It went as high as #6 on the album chart while the “Dream Police” song went to #26 on the singles chart. The song “Voices” hit #32 as a single.

The album was reissued in 2006 with four bonus tracks . According to the album’s Wikipedia page there are five songs that were listed as “unreleased outtakes”. Two of those songs did end up being recorded and released later on down the line. One was “Next Position Please” that Cheap Trick re-recorded and had it serve as the title cut of their 1983 album. The song “It Must Be Love” was recorded by Rick Derringer in 1979. There also appears to have been a Japanese reissue in 2017.

Toto’s Steve Lukather played guitar on the “Voices” track. Jai Winding played the organ, piano, keyboards and synths on the Dream Police album.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

.38 SPECIAL – WILD-EYED SOUTHERN BOYS (1981)

In the mystery writing world, there are those who meticulously plot out their books before doing the actual writing of the story and there are those authors who write by the seat of their pants. While I don’t write mystery novels, I take the seat of my pants approach when determining which album I’m going to write about for a given week. 

Of course, then I have to do a little research about the album so I can learn about an album if I’ve never heard it before or have stuff to flesh out a piece on a release I’m already pretty familiar with.

In the case of writing about .38 Special’s 4th studio album Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, I had to learn about most of the album. While I have managed to acquire all of the band’s albums on either cassette or CD, it’s not like I know every song in their catalog by heart. 

For this album, I ended up knowing three of the nine tracks beforehand. And of those three tracks, I’m pretty sure the album’s title cut I only heard when I owned just a greatest hits release for the band. 

I do remember hearing “Fantasy Girl”, probably on the radio and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard “Hold on Loosely”, the biggest song from the album. While it had some success on the singles chart when it was released, it has gone on to become one of the biggest hits for the band. It still has a home in their live set and if you tune into any classic rock radio station you will inevitably hear this song. 

But that’s a good thing because the song does hold up quite nicely. Besides the great vocal from Don Barnes (who trades off lead vocals on the album with Donnie Van Zant), the guitar line provided by Jeff Carlisi provides a killer hook that always manages to draw me in.

For the title cut, I find it funny that given the song’s title, the song isn’t a bit more of a wild rollicking track in terms of tempo. It still has an uptempo drive to it but it is still a bit more mellow in its delivery compared to some of the other fast moving numbers.

That would include the song “First Time Around” which has a smoking musical score to it. Meanwhile, the song “Back Alley Sally” has a nice little rocking beat to it. Given the lyrical subject matter of the song, I thought this song coincided more with the album’s cover art than the actual title track.

Getting back to “Fantasy Girl”, the song ranges from mid-to-uptempo but has a solid hook that keeps me very entertained each time I hear this particular song.

That .38 Special can successfully combine both the Southern Rock and arena rock sounds to make high quality radio friendly tracks has always been the biggest key aspect of their appeal. However, since I’m nowhere near being an expert on their catalog, I was a little surprised to find that the song “Hittin’ and Runnin'” had a bit more of a pronounced bluesy feel to it. It’s woven throughout the song but unless my ears were playing tricks on me, it was there and it made the song that much more interesting to me.

When I first heard the song “Honky Tonk Dancer”, my notes said that I liked the sly guitar playing on the track. And that stuck with me through each successive listen to this song. The guitar work has a nice subtle touch at times and that deepens the overall tone of the music to me.

“Throw Out The Line” was used as the B-side for the “Hold On Loosely” single. While it is likely only remembered as an album track, I liked the hard rocking nature of the song a lot. The same could be said about the album’s final song “Bring It On”. It’s a straightforward rocker that will keep your excitement level high.

I’ve written about two .38 Special albums in the past (Special Forces and Tour de Force) and liked them both. You can now add Wild-Eyed Southern Boys to that list as well. At the moment, I don’t have any more of the band’s albums on cassette but hitting the high water mark on these albums certainly has whetted my appetite to get my butt in gear and investigate the rest of their catalog ASAP.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Wild-Eyed Southern Boys album was the first album for .38 Special to go platinum. The album was reissued in 2023 via Rock Candy Records with four live cuts added on as bonus tracks.

Survivor’s Jim Peterik co-wrote three songs on the album but wrote the album’s title track on his own.

The song “Hold On Loosely” was the first single released from the album. It rose to #27 on the singles chart. It has appeared on the soundtracks for the movies Joe Dirt and Without a Paddle. It was also used in an episode of the TV series Better Call Saul.  The video for the song is credited with being the 13th video played on MTV the day the network premiered. The album version of the song runs nearly five minutes but the single version is edited down to just under four minutes in length.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

SURVIVOR – CAUGHT IN THE GAME (1983)

“Jackie no, Jackie don’t go
You’re a hard act to follow”

That lyrical line from the song “Jackie Don’t Go” might also sum up the relative lack of commercial success that Survivor’s Caught in the Game found upon its release in 1983.

Let’s face it, when you write the #1 song in the world in 1982, there’s only one way to go from there. But dismissing this album in the face of being sandwiched between the “Eye of the Tiger” song and album and the Vital Signs album that came afterwards is doing quite a disservice to yourself and the band.

You might be asking why you should go back and check out Survivor’s 4th studio album and the simple reason is that it contains some of their best work. The album’s musical direction had a bit more of a harder edge to it, but it still maintained some great pop melodies throughout as well.

With all but one song written by guitarist Frankie Sullivan and keyboardist Jim Peterik (Peterik wrote the song “What Do You Really Think?” on his own), the album opens with the title track. And while the song itself failed to chart as a single, it is a memorably rocking track. I loved the riff that powers the song. You first hear it in the song’s intro but it is threaded throughout the song and is the first definitive example of how the guitar would be much more in the forefront of the music on Caught in the Game.

I mentioned the song “Jackie Don’t Go” and while the nostalgic look back at a lost love opens with more of a keyboard driven sound, the guitar dominates the rest of the song. It’s just a cool uptempo rocker that has remained one of my personal favorite Survivor songs from the first time I heard the track.

The one true straight up ballad on the album is the song “I Never Stopped Loving You”. It’s got a powerful delivery from singer David Bickler and while the song is more than forty years old at this point, it remains quite a draw and doesn’t sound dated in the least.

There’s a killer hook in the straight up rocker “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way” and the first side of the album closes out with another uptempo track in “Ready For The Real Thing”. Each of these two songs stand out on their own with great melodies threaded through the faster pace of the delivery.

The second side of the album opens with the song “Half-Life”. Now, I can’t remember if I’ve always thought this about the song or not, but when I was listening to it for this article, I thought the way it was presented in such a dramatic fashion, it felt like it was a track that belonged on the soundtrack of a science fiction movie. The song’s opening definitely feels like music you’d hear at a movie’s opening credits while the rest of the song would play over the end credits. But whatever the actual intent of the song, it was a damn fine piece of work.

“What Do You Really Think?” has a lively pace and hook that carries the listener along quite willingly.

As for the song “Slander”, I really loved the guitar work on this song. I felt this track had a darker tone to it that coincided with the song’s title and song lyrics. I found that tone really had a particular appeal for me.
The album closes out on what I think is one of Survivor’s finest works. The song “Santa Ana Winds” has an epic feel to it. I remember how blown away I felt when I first heard the song. It is vastly different from what most people who are only passingly familiar with the band’s music would expect. Peterik’s keyboards start off the song in the beginning but a more realized rock tempo soon takes over. Bickler’s performance is outstanding on this song and I loved the two extended instrumental breaks that help make up the song’s running time. In particular, the song’s outro really caught my ear.

While Caught in the Game barely broke the Top 100 on the Billboard album chart (#82) when it was released, this album is FAR AND AWAY better than it is given credit for. While nothing is going to replace the “Eye of the Tiger” song and by extension the Eye of the Tiger album atop the band’s list of successes, ignoring the fantastic work on this album is just criminal in my opinion.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Caught in the Game album has been reissued on CD at least twice. There was a 1999 Japanese edition from Pony Canyon and then Rock Candy Records reissued a remastered edition of the album in 2010. This edition has no bonus material other than an essay/interview with keyboardist Jim Peterik about the recording of the album.

There were four singles released from Caught in the Game according to the album’s Wikipedia page. The title track, “I Never Stopped Loving You” and “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way” were released in the US while “Slander” was released in Germany. However, other sources including that interview in the Rock Candy Records reissue say only 1 or 2 tracks were given single releases.

Survivor singer David Bickler left the band in late 1983. Though he did return for two stints fronting the band (1993-2000, 2013-2106), the band never recorded another album with him after Caught in the Game.

Special guest appearances on Caught in the Game included Kevin Cronin (REO Speedwagon) and Richard Page (Mr. Mister) on backing vocals. Daryl Dragon is credited for providing “additional keyboards”. He’s best known as the Captain from pop duo Captain & Tenille.