'80s Rock: Notes From The Listening Post

GUEST POST: Allen Lulu (Retro Album Reviews)

Sep 17, 2024

Once I found out about my pal Allen Lulu’s exhaustive ‘80s album review project, I knew I had to let him tell you about it. If you like rock music and discovering releases you might have missed (or forgotten about!) along the way, The Listening Post should be on your radar. In my mind, these kinds of niche groups are the best reason to open Facebook these days. —Steve

In 2015, I found myself sitting in a new house, kids at school, a break from work and little to do when I had a realization: “I have access to millions of songs and thousands of albums thanks to streaming.”

I asked myself this question: “What did I miss?”

So, I started an archaeological dig into the music of my teenage years and decided to listen to everything I could and rate/review them. Because why not, right?

One day, bored of the growing division on my Facebook feed and having just finished listening to Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock, I posted this: “I think Paul Simon owes Mr. McLaren royalties.” That sparked a conversation among music lovers who, like me, were tired of all the politics.

Before long we started a Facebook group called The Listening Post: The 1980s where I began posting my ratings (and occasionally pithy, often misguided and opinionated reviews).

Then COVID happened. With nothing to do but sit at home, we reached out to people who had joined our little group and asked them if they wanted to try their hand at reviewing.

Here we are eight years later. Thousands of albums have been unearthed by our workhorse of a researcher, Sheffield Chastain, and we’ve only made it to 1983! There’s a core group of about 12 reviewers at this point, but it occasionally fluctuates up to several dozen.

Below are a handful of my reviews from The Listening Post that I thought Remember The Lightning readers would enjoy. Some of these artists and albums will no doubt be familiar to you, but they were new to me when I wrote about them for our group.

The Bats—How Pop Can You Get?

Released: 1982
Genre: Power Pop
Rating: 4.75 out of 5
Highlights: “How Pop Can You Get?,” “Not Easy For Me,” “Mr. Peculiar,” “Living In Alaska,” “Not My Girl Anymore,” “Hey Teen-Age,” “Every Night,” “Too Out / Bottom Of The Ninth,” “Popgun” (bonus track on the 2008 re-issue)

There isn’t a bad track on here.

True story: In my Covid haze I forgot to close out my audio recording app so everything funneled through it made this record sound awful. I was about to give it 4.5 stars based on that even though the production and mastering was so awful. My bad.

I closed it out during the penultimate song and, lucky me, I got to listen to the entire thing again! Who the heck were The Bats? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Before the soundtracks for the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson. Before producing Fiona Apple and Kanye. Before stints at the Club Largo. This was Jon Brion’s band, and it’s a banger.

It lies somewhere between Sparks and Jellyfish. With, yes, a little bit of the Tubes (“Every Night”). It’s like…an ‘80s Fountains of Wayne. Put this in the same box as Game Theory for me. Power pop gems that no one heard or ever will hear.

“Not My Girl Anymore” is the theme song to a sitcom that never happened. But, damn, it should have. Ten years later this is the theme to some CW show. That is not a bad thing, btw.

From the liner notes: “Living In Alaska” and “Hey Teen-age” are early eight track sessions, some of our first. We had so much fun that it seemed that re-recording for the sake of higher tech would have been an anticlimax. Pardon the hiss level.”

This album is damned near perfect.

D.L. Byron—This Day and Age

Released: June 1, 1980
Genre: Power Pop
Rating: 4.75 out of 5
Highlights: “Listen to the Heartbeat,” “21st Century Man,” “Big Boys,” “Get With It,” “Love in Motion,” “No Romance, No Weekend, No Love,” “Lorryanne”

Who is D.L. Byron? I know he wrote a single for Pat Benatar (the massive “Shadows of the Night”), but this record is something I’ve never heard of. It’s produced by Jimmy Iovine and, you know what? It’s damned good.

Byron also wrote a memoir. But…who didn’t? And he runs his own label… to put out his own music. He sounds like Elvis Costello at times. But his music is really edgy and tight. G.E. Smith comes to mind. And Warren Zevon.

Side one is a banger and bop after banger and bop. What happens when you flip this shit over? It’s a freaking party. This is like hearing The Jags for the first time. Just another winner from 1980.

The Jags—Evening Standards

Released: 1980
Genre: Why doesn’t this stream?!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Highlights: The whole record. Not a bad track on it. A masterpiece of the genre.

From the Elvis Costello school of the uncool this band could be the template for The Oneders in That Thing You Do.

I have few words. These guys would have been super-rich if this style was in vogue at the time of the Brill Building and they provided songs for other acts.

This is delicious power pop. Does it sound like other power pop of the era? Yes, but that don’t make it not good. When this form is at the height of its powers, it’s amazing. That’s this album. Holy hell, these guys can write and play. It’s like discovering Fingerprintz and Dirty Looks for the first time.

Is there a faux reggae tune? Of course. There has to be! It’s skinny tie new wave and every album has one of those! This one is “Woman’s World,” and it’s stellar.

Do I care that “Little Boy Lost” sounds like Elvis Costello? Nope. He doesn’t own that sound. Do we get this if not for him? I don’t know. There’s a line from the ‘60s through Elvis Costello into the kettle of power pop—this is a ladleful.

I’m actually angry that this is not available in any other format.

Hilly Michaels—Calling All Girls

Released: May 28, 1980
Genre: New Wave
Rating: 4.75 out of 5
Highlights: “Calling All Girls,” “Teenage Days,” “Shake It and Dance,” “U.S. Male,” “Turn Me On Your Radio,” “Devotion,” “Something On Your Mind”

You know this guy. Listen to that title track. It explodes with newwaveosity and was all over MTV back in the day. Then you never heard it again. Like, you hear Plastic Bertrand more than this tune and this song is better than “Ca Plane Pour Moi,” which is an excellent example of the genre.

This came out on my birthday in 1980 and I would have been very happy in retrospect if someone would have given this to me. Hilly played with Sparks and this is Sparksalicious.

This is produced by Roy Thomas Baker and it sounds like it was produced by RTB. It’s clean and crisp and multi-layered and just plain weird when it needs to be. (Is RTB in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? He really should be.) Greg Hawkes plays keyboards on this as well.

Listen to “U.S. Male” and tell me that it doesn’t belong on Angst in My Pants. It’s actually better than 50% of that album and that album is great. “Turn Me On Your Radio” should be a new wave radio staple, dammit. “Devotion” is a 1980s glamtastic updating of the sound that the Bay City Rollers couldn’t quite capture. Because you need RTB on the knobs to make that happen, boys.

“Something On Your Mind” is an updating of that Kimono My House style that we all loved. This album is a new wave classic and people should talk about it more.

The Shivvers—The Shivvers

Released: 1980
Genre: Power Pop
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Highlights: “Teenline,” “Please Stand By,” “Hold On,” “When I Was Younger,” “No Substitute”

This album presents a dilemma. It was recorded in 1980, shelved and then finally released in 2014. If we got to 2014 it would be irrelevant except as a curio release. Including it in 1980 flies in the face of our mission statement, which is to go back to an era and “see what we missed.” Well, we couldn’t miss this because it wasn’t released. Argh.

I decided to go ahead with listening and rating it, and I’m glad I did. It reminds me, from the outset, of another unheralded curiosity from 20 years later: Teen Machine’s After School Special, dynamite collection of power pop fronted by actress Amanda Foreman and filmmaker Cody Jarrett. The track “Hot Mom,” a bubblegum gem that predates “Stacy’s Mom” is about the exact same topic, but told from the point of view of the daughter of the hot mom. Damn, that’s a great album.

This is like the precursor to that one. Fronted by Jill Kossoris, this is snappy power pop that calls to mind Raspberries more than the skinny tie genre that it morphed into by the time of this release. So, it really has no place in time.

If you are hungry for that genre, this album will reward you with each track, none too cute (like Teen Machine), but also none too cloying (see Eric Carmen’s solo work). This is softer Runaways (“When I Was Younger”), or what Blondie might have sounded like if they wanted more “roll” in their “rock.”

The time for this album was ripe with the Go-Go’s, Blondie, Pretenders, the Bangles and Lone Justice all making waves, so a female led new wave/power pop band should have been big—or at least had one or two hits to get on a compilation. There is a guitar solo on “Life Without You” that rivals some of the best of the era.

In a more generous mood I would give this a 5, but I’ve been taken to task for my weird (and sometimes gut-driven) rating system. Had there had been one super catchy hit on this thing (a la The Jags’ “Back of My Hand”) I could justify it. But it’s just a solid collection of would-be-hits from a bygone era. I would be proud to cover any of them if my (sometimes) power pop band was still around.

Allen Lulu is a musician, actor, writer and spokesman currently living in Los Angeles. His former band, Throttle Back Sparky, performed all over Southern California in the mid 2000s. He runs a Facebook group called The Listening Post: The 80s, which has spent the last five years listening to, reviewing and rating every “rock album” from that decade. He can be found talking about vinyl records on his TikTok at @areallulu.