Dean Friedman, Dean Friedman

Dean Friedman, Dean Friedman, 1977, :35

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It's like someone took all of the 1970s AOR and concentrated it onto one slab of vinyl.  Vest-wearing, mustachioed Friedman sings of getting high, coming to peace with his crazy mother, and free love.  You can practically smell the colitas and polyester.  Friedman's got a straightforward story-telling style of songwriting like Harry Chapin without the extended imagery and a nasal voice like Al Yankovic without the satiric zaniness.   Sample lyric: "Anytime I get a little silly, please try not to be dismayed / You know it's really not my fault / Just take everything I say with a grain of salt."  Okay, then.  A low point of the album is the histrionic and stretched thin metaphor of preferring to win at Hearts rather than winning at "Solitaire."   If you get his drift.  As a whole, it's corny as hell, but somehow endearing, like someone who's really ugly but confident.   Favorite tracks: his only US hit "Ariel," the practically rockin' "I May Be Young," the swinging big-band style "Funny Papers."

Young, Loud and Snotty, Dead Boys

Currently doing one album for each year, 1960-2020. Today: 1977.

Young, Loud and Snotty, Dead Boys, 1977, :35

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

A short, sharp shock. Vocalist Stiv Bator's wanna-be-a-snarl-but-actually-a-whine might have influenced a thousand angry teens to turn to punk, but it's kind of annoying after a few songs. More important, though, is their stance. You might write off "Caught With the Meat in Your Mouth," a nasty account of a groupie, as juvenile lewdness, but there's something to object to on nearly every song. Take "I don't need none of your bedroom bruised sweet box / And I don't need none of your spoiled ass sweet talk / I wanna write on your face with my pretty knife / I wanna toy with your precious life" from "What Love Is." The full-on sexist bile of "Look at me that way, bitch / Your face is gonna get a punch" from "I Need Lunch." Not to mention the totally unnecessary "Ya got dents in your head that tell me all the beds / You've been shoved on" from "All This and More." I get they're young, dumb, and high on a wave of rejection of all social and sexual mores, but it's just too misogynistic to take today. The punk ethos shouldn't be represented by these nasty fellows.  Two stars, barely, for having influence.  Favorite tracks: "Sonic Reducer" and "High Tension Wire," I guess.

Talking Heads: 77, Talking Heads

It's Finally-Got-Around-to-It-Friday!  Wherein I discover a classic that everyone else already knows about.

Talking Heads: 77, Talking Heads, 1977, :38

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I've been a Talking Heads (and David Byrne) fan for a long time.  A long time.  And yet, I never got around to listening to much of their debut album.  What a waste of three decades!  This album remains today so disjointed, so strange, so punk in its ethos and New Wave in its sound, that it must have sounded positively Martian when it was released.  Syncopated rhythms, funky choppy bass, Byrne's staccato yelping, his lyrics gazing puzzled at the daily life of other people through the small end of a telescope. "Don't expect me to explain your indecisions / Go talk to your analyst, isn't that what they're paid for?" I don't think anyone else in music (except maybe Loudon Wainwright, and he'd be doing it self-referentially) would voice such thoughts.  And nobody else would chirp "Oh the boys want to talk / Would like to talk about those problems / And the girls say they're concerned / Concerned with decisiveness / And it's a hard logic to follow / And the girls get lost / And the boys say they're concerned." Presumably, when Byrne finishes his study of humanity he will ascend back to his home in the stars.  Favorite tracks: "Tentative Decisions," "Psycho Killer," "Pulled Up."