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| "Give The Gift Of Music" already! |
In all honesty, this writer has no idea why this particular band has suffered such a merciless fate in the years since they were part of a creamy crop of stellar acts on Island Records.
Ah, there's the problem: Seems any artist signed to Island Records in the early-to-mid '80s that did not have a U and a 2 in their name got rightfully neglected by the label. Having become friends with members of various Island acts over the years, they all sing the same tune of seeing their best work languishing on the vine while Bono & The Boys got the royal treatment.
One cannot be too mad at U2, though, as they signed Blue In Heaven to their own own Mother Records before helping them get a deal with Island.
Blue In Heaven's two albums for Island have both gone completely out-of-print and, near as I can tell, nobody even misses them, which is a shame.
I must confess that, while I had read some rather inconsequential blurbs about the band in the rock press at the time of this song's release in 1986, I never actually saw their albums in the bins, but, I did have the good fortune of becoming roommates with a friend from my record store days who owned every important rock album of the last twenty years and, even better, a bunch that should have been.
Remember all those cool indie albums you'd see advertised in Trouser Press every month that you WANTED to send away for, but never did, like Fools Face Tell America or pre-Enigma versions of the Smithereens Beauty & Sadness & Berlin's Pleasure Victim?
My new roomie, it turns out, was the kid who had sent away for them all.
Even so, I can't quite recall what made me pull Blue In Heaven out of yonder musical haystack, but they wound up sounding very much like I'd envisioned: darkly rhythmic, lead singer with just the right snarl to his voice, and songs that sneak up on you with razor-sharp hooks.
I love the fact that "Change Your Mind" (from the album Explicit Material) starts out like just any other dreadful '80s pop tune of the time, with the obligatory synths rearing their head right away. Your ear half expects to be telling your finger to fast-forward or put the needle on a different song (because you certainly won't find this on CD or digital format), but then something funny happens...
Before long, you're hauling ass down some lonely stretch of highway in your DeLorean singing "Your body waits for me tonight, you're body waits for me!"
Sadly, after Explicit Material cratered, the band changed their name to the Blue Angels (blechh) and recorded the aptly titled Coming Out Of Nowhere in 1993.