Antique Music Reviews
No Jacket Required - by Phil Collins
Hard to believe its been twenty years since this gem was released. It has been sitting in my collection in various formats since, well, since its release in 1985. It was, as far as I can recall, the first full album I ever purchased.
The album was the third in line of Collins' solo work that featured his sweaty visage on the cover. At least he gave the albums different titles. In order to navigate Peter Gabriel's first three (or four, depending on which side of the pond you hail from) eponymous albums, you have to know them by number, or refer to them by the cover art (melting face, rainy windshield, etc).
No Jacket Required (NJR hereafter) is the unofficial soundtrack to the penultimate expression of 80's television, Michael Mann's pastel noir Miami Vice. The melancholic Crockett and intense Tubbs driving in the nighttime, with Long Long Way to Go playing for a good minute or two. No dialogue, no plot advancement, just two impossibly cool dudes cruising somewhere. Cut to commercial.
Collins' music was nearly as much on the show as Jan Hammer's, and it is a damn shame he only got one cut on the official soundtrack while Glenn Frey managed two. Grandmaster Melle Mel's contribution doesn't hold up as much with time, although "I Feel For You" with Chaka Khan still has legs, I would bet.
Collins actually had a couple acting gigs on the show. One was minor, if I recall, but he was a bad guy in another episode. His official site says he played a character by the name "Phil the Shill," which seems right as I think the character was a con artist who actually ended up avoiding capture.
[Note for further investigation: What was the track record of the cops on Miami Vice? I mean, I think half the bad guys got away, and when they did catch someone bad, it almost always meant that one of the main characters' loved ones or colleagues would be seriously wounded or killed.]
But back to the topic at hand, and more importantly, the fact is that NJR is one of the clearest single musical expressions of the decade. It featured a healthy amount of synth and drum loops, mixed together with the Phenix horns, (formerly Earth Wind and Fire Horns), Darryl Stuermer's guitar playing, and old hippie-looking Lee Sklar's bass. Then, of course, is Collins' drumming, the fame of which rests equally on his ability and on the unique sound created when he, Peter Gabriel, producer Hugh Padham messed around in the studio to electronically alter the sound produced by the drums.
The album produced four clear hits: Sussudio, One More Night, Take Me Home, and Don't Lose My Number. It shifted from uptempo, to ballad, to anthem, and ends on a more orchestral note (at least on the CD, where We Said Hello Goodbye was initially listed as a CD bonus track because they couldn't fit it on the cassette). Very little filler on this album, even the b-sides and other tracks were solid.
MTV was young, and still showing videos, and each of these was in serious rotation there too. Take Me Home featured a globetrotting Collins lip-syncing in front of various worldly landmarks, like the Sydney Opera House, while Don't Lose My Number was a hodge-podge send-up of various scenes from famous films and music videos.
I listened to it again tonight, mostly in my car with the volume cranked way up. Definitely a few Proustian moments, but I was able to get beyond that and really enjoy the music. I'll have to break out Face Value, and Hello I Must Be Going, and explore the old Genesis archive that I haven't touched in a while.
Hard to believe its been twenty years since this gem was released. It has been sitting in my collection in various formats since, well, since its release in 1985. It was, as far as I can recall, the first full album I ever purchased.
The album was the third in line of Collins' solo work that featured his sweaty visage on the cover. At least he gave the albums different titles. In order to navigate Peter Gabriel's first three (or four, depending on which side of the pond you hail from) eponymous albums, you have to know them by number, or refer to them by the cover art (melting face, rainy windshield, etc).
No Jacket Required (NJR hereafter) is the unofficial soundtrack to the penultimate expression of 80's television, Michael Mann's pastel noir Miami Vice. The melancholic Crockett and intense Tubbs driving in the nighttime, with Long Long Way to Go playing for a good minute or two. No dialogue, no plot advancement, just two impossibly cool dudes cruising somewhere. Cut to commercial.
Collins' music was nearly as much on the show as Jan Hammer's, and it is a damn shame he only got one cut on the official soundtrack while Glenn Frey managed two. Grandmaster Melle Mel's contribution doesn't hold up as much with time, although "I Feel For You" with Chaka Khan still has legs, I would bet.
Collins actually had a couple acting gigs on the show. One was minor, if I recall, but he was a bad guy in another episode. His official site says he played a character by the name "Phil the Shill," which seems right as I think the character was a con artist who actually ended up avoiding capture.
[Note for further investigation: What was the track record of the cops on Miami Vice? I mean, I think half the bad guys got away, and when they did catch someone bad, it almost always meant that one of the main characters' loved ones or colleagues would be seriously wounded or killed.]
But back to the topic at hand, and more importantly, the fact is that NJR is one of the clearest single musical expressions of the decade. It featured a healthy amount of synth and drum loops, mixed together with the Phenix horns, (formerly Earth Wind and Fire Horns), Darryl Stuermer's guitar playing, and old hippie-looking Lee Sklar's bass. Then, of course, is Collins' drumming, the fame of which rests equally on his ability and on the unique sound created when he, Peter Gabriel, producer Hugh Padham messed around in the studio to electronically alter the sound produced by the drums.
The album produced four clear hits: Sussudio, One More Night, Take Me Home, and Don't Lose My Number. It shifted from uptempo, to ballad, to anthem, and ends on a more orchestral note (at least on the CD, where We Said Hello Goodbye was initially listed as a CD bonus track because they couldn't fit it on the cassette). Very little filler on this album, even the b-sides and other tracks were solid.
MTV was young, and still showing videos, and each of these was in serious rotation there too. Take Me Home featured a globetrotting Collins lip-syncing in front of various worldly landmarks, like the Sydney Opera House, while Don't Lose My Number was a hodge-podge send-up of various scenes from famous films and music videos.
I listened to it again tonight, mostly in my car with the volume cranked way up. Definitely a few Proustian moments, but I was able to get beyond that and really enjoy the music. I'll have to break out Face Value, and Hello I Must Be Going, and explore the old Genesis archive that I haven't touched in a while.
posted by B.V. at 7/19/2005
5 Comments:
Genesis, eh? I await your reviews of Rush and Yes.
No, not Genesis, this was Phil's solo work. It started getting harder and harder to stylistically tell them apart after this point, though.
Maybe I'll review Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford's side project "Mike and the Mechanics," and keyboardist Tony Banks' solo work. Then I'll really go back and examine former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett's stuff.
On cassette, I basically had the entire Genesis library. It has probably been ten years since I've heard the older stuff. I remember Peter Gabriel's 25-minute musical acid trip "Supper's Ready."
I know No Jacket Required was solo. You closed mentioning your intention to explore your Genesis archive.
Right. Never got into Rush. A friend gave me a cassette of theirs as a gift, but it didn't take.
As for Yes, I wanted to like them, but sometimes Jon Anderson's voice irritates the crap out of me. Also never owned any of their recordings.
Brilliant album. No irony required.
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