Category: “That’s Their Pet Sounds”

Mission statement:

No matter who we are in this absurd, brief, and messy life we can all lay claim to a peak, a shining moment where we were the best we could be, where all the stars aligned and we freakin’ delivered the goods.

Welcome to “That’s Their Pet Sounds”, our semi-regular feature where we endeavor to spotlight and celebrate a heretofore maybe uncool, often unjustifiably underrated, sometimes polarizing, not as acclaimed as they should be, or “what the hell?” artist’s grandest artistic achievement i.e. their greatest album.

*”That’s Their Pet Sounds” is named after the Beach Boys landmark 1966 LP which is universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made but yeah, you probably knew that.

Let’s get high…

David Lasley’s Best Album: Missin’ Twenty Grand (1982)

Background: If you have listened to the radio or been exposed to pop music at any point over the past 50 years there’s a good chance you’ve heard David Lasley’s voice. But unless you are a hardcore James Taylor fan, for whom he served as backup singer for decades or a loyal devotee of the West Coast sound, his name might not be familiar to you.

David Lasley has a ridiculous voice, a strikingly soulful, scenery chewing falsetto that is part ’60s girl group, part Motown diva Mary Wells, with a smidge of Smokey Robinson thrown in for good measure. It’s one of those “who/what the hell is that” kind of voices. But honestly, even those esteemed descriptors don’t quite nail its otherworldly essence. And so when I innocently caught wind of him one Sunday morning during good old Casey Kasem’s weekly Top 40 show back in April of 1982, I was a little teenage confused about exactly who a voice like that could be attached to.

The David Lasley song Kasem played, at #36 with a bullet, was a lustrous West Coast ballad called “If I Had My Wish Tonight”. As its sentiments were desperate, unrequited and supremely passive-aggressive it landed with perfect precision in my emotional teenage wheelhouse. Which meant I just had to have it. The universe somehow heard and arranged for my wish for “Wish” to be manifested with surprising speed and weirdness. Exactly one week later I found the actual album the song appeared on in a thrift shop. A freakin thrift shop. No, seriously. What a promo of a just released pop album was doing in a small dusty knick knack and moth haven in my Long Island hometown I will never know. At the end of the day I have to put it down to that great and mysterious pop music guardian angel-tooth fairy-benevolent spirit that drops and delivers songs into our lives when it thinks we’re ready or maybe need them the most. For whatever blessed reason, the spirit wanted me to meet this David Lasley guy. The album was called Missin’ Twenty Grand aka MTG and it only cost me a $1 or so ( I still have it, that’s it up top, complete with big promo hole in the corner).

My first listen of MTG was (quietly) revelatory. Not because the style of music itself was unfamiliar or particularly adventurous but because I’d never heard such overtly queer sentiments on a mainstream adult pop album before. There was talk about “lovers” and men being “fine”. There was a song with euphemistic title of “Roommate”. It was weird to me, I mean it was a soft rock record. I was a naive suburban teenage girl who up until then had gotten all her edge and exposure to “otherness” via the rock gods. Bowie’s taunts and Freddie Mercury’s winks (sidenote: not counting my fantasizing that Olivia Newton-John was singing about a girl in her 1977 hit Sam because that was just between me and her). Anyway that was the sum total of my exposure to musical queerness. On MTG , David Lasley’s songs were nothing like the garish, glittery anthems of the aforementioned legends, they were grown up, civilized, AM radio ready soft rock songs. I was not a worldly kid in 1982 and this kind of blew my mind. It seemed downright subversive to me. “Wow”, I remember thinking, “this is so cool”…yes, that was as deep as the processing and emotional absorption went. Cool.

David (in blue) & Arnold McCuller backing up James Taylor in 1977

By the time of MTG‘s release David was already a very well-established, in demand session singer and songwriter (check out his immense list of credits here)…but “back-up singer” is hardly representative of what he was actually doing on the ton of recordings he was a part of. Try this fun experiment after you read this essay;

Listen to MTG (links at the bottom of this piece). Follow it up with this random sliver of stone cold classics for which David provided “backing vocals”; Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family”, Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker”, Chic’s “Everybody Dance” and Cher’s “Take Me Home”.

Basically, once you are familiar with his voice and go to listen to almost any of the myriad of songs he’s sung back-up on, he’s all you are going to hear (my personal favorite moments are his high decibel “heaveeen’s” and “ecstasyyy’s” in “Take Me Home”). And oh yeah, he’s also written some pretty famous songs including this diamond below from an album that sold 8 million copies…

He also co-wrote this and this, yup. Gorgeous, supreme and evergreen.

From 1976-77 Lasley was part of a pop soul trio called Rosie who released a couple of albums on RCA but failed to hit the charts and subsequently broke up. Following that he embarked on a solo career, releasing a total of 7 solo albums, with his trilogy of ’80s releases, MTG, Raindance (1984) and Soldiers On The Moon (1989) serving as the artistic pinnacle. And I should point out that 1982’s MTG, was technically Lasley’s second album as the previous year had seen the release of a collection of demos entitled, yes, Demos. But as Demos was not so much a lean, mean radio friendly machine as it was a curio/showcase to attract potential collaborators, MTG has long been regarded as David’s official debut album. And so the handful of glowing and esteemed reviews it garnered rightfully refer to it as just that. Speaking of which…

This glowing NY Times review had a painfully accurate title…

Not everyone expresses love and/or approval in the same way…and with that I welcome you to the wonderful world of actual MTG reviews from 1982. On the one hand you had outright effusive stuff like Don Shewey’s piece for the Boston Phoenix where he declared “If I Had My Wish Tonight” to be “a mini-masterpiece”.

Then there was venerable Village Voice critic Robert Christgau’s begrudging word salad of a blurb which starts off semi-ominous but then turns the table with a twist ending:

Great falsettos like Smokey Robinson and Clyde McPhatter flow uphill, while lesser ones like Maurice Gibb and Russell Thompkins settle for the formal panache and expressive limitation of acknowledged artifice. Lasley certainly doesn’t flow, but he doesn’t settle either–his struggle toward full emotional range sounds forced at first, but then willed, which is different. Playing head voice for homosexual angst rather than love-man tenderness or androgynous affect, he sets his colloquial confessions to pristine studio soul backup completely appropriate in a concept album about a white guy in love with black music. B+

Didn’t see that B+ coming right ? But the coolest and most glowing commendation by far came courtesy of Stephen Holden in his NYT review (depicted above). Check out this little nugget:

The wide-open emotionality of Mr. Lasley’s singing, combined with his confessional lyrics and the way his tunes blend the style of Motown with more sophisticated Broadway and Hollywood influences, recalls the pop soul style of Laura Nyro’s classic late-60’s albums.”Missin’ Twenty Grand,” one feels, ultimately belongs in the same very exclusive league.

Yeah, you read that right. Holden is suggesting that MTG should be held in the same regard as the legendary Laura Nyro’s finest work specifically her Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry albums. Two genuine, dyed in the wool, desert island worthy classics. That is some serious freakin’ praise to be showering on a debut album.

Not that any of the accolades and attention from high places ended up mattering. In terms of generating interest and igniting sales, none of the critical acclaim ended up meaning a damn thing. The initial success of “If I Had My Wish Tonight” aside, MTG didn’t even manage to scrape into the Billboard Top 200 album chart.

Meet #36 in Billboard pop Top 40 in April of 1982…

Why It’s His Pet Sounds: Now as it happens Lasley loved both of those aforementioned Nyro albums that MTG got compared to in the NYT. In fact, during a 1985 interview with The Advocate he mentioned that back in the day, he’d listened to them “obsessively”. The simplest way to characterize MTG is as a slick early ’80s LA take on Laura’s ’60s broadway boho style. It’s the confessional, lushly melodic, soulfully cinematic sound of the city served up by someone who is as infatuated with soul songs about infatuation as Laura was. It’s the best lovelorn coming of age musical about a white gay kid with an otherworldly voice growing up in Detroit in tumultuous ’60s you’re ever gonna hear.

But while MTG is overtly, adoringly Nyro-esque, it also possesses a tinge of that contemporary early ’80s flavor, striking some of the same sonic chords as Rickie Lee Jones. Meaning you are not only surrounded by sweet hooks and heart on the sleeve heartbreak but by a bunch of idiosyncratic characters out on the street, acting out the action. Just as Rickie introduced us to her Chuck E, Eddie and Louie, David brings along his Charlie, Mrs.Brown and Willie ( If you don’t want him, he’ll “have him, he Will-eeee”). And so MTG is essentially a love letter, to Laura, to soul music and to the Detroit he grew up in, perfumed with a sweet ‘n’ sleek early ’80s sheen.

As mentioned earlier the 3 albums he released in the ’80s remain the high point/gold standard of his solo work. While the two that followed MTG, Raindance ( produced by Don Was) and Soldiers On The Moon are home to some gorgeous things, neither are as consistently good as the debut. In other words, they’ve got some filler. You could create a classic album by combining the best parts of both (can we talk about this and this, because good lord)…but as great as that might be, and it would, the cherry-picked melange still wouldn’t hold a candle to MTG as a whole.

I’d hoped that there would be a video of David tearing it up live on one of the tracks from MTG that I could insert here but there aren’t any on YouTube. While this sucks it also gives me an excuse to share this staggeringly wonderful video of Chaka Khan performing “Roll Me Through The Rushes” which David co-wrote with Lana Marrano, his former bandmate in Rosie and features on their first album (hear it here). Enjoy.

Her name is Chaka and she is here to slay you …

The Songs: By the way the album’s title is a reference to the fabled Twenty Grand nightclub in Detroit (1958-1976) where multitudes of legendary R & B acts performed and David and his sister often sang at as a teens. In an interview with James Taylor Online, he described the album as “kind of the story of us growing up and listening to R&B records and singing in black nightclubs”.

Despite the scenery chewing enormity of David Lasley’s voice, MTG does not come booming out of the gate. In fact the first track is maybe the most subtle and polite thing on the whole album. “Got To Find Love” has a yacht rock/West Coast style groove, James Taylor on backing vocals and, okay, some sexy sax™. It’s slick and smooth and honestly its main purpose is to ease us gently into the forthcoming vocal rollercoaster ride which begins with that desperate doll of a single “If I Had My Wish Tonight”. This lament of lopsided love is actually a cover of a track written by Dave Loggins (Kenny’s actual second cousin) and Randy Goodrum that appeared on the former’s 1979 self-titled album. With its light-hearted piano flourishes and ostentatious, yup, sax, the original version has a distinctly TV theme song-ish vibe (hear it here). As such it positively withers when stood next to the glamorous desperation and desire of Lasley version. Speaking of which, you know who arranged the strings on the MTG version, the ones that pull the song to the sky? Freakin’ legend Arif Mardin. And that’s Bonnie Raitt helping out on the backing vocals. Add in the soaring Lasley vocal and yeah, it’s not exactly what you’d call a fair fight ( sorry original). While I wouldn’t go so far as to call “If I Had My Wish Tonight” a masterpiece, like the review referenced earlier did, it is an undeniably gorgeous slice of early ’80s soft rock that still sounds exquisite 40 years later.

With its soulful, sweltering Laura Nyro summer in the city vibe,“On Third Street” offers an assortment of vivid vignettes from Lasley’s teenage years when he was performing around Detroit with his sister. The song struts and swings with genuine joyfulness whilst poking fun at his own youthful innocence and naivety. Dealers, drag queens, unscrupulous lowbrow music biz sharks ( that’d be “Mrs. Brown”) are all alive in and on Third Street. The vocal line he serves up to describe getting treats at the “the english muffin factory” is criminally sweet, with its “Hot BREAD in the hot SUMMER, it was BETTER without BUTTER“. The words he chooses to stress within the lyrics bring to mind that little party trick Aretha Franklin used to employ to transcendent effect on her more upbeat songs. If you want to hear it in action, just check out her 1969 version of Glen Campbell’s “Gentle On My Mind” right here. Listen to the words she chooses to accentuate. “Ink stains”. “Clinging”. “Binds”. “Cursing”. It is so perfect and clever and the kind of thing only the most instinctive and preternaturally gifted singers can do.The whole performance is just endlessly, utterly crazy genius….and David does this same thing all through “On Third Street”. He grooves and struts and shreiks, boldfacing words in the way only the best know how to do (“whole fuckin’ thing is insane!”).

Here’s that piece of hot bread we were just talkin’ about..

“Treat Willie Good” possesses a similarly Nyro-esque flavor but, added bonus, it also sounds like some lost and fabulous answer song to The Marvelettes eternally slinky Motown classic “Don’t Mess With Bill” (hear here). In the previously mentioned 1985 interview with The Advocate, David said that “Treat Willie Good” wasn’t necessarily what it seemed on the surface; “Everyone took it as such a gay song and I didn’t set out deliberately to write it that way ‘I’ll have him I will-ee, I’ll be his friend until he comes back to you’. I didn’t mean have him sexually, I really didn’t. It just sang so well”. Of course that’s exactly what it sounds like and part of what makes it such a beguiling thing. The whole Lasley vocal toolbox is on display here, cooing coyly one minute, getting all rapturous and loud the next then closing things out with some perfectly syncopated ad-libbing.

There are a couple of slow burning cover ballads to temper MTG’s pop-ified confections.There’s a torchy version of James Taylor’s “Looking For Love On Broadway” a deep cut from his multi-platinum 1977 album JT. And okay, soft rock hot take coming, Lasley’s take is better than JT’s, doing away with the aw-shucks shuffle of the original version and replacing it with a far more languorous and soulful arrangement. He takes a similar sonic approach on Clyde Otis’s prescient and powerful, “Take A Look”. Its instrumentation is more than suitable for last call and the vocal is crazy, resembling both a Miles Davis’s horn solo and a Prince style plea for love. The song was originally recorded and crushed/owned/blessed by, yup, Aretha Franklin in 1964. And while the eminently wonderful Wilson Pickett and Natalie Cole both recorded fine covers, Lasley’s version is the only one that even gets close to that Lady Soul stratosphere.

The euphemistic “Roommate” percolates with genuine bitterness (as inspired by the titular character’s supremely selfish ways) and features a neat cameo from Pete Townshend (!) who serves up some uncharacteristically subtle background riff-age. Despite its swoon-some recurring bridge,“Roommate” is MTG’s most pissed off track. Countering that and representing the teary side of the story is “Never Say”, a wistful, handsome West Coast slow groove, stacked with prayers, clever lyrical turns and read between the lines nudges like this:

Two boys walk along and I think they look like brothers, my friend turns to me and says I wonder if they’re lovers, one’s a little older and he looks a lot like me, I wonder why it takes so long for everyone to see…

As someone who actually noticed these kind of things, I can confirm that back in ’80-81-82, roughly 99% of the male artists occupying that same soft rock-West Coast-Adult Contemporary sound space that Lasley was, were singing about one particular thing. Yes, you guessed it, high school girls. It mostly involved reminiscing about their interactions with them when they themselves, middle aged guys were high school boys, emphasis on the mostly. I’m telling you, this was an actual thing (if this confuses you, I wrote a bit about the phenomenon as it relates to the genre here). I am bringing this up only to drive home how disarming it was at the time to hear David Lasley romping in those same musical environs and singing about men, boyfriends and hot boys.

By the way, in addition to “If I Had My Wish Tonight”, both “Got To Find Love” and “Treat Willie Good” were released as singles. Forgive these wrinkled, questionably carpeted photos below, they were the only visual evidence I could find that this actually happened. Neither track charted.

Welcome to lazy record label art direction 101…

While MTG’s penultimate track “Where Is Charlie And Joanne” has an exceptionally breezy melody and is swathed in a plush, pillowy production, it is also unerringly sad. Friends leaving and splitting up, emotional inertia, loads of wistful longing and regret, it’s all in there. In other words, it feels miserable but it sounds gorgeous, Lasley’s vocal in particular which comes across more like a slow, distant (heartbroken) siren than a tearful human person.

With its bouncing, effervescent Rickie Lee Jones flavored pop stylings “Take The Money And Run” might seem like an odd pick for the esteemed role of “the closer”. Written by late songwriter Don Paul Yowell, it’s not an adventurous, experimental all-consumingly epic summarizing all that’s come before. No, it’s a light, bright ‘n’ tuneful piece of candy with an ever so faint hint of ’60s girl group and/or Motown in its bones. It’s home to a pretty bewitching melodic twist preceding the chorus and Lasley serves up a pretty fabulous vocal, running like the wind one minute then even faster the next. But despite its breeziness, there is something about it that suggests the shop shutters being pulled down and Lasley bidding an affectionate goodbye as he drives off into the sunset. And so yeah, it really is the perfect song to wrap up the Missin’ Twenty Grand experience.

In Conclusion: There are a few specific ways you could characterize David Lasley’s career. He was one of James Taylor’s most beloved backing vocalists. He was an in demand session singer who performed on a ton of evergreen hits. He was a gifted songwriter who composed some genuinely superfine megahits. And, okay, he was a one hit wonder. All of that stuff is true…but know what else? He made a grown up, non-rock, openly queer pop album suitable for AM radio at a time when that just wasn’t done, when the common practice was for gay artists to maintain the illusion of heterosexuality if they were purveying that more adult brand of pop or soul. From Luther Vandross, who was a close friend and colleague of Lasley’s to Mom’s choice, Barry Manilow, no one dared to step over the line. Hook-filled and infectious, soulful and emotional, Missin’ Twenty Grand had that universality that all the best pop albums did but was not remotely coy or secretive about its sexuality.

David Lasley’s voice is an outrageous, head-shakingly amazing instrument. When he sings ‘And be thankful to the lord up above, he SENT you Willie’s love to love‘ in “Treat Willie Good”, well, that is one utterly ravishing crazy good slab of singing. And Missin’ Twenty Grand is full of moments like that one. It’s just a fab old record full of soulful sweetness. It’s David Lasley’s finest recorded hour, it’s his Pet Sounds.

Hear it here! : You can listen to the whole album on Spotify below (FYI: tracks 12-15 come from Raindance, David’s 1984 follow-up LP). You can also buy the cd over at Discogs, where there are plenty to be had (and you should have it)!

Update: David Lasley passed away on December 9, 2021. He had experienced significant health challenges over recent years. He was amazing and just want to encourage everyone to seek out all his beautiful work. Rest in peace David 🌼

Mission statement:

No matter who we are in this absurd, brief, and messy life we can all lay claim to a peak, a shining moment where we were the best we could be, where all the stars aligned and we freakin’ delivered the goods.

Welcome to “That’s Their Pet Sounds”our semi-regular feature where we endeavor to spotlight and celebrate a heretofore maybe uncool, often unjustifiably underrated, sometimes polarizing, not as acclaimed as they should be or “what the hell?” artist’s grandest artistic achievement i.e. their greatest album.

*”That’s Their Pet Sounds”is named after the Beach Boys landmark 1966 LP which is universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made but yeah, you probably knew that.

Now grab yourself a cushion and let’s go chill in the gazebo…

Kenny Loggins’ Best Album :

Celebrate Me Home (1977)

Background : By the end of 1976, after 5 years as a performing duo, pop troubadours Loggins & Messina decided to end their musical partnership. It’d been a great run that saw them score no fewer than 5 platinum albums, 2 Gold albums and a top 10 pop hit with the somewhat polarizing “Your Mama Don’t Dance” ( the “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” of its day). Loggins explained the situation in classic rock-speak, stating that things were starting to feel “too comfortable”, that they needed to break up for “creative reasons”, adding that the decision to split “was mutual”. “We both felt it was time to put ourselves in different environments”. But really it was inevitable. For it had become abundantly clear over the course of the partnership that this Loggins guy had something. Not only did he write ridiculously melodic and memorable pop songs like nobody’s business and resemble the world’s sexiest mountain man, he was also blessed with a special voice…which is to say, damn could he sang.

And so from the ashes, in 1977, did the Loggins (heretofore to be referred to as KL) solo career begin in earnest.

Celebrate Me Home, the first KL solo album, was produced by Phil Ramone and Bob James whose merged styles could best be described as “slick” with a side dish of “smooth”. Built on a bedrock of ace musicianship, lush strings, assertively strummed acoustic guitars and fat Fender Rhodes chords, there are no detectable blemishes or visible pores anywhere on Celebrate Me Home. Now while “slick” and “smooth” would no doubt get their asses kicked on the rock ‘n roll playground by “shredding” or “thrashing” or even plain old “rocking”, in the case of Celebrate Me Home, stressing the smooth side of things perfectly suited the lush KL songwriting style. If you ever want to simulate the feeling of watching an exquisitely perfect sunset lasting exactly 45 minutes over the Pacific Ocean in 1977, this is your soundtrack. Okay, I know what you’re thinking and yes, I suppose you could also play Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue with its equally bearded, beached, beauteous, born in ’77 vibe but you’d be settling in for a significantly rougher and more angsty ride. I recommend you just start your evening with Celebrate Me Home and save Dennis as a chaser soundtrack for when you’re getting wasted later that night because it’ll make way more sense then.

Don’t let the riding crop scare you, he’s only looking to tame you with his melodic dreamscapes and lustrous voice.

Why it’s his Pet Sounds: Picking Celebrate Me Home as KL’s peak performance, where his melodic gift was firing at maximum capacity was an easy choice…pretty much. It should be noted that the 3 studio albums that followed were of a supremely high standard and all totally ruled in one way or another, from the dark, lusty moodiness of Nightwatch (1978), to the romantic spirituality of Keep the Fire (1979), to the angry AOR of High Adventure (1982). They are each in possession of some undeniably timeless, epically wonderful songs. And we should also acknowledge latter day album and dark horse Leap of Faith (1991) which was full of handsome, loved up new age pop as well. But as far as nailing it across the board in terms of mood, melody, overall vibe ( and there is one) and expertly mimicking the feeling of being on some languid and dreamy sailboat with an attentive and romantic captain, Celebrate Me Home is without peer. This album somehow manages to make rejection, lying and cheating sound warm, sweet and reassuring.

The inner sleeve photo. No innuendo to see here folks, move along.

The Songs (side one): “Lady Luck”,  the lead track on the album is a beauteous, glossy acoustic led groove with a nice fat bass bottom that relates a semi-cryptic tale involving the devil and selling your soul. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and everything is just a metaphor for cheating and being unfaithful. The song features this soon to be KL trademark of stopping or quieting the band mid-flight to spotlight some ethereal harmonizing or over the top vocal flourishes before waving them back in again. He’s employed this aural quirk in multitudes of songs throughout his career from “This is It” to “I’m Alright” and it always works. Speaking of that, when it comes to singing, Kenny Loggins can also be a scenery chewin’, word stretchin’ son of a gun… which is to say you can expect a fair amount of of vocal taffy pulling within most of his performances here ( and in most subsequent recordings). “Lady Luck” features one of the more endearing examples of that particular idiosyncrasy wherein Kenny reshapes “love triangle” into “love Try-YANGah“. Now that there’s some quality chewin’.

Most of the songs on Celebrate are co-writes, the coolest collaborator being legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb who penned the lyrics to poisonous little rose “If You Be Wise”. While promising on paper, it’s definitely one of the second tier tracks whose main purpose is to act as sweet glue between 2 absolutely killer tracks. It’s a pretty laid back affair with an optimistic melody and features a pretty hummable chorus. Lyrically though, it’s another story, for “If You Be…” is really a shoulder shrugging, finger wagging warning about getting too attached to a touring musician because you know, there are temptations on the road babe and he’s only human.

“I Believe in Love”– Right so as mentioned earlier, KL can sang and this song offers the space and opportunity to show off his entire range, from the cooing falsetto to the full throated blast. It’s both joyful and melodic, featuring an odd tinge of calypso as well as enough breathing room in the chorus to allow KL to seamlessly ask the audience in live settings if they believe in love ( here’s what they said) .

The song was written by KL ( the music) and the long-time Barbra Streisand collaborators and married songwriting team of Alan and Marilyn Bergman (the lyrics). The song first appeared in the 1976 film of A Star is Born as sung by Streisand in a bitchin’ blue polyester suit. And okay, gonna say it, KL’s version destroys Barbra’s. Crushes it into microscopic dust.  Anyway the Bergman’s were a couple of old school composers who weren’t remotely rock ‘n roll ( their credits also included Streisand’s “The Way We Were” as well as her duet with Neil Diamond “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”). Still they managed to pen a verse within “I Believe…” that is totally rock and doesn’t care about anyone but itself :

But I don’t want to find myself one day

Wakin’ up and lookin’ at Monday

With some what’s her name left from Sunday

I Believe in Love

Right, I’ll call you sometime okay? We still have aways to go this tour and I’ll be kind of busy but I’ll try, no promises. One of the eternal wonders of the Celebrate Me Home album is how skillfully KL plays the roles of both bearded rock stallion and sensitive ’70s hippie guy without ever favoring either. Such is the magic and mystery of Kenny Loggins.

“Set It Free” remains one of the finest KL tracks ever, an epic ballad of realization that sounds like a mournful rainy day for the first 4 minutes and a cultish worship song for the last 2. Bob James’s opening intro on keys and the delicate KL vocal on the first verse literally feels like a warm, enveloping embrace, all swoons and sighs. There’s a great cover version of “Set it Free” by revered Norwegian jazz singer Radka Toneff from 1981 that’s also absolutely worth hearing. In her arrangement, she eschews the entire choral style ending and just sticks to the verses and chorus, offering up a heart-squeezingly desperate and beautiful vocal; it really drives home how exceptional the song is at it’s core. She died from suicide soon after this recording was done, at age 30, making this a undeniably poignant listen.

The romantic tables are turned on the ballad “Why Do People Lie” this time with the woman doing the cheating and KL doing the I don’t wanna believe its. It’s a showcase for the absurdly seductive KL falsetto which he milks here to the 1000th power. Naturally that meant once he took the song into a live setting he could really milk it. Check out this performance of the song from his 1980 album Kenny Loggins Alive to hear an audience member spontaneously combust upon exposure to said falsetto in the second verse. It truly is a weapon.

Right, someone please get me to the  time machine asap…

The Songs (side two): “Enter My Dream” sounds just like its title and is pure luxuriant mellowness ( yes, it kind of is like a warm bath and if it gave off a scent it would be that of a subtle, intoxicating vanilla candle, a good one, not one from The Dollar Store). It is quite possibly imbued with subliminal messages because it’s hard to listen to it and not immediately want to go lie down in a field of grass and stare vacantly at the sky for hours. It also features one of those patented KL “stop everything and just listen to me singing and nothing else” moments mentioned earlier in its coda…and despite having heard this song 3000 times, I am still not 100% sure what he’s singing at that point. I mean it sounds like ” And I love a lot about dreaming, and I dream a lot about love“. But honestly, as it’s not printed on the album sleeve lyrics, I have no f-ing idea but who cares right because it still sounds utterly magnificent.

“I’ve Got the Melody (Deep in My Heart)” was written by jazz pop diva Patti Austin who provides the guest vocal on the track as well. It sounds a lot like something you would have heard on a typical ’70s  variety show, when the host and guest star do their big duet number. Affectionate, slightly lovey dovey but stopping well short of sexy ( actually it’s miles away, definitely no tongue here ). I call this one a default listen. As in, it was on the LP and I wasn’t going to get up and move the needle to the next track necessarily because it wasn’t terrible just ineffectually pleasant.

It’s about to get dark in here…

KL is of course best known by the general population for his gargantuan ’80s soundtrack hits “Footloose”,“Danger Zone” and “I’m Alright”, all of which are basically fun and unquestionably frothy.  I always look at the big soundtrack hits as the end product of KL’s day job. It’s a job he was good at and got paid for but it didn’t really reflect the passions of the Real Kenny™. The songs bore no resemblance to what he was building out in the garage on Sunday afternoons, what he was truly passionate about. The Real Kenny™ can only be found on actual Kenny Loggins albums. They are him and he is them. Which is to say the true KL signature song is not “Footloose” or any of its arm wrestling, golf bag carrying wingmen, but is in fact this gloriously plush and sentimental singalong right here, the please don’t forget me epic “Celebrate Me Home”.

Now near as I can figure, after years of hearing it, “Celebrate Me Home” is about coming home after having been away for awhile and, like a battery getting charged overnight, getting enough attention from family and friends that you can use it to power you up during lonely moments when you go back to…wherever it is you came from that keeps you far from home…which in KL’s case is, you guessed it, the bastard road .

Still it’s not quite specific enough that its sentiments can’t be applied to other scenarios. Amongst the fascinating, weird and sometimes obvious interpretations I’ve stumbled on across the web, my favorite was seeing the song recommended for funeral services, “home” being another word for, you know, heaven. It’s a stretch but I’m telling you, once I read that I never heard the song the same way again. When you listen to Joy Division or Nico, you expect to brush shoulders with the grim reaper, but to come face to face with the other side in a freakin’ Kenny Loggins song ?  It’s just perverse and you’ve gotta love it.

To counter that idea or perhaps offer another version of what “heaven” might be like, please enjoy this extended live version of “Celebrate Me Home” (below) from a show in Santa Barbara in 1981. Watch in slack-jawed awe, at around the 7 minute mark, as KL, here playing the role of “Sexy Jesus”, descends into the crowd and ignites an extraordinary display of audience horniness the likes of which you rarely see outside of a National Geographic animal documentary.

“Daddy” is kind of an awful word. It sounds slimy coming from anyone over the age of 5 but okay. “Daddy’s Back” is a smoothy groove with a memorable tune and breathy, scenery chewing vocal that gushes with endless optimism. Of course based on his previous behavior throughout the album it’s hard to trust that “Daddy” is being truthful when he says he “can see an end to Daddy’s days as a rolling stone” but the rugged, passionate vocal ad-libbing at the end is enough to blind anyone to the truth at least temporarily.

“You Don’t Know Me” is a remake of an Eddy Arnold/Cindy Walker penned standard from 1956 that by the time KL had recorded it, everyone and their mother had taken a crack at. Elvis, Ray Charles,Willie Nelson, Bette Midler, Roy Orbison and Jackie Wilson to name a few hundred. And it was understandable why so many artists would want to, as its story of unrequited love was laid out so straightforwardly that most of humankind could relate to its lonesome yearning.

Thing is nearly every version sounded like it was made in a cheese factory, the majority of them overrun by ludicrously over the top backing vocals and schmaltzy instrumentation working as a devilish tag team to destroy the songs sad dignity ( and usually succeeding)…which is why the KL version stands amongst the absolute best. For one thing the arrangement is so skeletal and spare it sounds like a demo…okay one made by virtuosic musicians but still. And the vocal itself is extraordinarily understated by KL standards as in he doesn’t lose his shit until the last verse and sounds convincingly defeated throughout.

The inclusion of this cover is another reason why this album is so kick ass: to close with something so morose, slow and rainy after the flying above the clouds for nearly the entire LP takes some balls ( or a maybe a strong riding crop).

In Conclusion:  Celebrate Me Home only got as high as # 27 in the album chart in 1977 but it did ultimately achieve platinum status in 1980. Which seems about the right pace, for this is the one KL album that seems cool with laying back and letting others speed wildly to their ultimate destination. It’ll get there when it gets there. Look at the cover art, see how blissed out Kenny is to be home after months of touring ? He wants you to be blissed out too, chilled, that’s why he made this for you.  Sure, there’s some dishonest unfaithful behavior and disingenuous promise making happening in the songs but babe, that’s just life. The fact is underneath that hoodie beats an enormously empathetic heart with the magical ability of molding pop songs into ravishing sunsets.

If all the hyperbole here isn’t sitting right with you, I’ll offer you a more pragmatic explanation: basically Celebrate Me Home is like a less drugged up, totally shined, fragrantly showered, and contented version of Jackson Browne’s definitive life on the road diary album Running On Empty. It’s a reassuring arm around your shoulder, “bound to roam” but always coming home. It’s his Pet Sounds.

Hear it here:

Or here:

Mission statement:

No matter who we are in this absurd, brief, and messy life we can all lay claim to a peak, a shining moment where we were the best we could be, where all the stars aligned and we freakin’ delivered the goods.

Welcome to “That’s Their Pet Sounds” our semi-regular feature where we endeavor to spotlight and celebrate a heretofore maybe uncool, often unjustifiably underrated, sometimes polarizing, not as acclaimed as they should be, or “what the hell?” artist’s grandest artistic achievement i.e. their greatest album.

*”That’s Their Pet Sounds”is named after the Beach Boys landmark 1966 LP which is universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made but yeah, you probably knew that.

And now please join us on a trip over the top…

 Tears For Fears BEST ALBUM : Seeds of Love (1989)

Mission statement:

No matter who we are in this absurd, brief, and messy life we can all lay claim to a peak, a shining moment where we were the best we could be, where all the stars aligned and we freakin’ delivered the goods.

Welcome to “That’s Their Pet Sounds” our semi-regular feature where we endeavor to spotlight and celebrate a heretofore maybe uncool, often unjustifiably underrated, sometimes polarizing, not as acclaimed as they should be, or “what the hell?” artist’s grandest artistic achievement i.e. their greatest album.

*”That’s Their Pet Sounds” is named after the Beach Boys landmark 1966 LP which is universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made but yeah, you probably knew that.

Forget about those celebrity Halloween parties and remember Seal this way…

Seal’s BEST ALBUM : Human Being (1998)

Background: What is the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Seal? Generally speaking, it’s 1 of these 3 things, in no particular order:

1. “Kiss From a Rose”, the eloquent ballad/Batman Forever love theme.

2.“Crazy”, his first mega hit, from 1991.

3. The annual, oddly insufferable Hollywood Halloween party he up until recently hosted with his former wife, supermodel Heidi Klum.

And once that party started, Seal crossed the line from being a “musician” to being a “celebrity“. The ubiquitous and unending documentation of these parties fed this identity to such a large degree that it was remarkably easy to forget that this guy was once a credible artist responsible for some of the ’90s grandest, most emotive ear candy.

 

No.  

Okay, so there’s that, but nearly as unfortunate is what his most predominate artistic activity for the past 10 plus years has been, namely wandering down that same dusty road trodden by Rod Stewart, Michael McDonald, Barry Manilow as well as a myriad of others in the twilight of their careers i.e. putting out cover albums of classic but at this point seriously hoary old standards and mostly obvious soul classics, an exercise that no matter how sincerely intended, is the very definition of cheap applause and in some cases, desperation. When the response to new albums of original material is literally no response, well, it’s cover time. Albums like these should all have the same title, I Give Up and, as they inevitably sell in truckloads, I Give Up: Volume 2. Now in Seal’s defense, some of the choices on his 2 soul themed cover albums (titled Soul…and yes, Soul 2) are undeniable beauties: “What’s Going On”, “I’ll Be Around”,”Free” to name a few…but they are counteracted by the presence of the hairy warted heads and hands of “Lean On Me” and “Stand By Me”, the most unwelcome guests/passengers in the history of the NY subway system.

Nearly every song is a ballad and the musical foundation for the majority of them is chilly and electronic, with some added guitar flourishes and cinematic strings to heighten the overall drama…but even with that abounding heaviness, make no mistake, these are pop songs and as such the tunes themselves are strikingly memorable ( lotta hooks). There’s really no filler.

Mission statement:

No matter who we are in this absurd, brief, and messy life we can all lay claim to a peak, a shining moment where we were the best we could be, where all the stars aligned and we freakin’ delivered the goods.

Welcome to “That’s Their Pet Sounds” our semi-regular feature where we endeavor to spotlight and celebrate a heretofore maybe uncool, often unjustifiably underrated, sometimes polarizing, not as acclaimed as they should be, or “what the hell?” artist’s grandest artistic achievement i.e. their greatest album.

*”That’s Their Pet Sounds” is named after the Beach Boys landmark 1966 LP which is universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made but yeah, you probably knew that.

And with that here’s an artist frequently dismissed as a teen idol who defied odds and opinions to make a truly seminal power pop album…

Rick Springfield’s BEST ALBUM : Working Class Dog (1981)

Mission statement:

No matter who we are in this absurd, brief, and messy life we can all lay claim to a peak, a shining moment where we were the best we could be, where all the stars aligned and we freakin’ delivered the goods.

Welcome to “That’s Their Pet Sounds” our latest semi-regular feature where we will endeavor to spotlight, and celebrate a heretofore uncool, sometimes mocked, occasionally underrated, polarizing, not as acclaimed as they should be,  “what the hell?” artist’s grandest artistic achievement i.e. their greatest album.

*“That’s Their Pet Sounds” is named after the Beach Boys landmark 1966 LP which is universally regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made but yeah, you probably knew that.

This couldn’t start with anything else…

Barry Manilow’s BEST ALBUM : 1978’s “Even Now”

Background: Even Now was Barry’s 5th official studio album and went on to sell 3 million freakin’ copies. He remained so fond of it, and of that time in his career, that in 1996 he released an album of his favorite pop songs from 1978 or thereabouts by other artists and called it, wait for it, The Summer of ’78. He even went so far as to write a song with that same title swooning over what a great year it was. Make no mistake, Barry was really, really into 1978. Yup, even Barry knew that Even Now was the one.

It is important to note that all Manilow albums during his seventies heyday were essentially collections of potential singles or at least sounded like them…which means the only cohesive theme tying them together as LP’s were the fact that all the songs were performed by Barry. He was an unabashed pop artist who made singles for the radio. That’s what he did. That was his job.

Why it’s his Pet Sounds: Okay, before we begin have to attach a disclaimer to this : at this stage in life, I absolutely detest “Copacabana”, it’s just, I fuckin’ can’t… but that wasn’t always the case, which is to say as a kid, sigh, I thought it was pretty cool. I did….but reason I bring it up is because many people will write this album off straight away because of “Copacabana’s” presence i.e. it’s the opening damn track. And look, there is a liberal coating of schmaltz on a good portion of the album ( it’ll inevitably get all over your hands…or ears, case in point “Can’t Smile Without You”, that one really oozes) …but cast your cynicism aside, because once you get past those guys and go deep, you’ll discover that Even Now is Barry at his melodic, lovelorn best. Yes, sentimentally over the top but also kind of dark, dazed and lost and, it goes without saying, ridiculously tuneful.

Every track is sung with complete earnestness and nearly always features a dramatic key change around the last chorus or so ( you know those award show performances where all of a sudden a gospel choir or gaggle of harmonizing children rise from beneath the stage to join in on that final chorus and take things completely over the top, well it’s like that except it’s just Barry singing).

Okay, elephant in the room officially acknowledged, onward… 

The Songs: Want a song about not appreciating someone until it’s too late ? That’s the lush “A Linda Song”.

How about some loss, loneliness and regret ? Well the whole latter half of the record does a u-turn from corned out “joy” of “Copacabana “ and “Can’t Smile”. “Where Do I Go From Here”, “Even Now”, “I Just Want To Be the One” and  “Sunrise” supply plenty of emotional question marks.

And the guitar riff in “Leaving in the Morning” sounds like a slowed down version of the heavenly opening chord of Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” and as such is totally bitchin’.

The defining track on the album is the aforementioned darkly optimistic (really) and mournful “Sunrise”. In fact the cover of the album is literally a photograph of the song. It’s a world weary ballad about resigning yourself to this thing called life and trying to hang in there whilst contemplating your place in the universe and features a pretty gorgeous piano line that perfectly captures “the sad”.

“I can be dark too bitches”

Anything sub-standard ? Well yeah, “Losing Touch” is unpleasant and the kitsch of “I Was a Fool” can grate but those are tiny gripes.

In Conclusion: Even Now is Barry at his most consistent and has more top notch tracks per capita than any of his other 30 (!) studio albums. And for an album of singles really, it hangs together exceptionally well. It’s vintage AM radio gold. It’s perfectly calibrated lush, and melodic pop music. It’s his Pet Sounds.

Hear it here: