80’s at 8: January 3, 2023- Iggy Pop & The Call
Tonight’s 80’s at 8 started with Cry for Love, it’s a track from Iggy Pop‘s seventh album from 1986 titled Blah-Blah-Blah. It remains his most commercially successful album to date. Iggy Pop had been on a four-year hiatus before the creation and release of the album.
He collaborated with the Late Great David Bowie on the album. This would be their final collaboration. The album includes a cover of Johnny O’Keefe’s “Wild One” (here titled “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” and three original songs co-written with ex-Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.
The remaining tracks were co-written by Bowie, who also produced the album with David Richards but, unlike his previous work with Pop, The Idiot and Lust for Life (both 1977), did not play any instruments, although he did contribute with backing vocals. Bowie biographer David Buckley has reported that Pop “virtually disowned” the record, calling it “a Bowie album in all but name”.
It has never been specified what tracks on the album, if any, originated during the sessions of Bowie’s 1984 album Tonight (that album’s co-producer, Hugh Padgham, has recalled that Bowie and Pop collaborated on some songs that Bowie ultimately rejected for inclusion on Tonight).
The album was described by AllMusic as “the most calculatedly commercial album of Iggy’s career”, Blah-Blah-Blah was certified gold in Canada. In the U.S. it peaked at No. 75 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart.
Rolling Stone‘s contemporary review complained of a “nagging homogeneity to side one” but continued that “even at its most familiar, Blah-Blah-Blah is as spiritually outraged and emotionally direct as commercial pop gets these days”.
Check out the music video for “Cry For Love” by Iggy Pop here:
The second track on tonight’s 80’s at 8 came from Santa Cruz California rockers The Call titled Everywhere I Go from their 1986 album Reconciled. It reached # 38 on the BB Mainstream Rock Chart.
Reconciled, was recorded in mid-1985. Prior to this, the band had not had a recording contract for two years, due to what deen described as “legal bickering” between the Call’s former record label, Mercury, and their management company.”
When a new deal was signed with Elektra Records, the band produced their most commercially successful album to date. Peter Gabriel, Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr, Hudson and Hudson’s bandmate Robbie Robertson—both of the Band—all performed as guests on the album, which was released in 1986. Several tracks from the album became hits on the Mainstream Rock Chart.
Lead singer Michael Been died on August 19, 2010, after suffering a heart attack backstage at the Pukkelpop music festival in Hasselt, Belgium, where he was working as a sound engineer for his son’s, Robert Levon Been, band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
On April 18 and 19, 2013, band members Scott Musick, Tom Ferrier, and Jim Goodwin reunited for a series of shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles with Robert Levon Been of BRMC taking over the role of bass and vocals.
A Tribute to Michael Been featuring Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle was released on September 2, 2014. The songs were recorded during the 2013 show. The CD version included 14 songs while the special CD and DVD combo pack, and a digital deluxe version had 19. A limited edition vinyl release was also released.
Check out the music video for “Everywhere I Go” by The Call here:
25 Albums that Turn 45 in 2023
