And the Underwhelming 1982 Follow-Ups Just Keep on Coming!

Just when I thought I was out, 1982 pulls me back in. So as a follow-up to the epic post on Underwhelming 1982 Follow-Ups, here's a new batch of disappointing LPs. I just hope you aren't underwhelmed by this post...

You definitely won't be disappointed by this epic Eighties decode....

 

What the heck were we watching back in the Eighties? 

• How is it that some of the best-loved movies and cartoons of our youth are so heavily groomer-coded?
  
• What's up with all the hallucinogens and occult symbolism?
  
• Why did so many hard-R franchises get made into kiddie cartoons?
  

What were they thinking back then? Or don't we want to know?

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cringe as we ruin, er, decode some of your old favorites including:

• ET, the Extraterrestial
  
• The Goonies
  
• The Never-Ending Story
  
• Flight of the Navigator
  
• GI Joe
  
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
  
• Thundercats
  

And much, much more. You don’t want to miss this one.

CLICK HERE FOR
MORE INFORMATION

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Now let us rock, in a vaguely underwhelming fashion...

Artist: Black Sabbath

Album: Live Evil

Underwhelming follow-up to: Mob Rules

I was a big fan of this record back in the day, though it's been ages since I've listened to it. But the disappointment of it was that it showed that the Sabs' comeback with Ronnie James Dio had run out of creative gas. Indeed, Dio and Vinny Appice would quit the band before the mixing was even finished. 

The Sabs would recruit Ian Gillan and bring back the mighty Bill Ward for the Born Again album the following year, but even that conglomeration would implode and give way to a series of increasingly tedious Mock Sabbath lineups.

Artist: David Bowie

Album: Baal

Underwhelming follow-up to: Scary Monsters 

Bowie was in transition at the time -- getting ready for his superstar reinvention with Let's Dance the following year -- and didn't want to waste any songs on this "fuck you, RCA" artifact. Hardly anyone has heard of it, no one bought it and no one gives a crap, so let's move on. 

Artist: Dire Straits

Album: Love Over Gold

Underwhelming follow-up to: Making Movies

Mark Knopfler seemed to be at an impasse with the Dire Straits project after two hot 'n' fresh long-players. The Straits' sound seemed out of step in the synthpop 80s, and Love sold less than half of its predecessor. Sensing the well had run dry, Knopfler would spend the next three years working with other artists (Dylan, Tina Turner) and on soundtracks, before striking it big with a rejiggered Straits sound in 1985 with the multiplatinum Brothers in Arms.

Artist: Bruce Springsteen

Album: Nebraska

Underwhelming follow-up to: The River

Nebraska certainly has its fans, but as a low-fi solo acoustic record, it didn't have a lot of buyers. But the problem here isn't the approach, but the underwhelming material. Rock critics loved it for the lyrics, but none of these tunes - with the exception of "Atlantic City" - sticks in the memory. 

Apparently, Springsteen was dealing with depression in the wake of the extensive touring for The River, which makes sense: this record sounds like very, very depressive.

Artist: Stiff Little Fingers

Album: Now Then
Underwhelming follow-up to: Go for It

Stiff Little Fingers faced the same problem all the other punk bands signed to major labels did around this time: zero airplay, invisibility in the US, softening record sales, and enormous debt to their labels. Rather than go the submissive-pussy-sellout route that their heroes The Clash did with the traitorous Combat Rock, SLF kind of went into generic mid-70s guitar rock, a genre without a constituency in 1982.

I mean, SLF pinched out some of the same bullshit/punkass fake-Police music as The Clash on a pre-album EP (see above), but most of Now Then isn't nearly as hateful as no-T aural diarrhea like "Red Angel Dragnet," "First Night Back in London" or "Atom Tan." It's just kind of sad.

Artist: Circle Jerks

Album: Wild in the Streets
Underwhelming follow-up to: Group Sex 

Group Sex is one of the greatest punk rock albums ever made, and very likely the best LA hardcore album of all. But being an extremely limited form, hardcore is, um,  hard to sustain over time. So aside from some Boomertastic covers (like the title track), this album isn't significantly different in approach from its predecessor, it's just not as fresh or funny. Put simply, the hooks just aren't there. 

Nothing to be particularly ashamed of, but just a big letdown after a revelatory debut.

Artist: GBH
Album: City Baby Attacked by Rats
Underwhelming follow-up to:  Leather, Studs, Bristles, and Acne

Same goes for this one as with Wild in the Streets. GBH's first record was such a mind-blowing revelation because the band seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere, fully formed. They didn't have the same longish runway as contemporaries like Discharge and Blitz. Indeed, GBH sounded fresh and dangerous at the same time they were oddly familiar. 

Again, nothing wrong with this record - it's highly regarded in some quarters. It just doesn't have the drop-dead hooks and shock-of-the-new their debut had.

Artist: The Gun Club

Album: Miami
Underwhelming follow-up to: Fire of Love 

On its own, Miami is a perfectly fine record. But compared to impact Fire of Love had, it's a major disappointment precisely because it's perfectly fine. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a huge Blondie fan so it was surely a treat to have Chris Stein produce, but the production doesn't have the unhinged passion of earlier Gun Club recordings. 

Bonus Old Man Memory: I remember when I was a kid being disappointed in the remake of "Devil of the Woods" here, having taped the original version off the radio before this record came out.

Artist: X

Album: Under the Big Black Sun
Underwhelming follow-up to: Wild Gift 

Like the Psychedelic Furs, X's first four albums form the core of their legend and are all of one piece. Also like the Furs, I find X's third album of their quadrenity to be the least essential. Which doesn't make it even close to bad, but as with many of these records, the sound didn't feel as fresh on this one as it did on Wild Gift. "Hungry Wolf" and "Riding with Mary" are indispensable, though.

Artist: UB40

Album: UB44

Underwhelming follow-up to: Present Arms

UB40 had burst of the blue in 1980 with a moody and soulful British spin on Jamaican reggae, but their dark, political approach wasn't getting any traction outside the UK -- or exactly setting the charts alight inside it. UB44 showed they'd taken their initial approach as far as it would go, and they'd get very radio friendly the following year.

Artist: Ric Ocasek

Album: Beatitude

Underwhelming follow-up to: Shake It Up

Shake It Up was a huge comeback for The Cars after the underselling and artier Panorama, but Ocasek still hadn't got those Alan Vega/Kraftwerk influences out of his system quite yet. Since Ocasek was the primary songwriter for The Cars (and Greg Hawkes is all over the place here), Beatitude sounds quite familiar. It's just got none of the freshness, hooks or excitement. 

Artist: Neil Young

Album: Trans

Underwhelming follow-up to: Re'ac'tor

Neil Young started going sideways with this weird mix of his usual self-righteous hippie bullshit and synthesized-whatever-the-fuck, replete with hyper-irritating vocoder-drenched vocals. In fact, Young would go so sideways he'd ultimately get sued by Geffen for making unsellable records.

Artist:  Squeeze

Album: Sweets from a Stranger

Underwhelming follow-up to: East Side Story

I have no dog in this particular fight, since I've never been anything but mildly interested in Squeeze, (even if I think Glenn Tilbrook is an absolutely first-class guitarist). Like its predecessor, Sweets is just more of the same old jittery New Wave pop the band was serving up all along. But also like its predecessor, Sweets featured a boring mainstream R&B track designed for US Top 40 radio. But like so much of 1982, it was all just a bit tired and rote, and didn't have nearly the same success.

Artist:  Comsat Angels

Album: Fiction

Underwhelming follow-up to: Sleep No More

Sheffield's finest were seemingly cursed from birth, and their immense talent was only equalled by their terrible luck. It didn't help that they followed up the promise of their debut LP with the pounding, uncompromising desolation of Sleep No More, an album that is as great as it is oppressively bleak. 

Fiction isn't bad at all, it's just a huge step back from the edge of the Abyss that its predecessor stood athwart.

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The Eighties may be over, but it's never too late to make
2025 the year YOU master the mysterious arts of Sync!

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