A Walk Down Memory Lane with Trollheart

[Trollheart]

Another ported thread...


A Walk Down Memory Lane with Trollheart

Now that I'm hurtling with unstoppable force towards sixty, I've started waxing nostalgic, so here is where I'm going to feature and talk about the music that was, if you will, the soundtrack to my life, or at least, the music that was on the radio, on the telly and in the charts when I was growing up, and also the records I bought once I started earning money. This period covers the late 1970s, when I would have been around twelve or so, up to the mid to late 1980s, with perhaps a little on either side, as some songs/albums from earlier periods were in vogue at the time, music that was in the charts or on the radio, but which had been recorded some time earlier. The only real criterion other than the years will be that it will be music I either liked, hated or at least was to be heard when I was of that age. I'll ramble on about whatever I can pertaining to each track, and generally I will concentrate on one song, either single or album track, in each post. Comment is invited yadda yadda you know the deal by now.

I'll also be taking the opportunity to try, if possible, to look at the tracks with the eyes of age/wisdom, to see if my opinion, good or bad, has changed about it over the course of the intervening years. I find that a lot of the scorn I had for your average pop band or even certain genres has mellowed as I have not, and a sort of defensive posture I maintained in my late teens and early twenties, as I jealously guarded my metal, AOR and prog rock and consigned all other music to the level of crap, has if not vanished at least been challenged, and sometimes grudgingly and sometimes not, it's been possible, even necessary for me to re-evaluate the way I approached much of the music that surrounded me as I grew up into the failure you know today.

So, completely at random, the first song up is this.


From the album

Title: "I've Been In Love Before"
Artist: Cutting Crew
Writer(s): Nick Van Eede
Genre: Pop
Year: 1986
Highest chart position (if applicable) 24 (UK) 9 (USA)
Album: Broadcast
Did I own it? Yes
Album, single or both? Single
Opinion then: Positive
Opinion now: Positive
These days: You might hear it on the radio very occasionally, it may crop up on the odd love songs compilation album, but generally I think it's been forgotten about, which is a pity.

It's perhaps odd that an English band should make a larger impact on the Billboard chart than they did at home, but that's exactly what happened with Cutting Crew's second single from the debut album Broadcast. After scoring a huge hit with their first, "I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight" (a song, FYI, apparently about orgasm: bet the BBC wouldn't have had them on Top of the Pops had they known!) everyone suddenly knew Cutting Crew. Oddly enough, even now I keep thinking they were Australian, don't ask me why. But for their second single, it seems the UK public weren't so interested, which I find really strange, as it's a beautiful ballad (and you know me and ballads!) with a lovely midsection that just builds up into a hell of a release (yeah, I know: memories of the lyrical matter for their first single) and though I liked "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight", I was not as blown away (shut up!) by it as I was by the follow-up.

Nobody seemed to agree, or still does. If you mention Cutting Crew these days, anyone who still remembers them remembers the first hit single - not that surprising really, as it did get to number 4 here, and all the way to the top in the USA - but there are few if any people who can tell you what their second single was, and in fact the larger percentage of people, I would be prepared to bet, probably think Cutting Crew were a one-hit wonder. And yet they wrote a sumptuous ballad which was criminally ignored here (okay, top thirty is not exactly being criminally ignored, fair enough, but it's hardly top five, is it?) and let sink down into the depths of musical history, to be forgotten forever. Meanwhile, "I Just Died" continues to be occasionally played, while DJs no doubt grin and opine "That's Cutting Crew, from 1986, with their only hit single. Wonder what happened to them?"

Well, the answer is that they had four more albums, with over ten years between their third, fourth and final, not a single one of which even touched the charts on either side of the water, and indeed even their "breakthrough" album, the aforementioned debut, barely dented the British top 40 (coming in at 41 and going no further) while it did respectable business in the USA, reaching number 16, going Gold there and Silver in the land of their birth. No more singles were ever released, or if they were, there were certainly no more hits, and I guess in many ways you could say their first Broadcast was their last.

Or, if you want to be really smart (and who doesn't) you could also make the case that in the end, they just died in your arms tonight. None of which takes from the splendour and majesty of their second single, which will forever remain for me the superior of the two, even if it is now completely forgotten and ignored by everyone.

Welcome to my world!