…And so, Real Gone reaches the inevitable end of The Great 80s Project, but what an amazing year for music! The charts didn’t always reflect the interesting things going on, but in terms of albums, it’s a year full of wonder.
Category Archives: Miscellaneous
REAL GONE SESSIONS: Mick Terry – Big Sur
It took Mick Terry a very long time to record and release his second album ‘Days Go By’. The record started to take early form just a year after his 2010 debut ‘The Grown Ups’ and a couple of songs – ‘Pop’s A Dirty Word’ and ‘Riverbend’ – appeared online in early versions around that time.
The final record, though, seemed to have a tricky birth. Real life got in the way. Having a Transatlantic producer and differing time zones didn’t help. Eventually making its way into the world about five years later than planned, ‘Days Go By’ was worth waiting for. Each one of its tracks resembled a classically retro pop nugget; a musical love letter to AM radio artists like Andrew Gold and 10cc.
The Great 80s Project: 1986
With debut albums from Crowded House and The Housemartins standing alongside massive hits from Madonna, a-ha and Red Box, 1986 would already have a strong enough grounding to challenge 1984 as one of the decade’s finest years for music. With Huey Lewis’s ‘Fore!’ challenging 1983’s as his masterpiece, a strong AOR debut from Robert Tepper and Jackson Browne’s ‘Lives In The Balance’ channelling a very commercial sound, it was also very much a year for great Transatlantic AOR and sounds that now seem so entrenched within that decade, you can’t help but love them.
The Great 80s Project: 1985
After 1984’s gargantuan greatness with the dominance of Frankie and meteoric rise of Madonna and Prince, 1985 had a lot to measure up to. …And indeed, some have said it’s a rather more forgettable year for pop.
Beyond Redemption: An interview with Big River
2019 was a big year for UK blues rock band Big River. After a few years of tireless gigging, they’d started to make higher profile appearances. Perhaps more importantly, they finally released their debut album ‘Redemption’, a long time in the planning. We last spoke to founding guitarist Damo Fawsett four years ago, so he was keen to come back to Real Gone and fill us in on the band’s activities. This time, we got the full picture as we also got to spend time with Ant Wellman (bass), Adam Bartholomew (vocals) and Joe Martin (drums). Obviously, they’re all thrilled to bits with the response the album has gained…
***