Word: fab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Remember the Pre-Fab Four of 20 years ago, those insufferably cute kids who were selected, packaged and relentlessly promoted as TV's answer to the Beatles? Then you may also recall that despite a nearly total absence of musical talent, David Jones, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and Mickey Dolenz, the Monkees, confounded the critics and rock snobs by turning out a fresh, funny show and some major hits, including I'm a Believer and Last Train to Clarksville. Now three of the four -- minus Nesmith, a film producer who, says Dolenz, "isn't into it anymore...
...have been compared to the Beatles, flatteringly but predictably. Anytime a band comes along that has an act full of fun, a songbook full of tunes with enough hooks to put in a tackle box and a sensual appeal that is insinuating and disarming at once, the Fab Four get trotted out like some handy musical yardstick for measuring progress and promise. No fair. The Bangles are a long way from Ticket to Ride, never mind In My Life. It is still early in the tour--their first as U.S. headliners--but the accomplishment of their guitar playing...
...Tutti stem from the fact that Squeeze put the LP together in the studio before trying their stuff out live. If the songs on this record had begun as live riffs, spontaneous bits of popish nonsense in the best Squeeze tradition, they might have gone somewhere. Rather, the Fab-Four-that-almost-was (they're actually five now) worked very hard on pulling off a masterpiece in the sterile confines of an airless studio. The result doesn't snap, it rarely crackles, and it never pops...
...real world. I took a course in Zen once, but it didn't help me deal with the real world. Climbing the hill. I kept seeing people in laundromats, throwing lint on the floor, people pushing other people in the aisles in the frantic search for New Wonder Fab Cereal, people running each other over with Pacers. Datsuns and Mercedes Benzes...
...cuts on Marshall Crenshaw are positively eerie. "Soldier of Love" might very well be a track the Fab Four couldn't find room for on Beatles '65. "The Usual Thing" sounds strikingly like the Everly Brothers. But Crenshaw has done more than just successfully emulate his illustrious forebears. Rather, he is their logical successor, the latest link in an exquisite chain that began with Holly, hooked around Liverpool, latched onto California and then began to rust...