Word: halls
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cloudy mixture of fiction and fact, their dimensions expand with each prankster's tale and their history grows more fantastic. One story tells of a sly undergraduate who, dressed as a workman, avoided the winter snows by travelling to classes through the tunnels. During the 1969 occupation of University Hall, another rumor has it, Harvard administrators escaped invading protesters by fleeing through the underground passages. Once upon a time, the wrestling team jogged through the tunnels, sweating from the triple-digit temperatures, to lose weight before matches. And the stories live...
John Oates, who often writes slow and soft tunes, turns out a nice cut on Along the Red Ledge, with "Melody for a Memory." The pair make good use of string orchestration to provide a backdrop for Oates' mellow voice, echoed by a Hall falsetto. But this is typical Hall and Oates stuff, basically no different from the music on albums like Bigger than Both of Us or the less-successful Beauty on a Back Street. What distinguishes Along the Red Ledge as a worthwhile contribution to current pop music is the work that comes alive on the second side...
WITH A STRONG one-two combination, Hall and Oates team-up for a pair of punk-rock-influenced cuts. The first one, "Alley Katz," mocks the violent, socially rebellious lyrics of punk, reducing everything to a feline existence...
...Along the Red Ledge, for all its innovative passages and solid instrumental work, is a puzzling piece of music. It has almost everything, from a harmless love song called "August Day," written by Sara Allen (the subject of "Sara Smile" and a constant Hall and Oates companion and contributor), to a poor attempt at a Phil Spector rocker, called "The Last Time." There's a great orchestral work in "I Don't Wanna Lose You," a fine tune which may do well as a pop single; but the range and uneveness of the album as a whole make it almost...
...problem is that there's no real Hall and Oates sound. Not many groups can switch from a country, acoustic sound on an album like Past Times Behind to the futuristic, electronic rock of Bigger than the Both of Us. And perhaps that constant state of flux explains why Hall and Oates have never attracted a massive, fanatic following. They have some characteristic sounds; they can play formula pop or experimental rock, but not everyone likes their use of different styles of music. And Along the Red Ledge, in the end, becomes a Hall and Oates sampler, offering a little...