Rare Record Reviews - 70s/80s Albums and Singles Reviewed That You Might Not Know (And Some You Do)

Greetings music seekers,  I thought it fitting to start my new blog that I'm running (with a pseudonym) with a review of an album by Chris Rea, where the title and the title track parody a pseudonym the record company wanted to give him, "Benny Santini", to sound more exciting. That track was also the first one I heard from the album, and got me into it and Chris's music.   Introduction The album is one I really like ; debut albums can be snoozers where an artist finds his feet, and while there is some of that present, particularly on the second side (half) of the album, the majority shows a man who has been in the music scene for a time and wasn't completely green. (Rea had in fact released his first single as early as 1975, and been in a TV-show winning band called the "Beautiful Losers", but ultimately didn't amount to anything, with all but one member of that group forming Rea's backing band for his first few albums.) +'s The most pleasin...

Hey there, music seekers -  This is "James Solway" - well it isn't, as that's my pseudonym for this blog for legal precautionary reasons, but you get the idea - and welcome to my music blog, "Rare Record Reviews".  I've made this blog to hopefully shed some light on lesser known albums and singles from the 70s and 80s (and occasionally outside those golden years), whether commercially successful or not in their day, which regardless in my opinion did not get their fair dues as works of art. In terms of works of art, I regard strong music in two ways: - Lyrically significant , in terms of great storytelling or wisdom sharing, or simply lyrics cleverly written - Musically significant , in terms of outstanding musicianship or groundbreaking sound, or simply a pleasure to listen to Occasionally a third category, production significant , is used for music with amazing production values where the content may be more of average quality but the sound is sculpte...