Rolling Stones - Too Tough (1983)
The first of two lost Rock hits honoring Birthday Boy Keith Richards, who turned 69 today. This track, an underrated one, IMO, was the third track from the
Undercover LP to receive heavy AOR airplay -- "Undercover Of The Night" and "She Was Hot" were the others.
< < < < Caution >>>>
PG 13 Rated track ahead.
Rolling Stones - Little T & A (1981)
IMO, the best of the Rock hits from the
Tattoo You album. It is also one of only two Rolling Stones rock hits, "Happy" the other, featuring Keith Richards singing lead. Along with the aforementioned "Too Tough", it remains one of my favorite Stones tracks of the 80's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c-PW2VNLGo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqD--BNBmtI
Robin Trower - Tear It Up (1988)
The last big AOR hit for former Procal Harum guitarist and songwriter Robin Trower, who is best known for several 70's AOR hits including "Bridge Of Sighs" and "Too Rolling Stoned". This track from the
Take What You Need CD features Davey Patterson, formerly of the late Ronnie Montrose's band Gamma, singing lead.
Mr. Mister - Is It Love (1986)
The third -- and least likely to be remembered -- Pop/AOR hit from the
Welcome To The Real World album. While "Broken Wings" and "Kyrie" received most of the attention, this track appealed to me more because it is a little more harder-edged sounding. The band never replicated their success and ultimately broke up in 1990.
Fun fact: When the first Mr. Mister album, I Wear the Face, was released by RCA Records in 1984, lead singer Richard Page was offered the chance to replace Bobby Kimball as lead singer of Toto, and later was offered Peter Cetera's place in Chicago; he refused both offers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jgzAIg2cg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XamLT4cNKv8
Cool For August - Don't Wanna Be Here (1997)
The first of only three AOR hits for this band -- all from the
Grand World CD. Much like previous entry Screaming Trees, Cool For August suffered from lack of Record Label support/Commercial push and drifted out of the picture. As gilpdawg stated in an earlier post in this thread, many 90's bands suffered the same fate.
Sneaker - Don't Let Me In (1982)
This AOR one-hit-wonder of the week was written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of
Steely Dan, but never recorded as a Steely Dan track. It was/is catchy enough to make me wonder if wouldn't have been another hit for Steely Dan. The band Sneaker, interestingly enough, was named after the Steely Dan track "Bad Sneakers".
Sneaker was also a Pop one-hit-wonder, but not for this track. Their Pop hit "More Than Just The Two Of Us" -- IMO, really wimpy -- was custom written for Lite F.M Radio long before that format even existed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFpkggBQpO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJiipCGs3M
As always, Rock On, Redszone!
Adieu from R4Blue.