Showing posts with label John Parr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Parr. Show all posts

Retro Spins: John Parr - Running The Endless Mile



When I first listened to John Parr's self titled 1984 album, I was immediately hooked, and tracked down his follow up, Running The Endless Mile. However, in between listening to that album and this one, I faced a problem I've been running into as of late. What I've found is that songs I said were good, and got added to my shuffles, I skip over every time when they come around. I listen to a few seconds, and then say, "Meh," and move on. This happened with a lot of tracks from John Parr's first album. The only two I listen to these days are Naughty Naughty and St. Elmo's Fire, the latter of which I can hear from the actual soundtrack.

This has caused me to take a step back. Mind you, I'm still going to denote songs which stood out for me in my listening sessions. However, I'm going to try and be a little more picky, so to speak, on what I'm saying is "good".

With that out of the way, let me jump in.

Right off the bat, I recognized the song Two Hearts, which is apparently from the film, American Anthem. I honestly don't know why this song feels familiar. I've never seen the actual film, and I can't recall ever hearing it on the radio.

A quick search of the top forty charts from 1986 and 1987 only showed one track from the album actually touching the charts. That was Blame It On Radio. That song appeared at number eighty eight in December. However, by the following week it had dropped off completely. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't know how or when I heard the song, Two Hearts.

Overall, I like John Parr's voice, but I'm not necessarily feeling the songs themselves. They're just okay. It was interesting how the tracks which were noted as being from films seemed to be "better" than those specifically written for the album. Definitely not as interested in hearing more John Parr at this point as I was after hearing his first one.

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Retro Spins: John Parr - John Parr



John Parr
John Parr
1984

Wow! What a solid album!

I've always liked the song Naughty Naughty from John Parr, but I was hesitant to pick up the self titled album in recent years because it hovers around $50.00! It wasn't until ebay sent me a recent promotional coupon which gave me $15.00 off of a purchase that I revisited the album and stomached the purchase - $35.00 is still quite expensive for an album you want one song off of.

Well, I'm happy to report that this turned out to be a well worth it purchase! I loved this album!

Out of the nine tracks - ten if you count that it's technically the 1985 re-issue - I nabbed seven songs from it for my iPod. I don't know what it was about this album, but it just grabbed me with pretty much every song. I enjoyed it so much that I immediately went to ebay to find Parr's follow up album, "Running the Endless Mile" which was far more reasonable in price, but which admittedly I don't know any of the songs from. Yup, it was so good it left me wanting more. I love hearing albums like that.

Let me backtrack a second here and go back to what I said above. I mentioned this particular version was the 1985 re-issue with an extra track which just so happened to be Parr's hit, St. Elmo's Fire. While I love this song, I already have it from the actual soundtrack. As such, I didn't transfer it to my iPod since it was already there.

It's unfortunate that Naughty Naughty was the real only hit for Parr off of the album and even then it didn't necessarily blow people away making it to only number twenty-three on the charts by March of 1985. Magical debuted on the charts in April, but lasted for only one week. It wouldn't be until St. Elmo's Fire that Parr would finally get the number one hit he deserved. Sure, you could technically say it was from the album since it was packed onto it and re-released when it became such a massive success.

For what it's worth, I highly recommend the album to everyone. However, the steep buy in price may be enough to deter people from wanting to track this one down - Which is a shame that it costs so much because so many people may be missing out as a result.

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