Retro Spins: The Time - Ice Cream Castle

I'd been intrigued with The Time since first seeing them in Prince's Purple Rain, but never really bothered really digging into them. I then got reintroduced to them in 1990 when they appeared not only on the album soundtrack, but in the film, Graffiti Bridge - Another Prince movie. Despite enjoying their music from the film, I still never bothered to dig any deeper into them.

It wasn't until 2019 that the band would once again get on my radar, and this time I would rectify ignoring them for almost thirty-five years. In one fell swoop, I nabbed up four of their five albums; 1981's The Time, 1982's What Time Is It, 1984's Ice Cream Castle and 1990's Pandemonium. Truth be told, Ice Cream Castle was really the only one on my "want" list, but I figured I'd go ahead and just take the plunge when the opportunity arose out of the blue.

When I first played Ice Cream Castle, I actually didn't really have any intentions of listening to it. I really just wanted to sample some sounds for a few seconds to see if it was going to have potential. I clicked on track two, My Drawers, and immediately got hooked on the guitar riff. After making it about halfway through the song, I decided I'd just go back to the beginning of the album and have a full play. I'm glad I did.

The album opens with the title track, Ice Cream Castle, and oddly enough, out of all the songs on this disc, it's the one of the two I didn't care for. From there, it went into three great back to back tracks. Of course, I've already mentioned My Drawers. This was followed up by the incredibly funny spoken track, Chili Sauce, then the song Jungle Love - The song I actually wanted the album for in the first place.

Track five, If The Kid Can't Make You Come, was the second track I didn't particularly care for. However, track six, which was the last track on the album, aimed to please with The Bird.

Overall, I really like Ice Cream Castle (the album), and I look forward to digging in more to The Time. It's a shame it's taken so many years to find out what I've been missing, but hey, better late than never.

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