The Motels was a group from the 80's that I really didn't pay attention to. They had a couple hits, and those were okay. However, invested in their albums or overall music careers, I was not.
As I built up my music collection, I decided to add their 1982 and 1983 albums to my massive CD pile. For my purposes, that was more than enough, and remained so for quite some time.
It was during a local used CD shop peruse that I came across their album, Shock. I knew nothing about any of the songs on it, and at $13.99, wasn't sold on grabbing it. However, for some reason, the cover intrigued me enough to carry it around with me while I continued to look. I ultimately ended up grabbing it, and quite frankly, I'm glad I did.
As it turns out, Shock was the last album from the group to be released in the 80's, as after its release, lead singer, Martha Davis, went solo. She released an album in 1987, which was not well received, and by 1989 asked her record label to be released from her contract. With the exception of a few contributions to soundtracks, and a cameo appearance in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, she relatively disappeared from the spotlight for the better part of a decade.
Davis re-emerged in 1997, and toured as a new incarnation of The Motels. However, she wouldn't release a new solo album until 2004, and it wouldn't be until 2007 that a new Motels album would be released. Neither were critical successes.
Since then, the band has continued to chug along, releasing a handful of albums up through 2018. However, they never seemed to recapture that moment in time from the 80's where they found steady rotation on radio stations, and more important were, well, relevant, for lack of a better word.
Turning on Shock, I was caught off guard by the title track, which immediately had my attention. This was followed by Shame, which I equally enjoyed. What this also did was set my expectations incredibly high for this album. An expectation that while it wasn't met, I still wasn't left disappointed.
As a whole, Shock was a decent play session. Though I only ended up grabbing three tracks for my shuffle, the two above plus, Icy Red, I also didn't hear anything that I would say was "bad". It was an enjoyable forty-four minute session.
I think the title track may very well be my favorite song from The Motels. As I've said many times, I love finding new stuff, and not only did Shock provide this, but it intrigued me enough to go back to their previous two albums I've already heard to double check them for treasures I may have missed.
And with that said, that's what I'm off to do.
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS January 5, 1980 |
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS January 5, 1985 |
I had to look them up because I thought they sang a song in "Streets of Fire"- I was wrong, but Only the Lonely and Suddenly Last Summer were great songs. Cool that you added the Billboard chart from this week in history. Have you ever seen or listened to the soundtrack of "Streets of Fire?"
ReplyDeleteI bought the Streets of Fire soundtrack when you told me about it. Some nice hidden gems on that.
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