Customer Reviews

Dollar Album

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album has finally been released on CD almost 28 years after it's debut. It's given a good reissue by Cherry Red, is faithfully remastered and packaged superbly. Fans have been campaigning to get this on CD for the longest time and must be thrilled with this good value effort containing 6 rare bonus tracks.

Thing is, 'The Dollar Album' is one of those albums that isn't as good as you remember it... Much publicity at the time was attatched to the involvement of Trevor Horn who wrote and produced 4 tracks. He is truly the album's saving grace and his songs; 'Hand Held In Black And White', 'Mirror Mirror', 'Give Me Back My Heart' and 'Videotheque' are uniformly superb.

Thing is, there are 8 other David Van Day and Thereza Bazar penned and produced tracks! The duo had written some of the songs on their excellent first album, 'Shooting Stars' in 1979, but this is definitely too much of a good thing with the majority of the tracks trying to ape Horn's style but are let down by dreadful lyrics and weak production that exposes the often quite poor vocals. It's not as bad as the preceding 'The Paris Collection' album and the songs are catchy but there was far superior pop music around at the time and it's not hard to see why 'The Dollar Album' became their final album.

After this LP, the duo quickly split and attempted unsuccessful solo careers before embarking on a series of increasingly embarrassing 'reunions' that continue pretty much to this day.

Saddled with a cheesy, blatantly fake image, Dollar would always have to work extra hard to make sure their music stood out and they clearly weren't up to it. I think their mistake was trying to do too much. They weren't experienced or talented enough to write and produce whole albums themselves and while 'The Dollar Album' is probably their biggest selling and best remembered LP, it's the aforementioned Chris Neil produced 'Shooting Stars' album that for me is their peak.