Customer Reviews

Fatal Charm

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

 

 

As of two weeks post WTC bombing, this is the ONLY music I can bear to listen to. Please trust me. This is a riveting album. Although most of the tracks were recorded during the late seventies, they prefigure the next two decades of popular music and cultural change. Brilliant songwriting. Performances that creep under your skin. Maybe because Lance Loud was the key character in "An American Family" -- the first "reality" show in 1973. Lance (lead singer) and Kristian Hoffman (songwriter) wrote this stuff when they were in their late teens/early 20s and amazingly, they were really THAT prescient. Anyway, if you're my age (42) and feeling as lost and isolated as you ever have in your life, please give these guys a chance to keep you company. It's like the world has just taken a sharp turn into a parallel universe and they somehow got here 25 years ago. Here's hoping more people find them...

It's really a shame how the very active NY power pop scene, which ran concurrently with late '70s punk, has been completely written out of history. Since I believe discerning listeners CAN eat more than one kind of ice cream at once, permit me to present... THE MUMPS!!

I'd forgotten how good these guys were. The late, beloved, sorely-missed Lance Loud was an absolutely delightful frontman - always stylish, always witty, always hyperkinetic, and not entirely above the odd Very Dramatic Pratfall - which, unfortunately, sometimes involved spilling booze and broken glass all over the most august record company exec or music writer in the room.

Kristian Hoffman wrote most of the songs - and they were just as elegant and meticulously crafted as the stuff he's doing now. There is much, much more to his lyrics than meets the eye: check out "Crocodile Tears", a refreshingly stomping ode to apathy - or "Dutch Boy", an utterly perfect demolition derby addressing what certain cynics might term "Cameron Crowe-ism" - the dumbed-down, cleaned-up white-bread California liberalism creeping all over both the political and musical scenes at the time. Genius at work!

I was a little worried that the production here might render a lot of the stuff unlistenable, but it doesn't. While it's definitely low-fi, you really *do* get a sense of what the Mumps were about.

Hearing the remastered versions (and seeing the DVD) will be exciting too, but this CD should tide you over until that version comes out, hopefully in April 2005.

As of two weeks post WTC bombing, this is the ONLY music I can bear to listen to. Please trust me. This is a riveting album. Although most of the tracks were recorded during the late seventies, they prefigure the next two decades of popular music and cultural change. Brilliant songwriting. Performances that creep under your skin. Maybe because Lance Loud was the key character in "An American Family" -- the first "reality" show in 1973. Lance (lead singer) and Kristian Hoffman (songwriter) wrote this stuff when they were in their late teens/early 20s and amazingly, they were really THAT prescient. Anyway, if you're my age (42) and feeling as lost and isolated as you ever have in your life, please give these guys a chance to keep you company. It's like the world has just taken a sharp turn into a parallel universe and they somehow got here 25 years ago. Here's hoping more people find them...

Lance Loud...wow where do I begin...?....I first met Lance in New York City when we were both teenagers....so I can say I knew him when...Lance was a great man.. agood guy that was a very loving person....He was, as his name is,LOUD at times....but mainly I recall the real kind hearted boy / man in his soul...I can see him walking down the streets and avenues in New York City with that unashamed flambouyant gait of his which was at many times looked on as a weakness....but in fact Lance was a man in complete command....he got things done....he went for it ....many years...I should say decades...before the phrase "GO FOR IT"...was ever coined or mentioned.... THAT is what Lance Loud was all about.... AND DO NOT YOU EVER FORGET IT...!...A boy....later a man... and always just a guy with dreams like everyone of us .... But most of all I will remember him as a man who kept the peace....in a time of turbulance.... HAIL,HAIL LANCE LOUD...HOLLYWOOD JOE (NYC and LA)