Customer Reviews

Old Wave

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1983 Ringo Starr's album OLD WAVE came out. At that time, oddly, Starr had no record deal in the United States or even England, so OLD WAVE was released in other countries including Canada and Germany.

It's hard to understand why. Twenty years later, this Ringo Starr fan considers OLD WAVE to be the drummer's most overlooked album. More to the point, it's one of Starr's best, with no fewer than seven excellent songs: "Picture Show Life," "She's About A Mover," "Going Down," "In My Car," "As Far As We Can Go," "Alibi," and "Everybody's In A Hurry But Me." Starr's vocals are as good as he gets. Musicians including Joe Walsh, John Entwistle, Waddy Wachtel and Gary Brooker, along with Ringo, play their guts out.

In 1983 I was lucky enough to pick up the Canadian import of Ringo Starr's OLD WAVE at a record collectors show. A few years ago OLD WAVE came out on compact disc, so get it while you can. I will enjoy it for another twenty years.

This disc. originally came out in 1983.On RCA records from Canada,Germany,New Zealand,Austalia,and Isreal! It features,Eric Clapton,John Entwhisle,produced by Joe Walsh This is like having the Beatles,The Who,& The Eagles and Cream on one Disc! This is my favorite solo Ringo. Joe Walsh did a funky version of In my car on one of his solo albums. Sadly Ringo will not do any of this stuff live.This disc. should be in print always. as Ringo would say, its a classic!!! My favorite cuts are,Hopeless,I keep forgetin,As far we can go........

This really is a sadly overlooked album. This is not nearly as pop as many of his albums. The music is honest and real and not contrived. It's just good music, well writen and played, and it sounds as fresh today as it did when it first came out.

I love this cd. It is Ringo's best and worth every penny.

this is a superb album.every song is great. any ringo fan who hears this album will love it.please look for this album if you are a ringo fan.i keep forgetting is no excuse.

Hi, this album is hard to find but I heard it recently. It's worthy to note there is not much Ringo Starr material from the 80's.

The opening track 'In my car' is classic 80's with a driving keyboard riff and catchy melody. However most of the remaining track are more or less rock or country-rock with a slight 80's dance style beat. Some songs are a bit experimental with tones and partiuclarly the vocoder. One of my favourite tracks is "Be my baby" which is not a cover of the famous Ronettes song.

The final two tracks are off-kilter jams that are interesting, and drive home the point this album wasn't carefully planned or arranged, but is quite spur of the moment. It is a fun, enjoyable listen. Anyway it's not fair that so many of Ringo's albums are so hard to find, if you want to complete his discography. Hope you enjoy it when you find it.

I was able to buy "Old Wave" as an import vinyl back in 1983, and I recall being somewhat disappointed; the mix was bad and the songs odd. Never having been an Eagles fan, the presence of Joe Walsh didn't impress me either. I loved 'In My Car' and 'I Keep Forgettin', otherwise, "Old Wave" was just ok. Years later when it appeared on cd, I found myself a lot more impressed. The production still isn't any good (Ringo's vocals sound good but thin and horribly pinched) and some of the songs are still weird. But age brought a different level of understanding to what was going on here. Ringo wasn't trying to make the charts; he was just relaxing with musicians in the studio and having a really good time. It's true that nearly all of his albums are good-time works, but the 1976-1981 albums also attempted to update his sound for contemporary tastes. And while the bulk of "Bad Boy" and "Stop..." were very successful in doing so (at least artistically), often Starr sounded lost.
Not here. It's just Ringo being Ringo.
If you like Ringo, you'll like "Old Wave". Simple as that.

This is a great cd , It did not evan chart, Many never new it was put out. A must to have, t rock all the way home.

This album was produced in 1982 and released in 1983. It is a band effort. (This musical unit consisted of Ringo, Joe Walsh, Mo Foster, Gary Brooker and Chris Stainton, according to this CD's truly informative and detailed booklet.) I remember Ringo Starr going on a talk show around this time and the interviewer asked him why this was not available in the United States except as an import. Ringo's answer was "I lost my record contract."
I believe the reason this album is so little known is that it didn't come out in the United States until eleven years after its initial release. Even though it follows the typical Ringo formula of using famous musicians to back him up on every track, OLD WAVE differed from that formula in one major respect: This album sounds like musicians rocking out, not being sidemen, however excellent the sidemen were on RINGO and GOODNIGHT, VIENNA. You can hear these guys almost getting to the point of jamming. I wouldn't call any of these tracks a jam session, but there are instrumental solos of good length. Ringo's drumming here is more expressive than it is on any of his other solo albums. This sounds like a band playing in a club. It's well-recorded, by the way. I don't sense muffling or fancy editing. It has a live-in-the-studio sound. Ringo worked closely with Joe Walsh in particular here. If it's a forgotten Ringo album, it's also a forgotten Joe Walsh album.
The CD adds a song at the end from a few years earlier, very different in tone, but it has Ringo in very good voice, as does the rest of the CD.
Some of the personnel are Clapton, Entwhistle, etc., but they are not merely punching the clock. This is blues-rock.
For an album so carefully packaged (the album cover, which the CD reproduces, has Ringo photographed before he was famous, his hair combed very much the way an American rocker in about 1958 would comb it), it is amazing that legal problems so completely crushed its prospects that, even with its ultimate American release in 1994, it generated almost no industry buzz. (ICE magazine excepted. That was one of the only genuinely fun indy papers ever. I think I learned about OLD WAVE from ICE.)
This is Ringo for rockers.

It's been quite some time since I last wrote any reviews concerning the Beatles. I think I may have said that "Morse Moose and the Grey Goose" was a great song, so what does that say about me? (I still stand by that belief BTW.)
Anyway, I've been listening to a great Internet radio station called Beatles-a-Rama and heard "In My Car" today for the first time in years. I had to go back and give Old Wave a listen. Damn! It is a great album! Overlooked as others have said before me. These guys were just having a great time- you can hear it. Listen to "She's About a Mover" and it's Ringo back in the early 60s again- so happy to be in the spotlight. This is a fantastic listen!