Customer Reviews

Plan B

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am an old fan of Huey Lewis. However I must confess I had almost forgotten him with the years. I recently rediscovered him watching again "Back to the future" with my young daughters (for them it was the first time and a shock !). Wanting to listen to Huey again (and to the News !) I bought Fore and Sports. My pleasure to hear them again was so great that after some hesitation I bought Plan B, finally convinced by the very good reviews written in Amazon. It was a right decision. After so much time the risk to have a kind of ersatz (only just efficient to recall you the good old time) was strong like it was often the case with many groups and singers. But not with Huey Lewis and the News ! The disc is excellent, full of joyful energy (I was always fascinated by the energy of Huey and his unique voice and this energy remains intact) and could have been, however, a little bit longer. It's almost incredible to make such good music - which sounds so "classical", so ageless - so many years after. Songs like "When I write the book", "Thank you # 19" or "Let her go and start over" (wonderful backing vocals) - but all the titles can be quoted - could have been written twenty years ago and, for me, it's a compliment. Last precision: my daughters (12 and 6) like Plan B as much as Fore or Sports. And I swear it, without any constraint !

It's been years since Huey Lewis and the News have released an album and the wait is worth it. There have been some changes in the band since the last release with the addition of the horn section (Marvin McFadden on trumpet, Ron Stallings on tenor sax, and Rob Sudduth on tenor & baritone sax) and John Pierce has replaced Mario "Dracula" Cippolina on bass. In addition, guitarist Chris Hayes is on the album, but is no longer on the tour, ably replaced by Stef Burns.

The album kicks off with a party song of We're Not Here For A Long Time (We're Here For A Good Time). The people hollering at the beginning remind me of the beginning of Bruce Springsteen's Sherry Darling. It's a fast mover with Sean Hopper's organ intro. It's pace is fast moving and the band is tight. My Other Woman is reminiscent of Bruce's Tenth Avenue Freezeout with the horns, but a slower pace. The main line in the song is "my other woman's got another man". I Ain't Perfect is extremely tight with a Steely Dan/Al Green feel. Hayes plays some good bluesy guitar and Pierce's bass playing is excellent. Next is a cover of Rockpile's When I Write The Book, back in 1980. This has a good arrangement and the sound is fresh. The momentum is very strong at the end of the song. I'm Not In Love Yet features a duet with Wynona and brings up memories of Huey's duet with Gwyneth Paltrow in Cruising Together. This definetely has a crossover of R & B/country and works well. Thank You #19 is once again played in tight fashion with Pierce's bass driving the tune. In addition, Hayes shines on the guitar. References are made in the song to Marvin Gaye and Sam & Dave. Very soulful tune and reminds me of Sly and the Family Stone.

The title tune, Plan B follows with a mixture of blues and jazz. The band sounds as if they're the band on Letterman. This song has a little bit of Donald Fagen's Ruby Baby and the song fades away with a sax solo. The Rhythm Ranch has a Little Feat/Bruce Hornsby feel and the song closes with a good harmonica solo by Huey. Let Her Go And Start Over reminds me of The Band's The Weight and once again features Huey on the harmonica. I Never Think About You is tight and is Southside Johnny-like. A nice organ solo by guest Jack Jacobsen is featured. Hayes tears away on the guitar at the end with the horn section behind him. A stronger version than the one on the Time Flies album, So Little Kindness is sharper and more energetic and is a good album closer.

It's good to see Huey Lewis and The News perform so well after all these years. They've been one of my favorite since the first album and saw them last Saturday night in Mahwah, NJ. Also, the contributions of keyboardist Sean Hopper, guitarist/sax player Johnny Colla, and drummer Billy Gibson are an asset to the band. In addition, they've given us great harmonies and continue to do so. When I mention the songs sounding like other songs, they are by no means copies because Huey Lewis and The News have their own sound. Keep up the good work and come back to Mahwah. Also, a great album cover with combo of election buttons and buttons of Huey and the News.

If you've heard that Huey is doin' the swing thing now, and have steared clear, well you better not. This group is as great or better than in their hit heyday. We saw them live, and were totally blown away!! One of the best shows ever!!! The record is just as good. This is a pure classic.

In the can for some time, and only recently released through Silvertone Records, a division of Jive, "Plan B" is a solid release that's more faithful to the News' R&B-flavored blues-pop that's been entertaining audiences for years.

After a disheartening handful of new songs on Huey's 1996 "Time Flies" collection that seemed to suggest Lewis & Co. were chasing a pop landscape they could never catch up with, this return to roots is a breath of fresh air. Lewis' vocals are strong and assured, the band is playful and focused, and the songs are good. "Plan B" is the kind of album that goes down so smoothly, it's surprising when it actually ends. By the way, that's good.

Several tracks are stand-outs: "We're Not Here For A Long Time" is a rouser, and a perfect way to kick off the album. "Plan B" and "The Rhythm Ranch" are catchy foot-stompers. "So Little Kindness" is a reworked song from "Time Flies" that actually becomes a much better song AFTER it's inclusion on a Greatest Hits album!

The Wynonna duet is a nice ballad, and makes one wonder why the recent hit remake of "Cruisin'" with Gwyneth Paltrow was excluded. Finally, "My Other Woman" is almost a send-up of achy-breaky country songs while keeping tongue firmly in cheek.

Will this set any sales records? Of course not. Despite being released from the same parent house of *Nsnyc and Britney Spears, there's simply no support from the home office. But for the true Huey Lewis fans who can separate one of the hardest working bands of the past two decades from their Top 40 fortunes, this is an album long overdue.

I am 22 and have been following the career of Huey Lewis and the News for almost my entire life, and after waiting 10 years for a new CD of new material (I'm not counting the "Fore Scores" and "Time Flies" albums) and I have to say that this was well worth the wait. The band gets back to it's basics, sounding more like the R&B bar band that they started out as instead of the pop rockers that they would become famous for. Not that the pop sound isn't there, because it is! The album sounds like something that was written in the 1950s-early 1960s, but recorded just recently. All the sounds are strong, sounds great, and I really can not name one song on here that is bad! The soon-to-be anthem of the band, "We're Not Here For a Long Time (But A Good Time)," kicks the album off. The title and the song says it all: they're not here for a long time, but how can you not have a good time hearing this!!! Wynonna Judd makes a wonderful appearance singing a duet with Huey on "I'm Not In Love Yet," and the band redoes "So Little Kindness" from the Times Flies album with a much stronger feeling.

I can not stress enough that any fan of Huey Lewis and the News, or of rock or R&B will enjoy this album. It's a well-constructed, well-rounded production all around. Was it worth the wait of 10 years for new Huey stuff? I can not start to stress that yes it was!!!! Now starts the waiting period for more Huey and the Boys :)

Thank God. Heuy is back! Huey Lewis and the News' latest effort is more like Huey solo than the band stuff that has been
rockin' like SPORTS and FORE, but it is enjoyable nice rhythm and blues one. Plan B the title is brilliant. Probably Huey want to do something different from 80's commercial pop style.
Released from pressure to sell well during 80s he searches for what he really want to do. That's rhythm and blues good ol' rock and soul. Recommendable tracks include Thank You #19. When I Write The Book, Plan B. It may take some to sink in.
Recommended for wide range of mainstream American music fans.

This is a great CD! Don't let the lack of the band's success as of late scare you away into checking out their post-"Fore!" music. Their sound stayed the same and they kept making great blues/rock fusion music, the musical tastes of the public around them just changed. This CD is great if you are a Huey fan from way back or are just getting into them or simply like good ol' rock and roll. Standout cuts are tracks 1, 4, 5 and 11. I highly recommend this! Enjoy!

This album is fantastic the ten year wait (although too long) was well worth it. The first track sounds like it has been lifted off the Picture This album and at first you think they are going to tread old ground but when you here track 2 'My other woman has another man' you then know your in for a real treat.'I aint perfect' is a classic and the tracks that follow 4 5 6 just complement one another greatly. The title song 'Plan B just takes you back to the time when Huey and the News dominated everything.My personal favourite 'The rhythm ranch, has me singing away as if the song is already an old classic tracks 9 10 11 are equaly as good. This album is a soul searching album about relationships and love not at all like the rubbish these new bands are pumping out, you know you are going to sit back and enjoy this album. The change to R n B is not too bad but you can tell at the heart of every song there is rock n roll. Buy it you will love it.

First, this is a step in the right direction. It's quite a bit better than the last album of HLN originals, "Hard at Play." They have installed a permanent horn section (though a lot of their problems still lie in this area), recaptured some of the groove from the time they were turning out absolutely unbelievable songs in the 80s, and retained some of the retro-50's sound from "Four Chords." A few songs might be single-worthy (though it's hard to imagine exactly what radio stations will go for them nowadays). The album started off with a good sales rating on Amazon; it will get back some old fans and might win some new ones.

Which is good. Because I care about this band. They're so damn talented -- they represent a kind of band-wide, multi-tasking kind of talent that no popular groups or performers right now can match. If you see them perform live, you can see the talent is still there, mostly. But they're still not capturing it, and to me at least it's pretty clear where the problems are.

There are two great things about Huey Lewis and the News: Huey, and the News. Sounds obvious -- but it's a good way to break down the band's fix-able weaknesses. Now, in no particular order,

Huey issues:

Range -- Aside from a couple of spots, the songs all have Huey mostly dinking around the middle of his range. Might sound like a minor issue, but it's one of the first things that struck me about these songs. Most of the older hits all have Huey at some crucial climactic moment reaching (successfully) to the top of his range -- and it's a beautiful thing.

Songwriting -- A few songs (Thank You #19 and I Never Think About You) are truly forgetable and seem aimless. A number of others -- the rest of tracks 3 through 8 -- are just mediocre, with the exception, perhaps, of Plan B (they do a fine job with a blues tune). Notably absent is the power ballad, which used to be an HLN strength (e.g. Stuck with You, even World to Me on "Small World"). One song comes close -- Let Her Go and Start Over. But it's one of two songs on the album written by someone other than Huey. The songs are better than Hard at Play -- and there's nothing totally brainless like that album's "Do You Love Me or What?" Tracks 1 and 2 here are quality. "So Little Kindness is fine," though it still suffers from arrangement problems (see below). But if the well is drying up, maybe it's time to reach beyond the band more often for song material...

Harmonica -- why are they so shy about featuring the harp on studio albums? The guy's a respectable harmonica player -- use that sound more than a few bars once an album.

Then, equally important, there's the News:

Horn arrangements -- So they finally made horns actual members of the band. Formal recognition that horns are crucial to the HLN sound -- it's about time. But the arrangements aren't doing justice to this decision. The wonderful thing about the Tower of Power horns (well, one wonderful thing) was that their horn lines were so often *polyphonic* -- it was rich and exciting, and crafting new arrangements took a little time so it was something listeners couldn't get from a lot of other bands. So why do horns on HLN songs now spend so much time playing in unison? You've got four horns, for crying out loud -- use 'em! This was the problem with the first version of So Little Kindness, for example -- and they haven't fixed it this time around. The horns do form occasional chords, and the unison lines are not exactly bad, but it just sounds thin. To me, this stands out as a major weakness in the HLN sound.

Harmony vocals -- this is the other. This is what I mean by multi-tasking skill. All these guys can sing. Harmony vocals in classic HLN were three, four, maybe five parts. In some of its greatest moments, the band and Huey sang to each other. Few other bands put as much care into arrangements, and even fewer could pull it off so brilliantly. Now we're lucky to get an occasional duet vocal -- when it happens it's one of the things that helps My Other Woman and Let Her Go and Start Over click. Good lord -- horns and harmony vocals are what make the News one of the greatest bands of all time. Bring 'em back!!

Sax solos -- I counted one of any substance on this album. No wonder there were rumors Johnny Colla was thinking of leaving the band -- he's totally underutilized. Why bands choose to mostly save their sax players for live shows is a mystery to me. His solos featured in so many of the best songs -- Trouble in Paradise, Do You Believe in Love, Is it Me, Heart of Rock 'n' Roll, Hip to Be Square.

Bass -- I don't know what the story is, but the band lost Mario Cipollina and he's been replaced by John Pierce. And you notice it. Cipollina might have gone underappreciated before, but there's a definite lack of bass presence here. The lines are simple, wallpaper. It makes one appreciate how much life Cipollina subtly gave HLN songs through his bass. Pierce should study up and see how he can inject some of that style in to the new songs.

And that concludes the list of weaknesses that struck me as I listened to Plan B. But I hope it's clear I think this band is far, far from washed up. The songwriting problem is a bit more tricky, but in my view so much of what ails them is just mechanical -- a matter of music arrangements and priorities.

This is easily the longest review I've written. With any luck, it might actually reach the band -- because I care about the sound and the tradition, but I also seriously believe they've still got a real future. They still represent the greatest traditions of American pop.

This has the classic HL&TN's sound and has several great tracks on it. It is good to see that the boys still got it.