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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
They Left the Best 'Til Last,
By
This review is from: In Praise of Older Women & Other Crimes (Audio CD)
For years I have been checking to see if they had released this album on CD, and was wondering if they ever would. Here, in 2005, they finally did. I never understood it because to these ears this is the best album Kid Creole & the Coconuts ever made. I saw the band perform most of this album in 1986 at the tiny Trocadero in Philadelphia. Best live performance of music I have ever seen.
The album has four great cuts. Endicott was probably the groups' biggest hit, with considerable play as an MTV video. In it the Kid tries to defend himself against unfavorable comparisons to a paragon of virtue named Endicott. The band is in peak form. Particul'y Interested, in which the Kid professes love for his latest, has a massive groove that grabs you and won't quit. Take Me, my favorite song ever by the band, features the Kid being aggressively pursued. The damn thing is one non-stop hook from beginning to end, with the band providing a propulsive force to back a hilarious lyric. How this song gets left off of greatest hits and best of collections totally mystifies me. Caroline Was a Dropout is an ode to a old flame for whom things didn't turn out so well, done as only the Kid can with a mix of sadness, distain and attitude. At the time this was released, I walked around wondering why Prince was so big while Kid Creole struggled to get the recognition he so richly deserved. Listening to this, I still wonder why.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"(Darlin' You Should) Buy This",
By
This review is from: In Praise of Older Women & Other Crimes (Audio CD)
It's wonderful to see this appear on CD, as there are likely new audiences for the best stuff of Kid Creole and the Coconuts. I'd been following them since "Off The Coast Of Me" and bought this on vinyl right away. Then I bought the cassette and nearly wore it out in a year, traveling the highways of Arizona. My favorites are "Particul'y Int'rested" and "(Darlin' You Can) Take Me" (which is best played loud while cruising at 65 mph with the windows down and the AC on) and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down." Highly recommended!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Triumph Of A Free Spirit...Or Not,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: In Praise of Older Women & Other Crimes (Audio CD)
Following the completion of a three album concept with their Doppelganger a year and a half early Kid Creole & The Coconuts rebounds strongly here with an album that has a very different sort of flavor all around than what they'd done previously. Now being 1985 one might expect an album full of gated drums and rampant overproduction. Interestingly enough this album is one of the more stripped back musically for it's era-following very much in the lead of where Prince was taking music around this same time. Now that DOES NOT mean this album follows the Minneapolis sound clishes most Prince copy cats were doing at this time but rather the more stylistically broad and mildly experimental pop sound he pursued to move away from those clishes. The lyrical approch was also significantly broader too,as if it hadn't been before. The more implied wit of previous albums gave way to a more overt social commentary that forshadowed (without incitements to violence and profanity of course) the lyrical orientation of what hip-hop would do in a few years.
This albums can actually be divided into two parts: a romance oriented part and a socially consciencious one-both approching the subject matter from a contemporary and observational angle. The opening "Endicott" is a wonderful example-stomping,bass/guitar fueled funk with this melodic steel drum solo featuring the free spirited Kid Creole up against the secure-to-the-point-of-being-deadly-dull title character,who is somewhat reminiscent of the Ned Flanders character from The Simpsons and actually delighting in the fact,unlike Endicott he's "free of any major order liability". It's as much of a lyrical nod to funk itself as anything George Clinton ever did and just as infectious. The more quirkily new wavish "Particul'y Interest" finds the Kid in a very swoony state of mind whereas on the extremely slick funk-pop/jazz of "Name It",one of the best songs here actually we find the character discovering that possession isn't the way to go in love as he'll buy his girlfriend foreign videos "if they'll keep her home". The bouncy R&B styled "Darlin' Can You Take Me" and the Michael Jackson styled,breakdance worthy electrofunk groove "Luv Got Me Dancen' On My Kneez" have a more lighthearted flavor. On the other half the flavor is the flipside of romance as the more contemporary dance/rock sounding "Caroline Was A Dropout" and "The Animal Cop" explore the ills around us that tend to work against modern romance. In the former we're dealing with a non caring lady who winds up a stripper and the Kid admits he has no sympathy for because she has "the same opportunities as him" and on the latter we have a song dealing with 80's racially motivated police brutallity that takes a more witty approch than the gangsta rap crews would on similar themes. On "Dowopsalsaboprock" we have a bouncy,synth based dance number,a little more early Minneapolis sound influenced perhaps that points to the bands musical eclecticism and on the slower "He Can Have You" and the incredible big band funk flavor of the closer "You Can't Keep A Good Man Down" the kid has both rejected and finally resigned himself from love and is back on the prowell. So as the album cover of this indicates it finds the Kid Creole character,much as many men of that era dealing with the twin sides of his nature;the carnal and the conscientious. And with such a diverse array of grooves backing these creative and thoughtful lyrics up this is a very hard album to lose with.
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