Customer Reviews

X-Static [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED] [EXTRA TRACKS]

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of my favorite Hall and Oates albums and one of their most underappreciated. Most people will recognize Wait for Me, but won't be familiar with the rest of the album. Some of the gems included the "should have been" second single, Portable Radio. The great concert rocker Bebop/Drop and one of the coolest Hall and Oates songs they recorded, Hallofon-Intravino. The CD also includes the tough to find No Brain, No Pain and an unreleased track which almost sounds like a "sequel" to Wait for Me. Buddah did a great job on the CD and the packaging also includes some great liner notes where Daryl and John talk about the songs. Hopefully Buddha will bring out some of the other out of print CD's (Livetime, Beauty on a Back Street, Bigger Than Both of Us) with bonus tracks. Visit them at [another website] and drop them a note telling them you want more Hall and Oates.

In my opinion, this is probably Hall & Oates' best album overall (my personal favorite), and easily their most forgotten. So many good songs, such as "Wait For Me (Studio version)", "Intravino" "Woman Comes & Goes", and "Portable Radio". The disc was originally released back in the late '70s during the heyday of punk rock. It starts out sounding like standard Hall & Oates, but, track by track, it slowly "degenerates" into being a punk album by the end! Too bad this one isn't available domestically. RCA hated this disc from the beginning, along with Daryl Hall's "Sacred Songs" LP, and both were reluctantly & barely released by RCA, which probably explains why they've both been out of print in the US for close to 20 years! Definitely the most daring CD that Hall & Oates have ever released A welcome change from the usual play-it-safe Hall & Oates fare. Every song has merit. Put it on and let it degenerate before your very ears! Well worth the few extra dollars for this import.

I saw these guys perform this album live, in a small club in Albany, N.Y. in 1979 and it has been my favorite by them ever since.

Don't get the import!! This bit of dance rock has been re-released under the Buddah label with an unreleased track "Time's Up (Alone Tonight)" and "No Brain, No Pain" which is featured on the B-side of "Wait For Me" and makes its CD debut here.

"Wait For Me" and "Time's Up (Alone Tonight)" are bona fide classics.

With X-STATIC, their 1979 album, Hall and Oates got caught in the middle of a raging battle between disco and rock. They started incorporating ceratin elements of disco into their sound; however, contrary to popular belief, X-STATIC is not a disco album. It's a combination of disco and their signature rock 'n soul music. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's kind of like a mixed bag.

But X-STATIC does have its moments. The first several songs, "The Woman Comes and Goes," "Wait For Me," "Portable Radio," "All You Want Is Heaven," and "Who Said the World Is Fair," are all standouts, proving that Daryl and John can write some great songs.

But from the sixth track "Running From Paradise," its title says it all. A silly, unfocused dud, it is the worst song on the album, and, things start to fall apart from then on. It's a dry spell that even Oates's tough rocker "Bebop/Drop," and the silly but melodic charm of "Intravino" can't save. The two bonus tracks on the Buddha Records reissue of the album I have not heard; instead I have an earlier Japanese import CD.

The problem with X-STATIC lies within the overall quality of the record. The production sounds a bit on the unfocused side, and not surprisingly, it was the last Hall and Oates album to have any connection with an outside executive producer. With VOICES, however, Hall and Oates produced themselves, to a better sound, but it wasn't until PRIVATE EYES that the magic came alive.

I have had this vinyl album in my collection for years and hardly gave it an ounce of attention until I purchased the CD today. I am still trying to figure out why but that isn't important really:what is it that I realize now what an important artistic milestone this is for Hall & Oates. This album extends on the approch Hall & Oates began on their previous recording Along the Red Ledge but this had a significant advantage over that one. This album was produced by David Foster (who also produced Earth Wind & Fire's I Am the very same year) and the result is yet another gloss coat on Hall & Oates' already glossy production style. Odd thing is the style H&O were going for here. Having worked with Robert Fripp on a solo album Darryl Hall apparently had got the idea to apply that avante-garde sensability to a fusion of disco and punk rock. So....is this album in fact David Foster producing an avante-garde disco-rock?Well in a word it is and Hall & Oates are more then up to the challange. Even though it doesn't sound like them I can here people like Huey Lewis may have listen carefully to "Woman Comes And Goes",with it's gritty combo of soul/rock in about equal measures. Up next is the hit from this album "Wait For Me" which,yes as one reviewer said pretty much standard H&O fare but it's one of my favorite late 70's hits from them.Even on my old vinyl one of my favorite songs from them here is "Portable Radio"-VERY much of it's time,VERY poppy and VERY David Foster but such a compulsive dance tune I can't help but love it."All You Want Is Heaven" is another one of those coulda-been-a-hit but it never was in fact;it's much closer something present on the Private Eyes album a couple years later.The disco/bass-funk influenced tunes "Who Said The World Is Fair" and "Running From Paradise" are actually very clever both musically and lyrically for what Darryl Hall called "a period of mindless dance music",even if the duo admitted they never truely understood the disco/rock prejiduce (always emphasizing the racism and homophobia that was truly behind much of the anti disco sentiment). They also must have had The Police in mind when the influence of "reggeta de blanc" hit them pretty hard on "Number One" wheras "BeBop/Drop" shows the most obvious punk influence. The ear catching and quircky instrumental "Hallafon" and "Intravino" have a strong experimental rock elan' and sound more like the intro to a follow up then a real album closer. The two bonus cuts are very very strong and why they were'nt included on the original album is beyond me."Times Up (Alone Tonight)"....well if it had been on the album let's just say this hummable,soulful tune would've easily been the recordings second hit single. The B-Side "No Brain,No Pain" actually calls to mind the punk influence on this album. So in the end 'X-Static' is an album that pretty much got burried when it first came out-as the notes pointed out the anti disco era in which it was released probably had a lot to do with it. But in recent years,especially as the punk/70's disco-punk rock fusion has become a staple for bands such as the Scissor Sisters and Franz Ferdinand (who I imagined have both heard about this album at one time or another)this either had (or should) undergo a musical re-evaluation and seen as what it is;part of a series of sleeper influencial pop albums by many different artists in history.

In this day and age of the cd, I guess I'll have to explain what I mean by the title. In the old lp (phonograph record) days, artistes used to put the best tracks i.e. potential hits on the 'A' side and filler or not so good stuff on the 'B' side. Some good albums were so good, you couldn't tell the difference but unfortunately some weren't so good and the difference was only too obvious and sometimes there were gems in the 'B' side that were great eventhough they didn't make the charts or the 'A' side.

Well this album by H&O has an excellent 'A' side but a truly pissed poor 'B' side. The strong tracks are the first 6 while the rest are completely forgettable. Still, the attempts at disco weren't that bad with "Portable Radio" and "Who Said the World Was Fair" while the first track and "All You Want I Heaven" stand out as among the best tracks H&O have ever done.

This album is very well produced by David Foster and this version has been remastered well and comes in a mini-lp sleeve with lyrics in English and Japanese.

It's always blown my mind that H&O reached their creative peak with middle-of-the-road-Muzak-Meister David Foster at the controls. Along the Red Ledge and this album, along with DH's Sacred Songs, form a trilogy of experimental, yet really accessible works that successfully bridge the blue-eyed soul years with the piano-triplet-crazy monster hit-making machine years.

Daryl's always been a really insightful guy: his best songs tend to reflect, but never blindly follow, current and emerging trends. As a result, the finished product is always a little ahead of the curve; the pristine wall of synth sheen that graces "Wait For Me", the new-wavey "Hallofon/Intravino", and how 'bout the rock-disco leviathan that almost single-handedly presaged the DOR (dance-oriented rock) radio format, "Portable Radio"? Every single one of these songs (and extra track b-side) "Time's Up" could have been a huge hit, but for the fact that the boys were just slightly out of fashion at the end of the decade and they were working with that weird Fripp feller (who probably recharged DH's creative batteries more than any other human being he's ever worked with - buy "Exposure", pleeaaase). Fine. All the better for us edgy pop freaks who need something a little obscure to get our swerve on.

This is, hands-down, a desert island disk for the ages. Buy it.

I didn't appreciate Daryl Hall & John Oates's clever and fun "X Static" when it was released in 1979. I was too "sophisticated," listening to my Talking Heads, Graham Parker, Elvis (Costello, of course), and Ramones LPs to "get" this blending of late 70s disco and too-cool new wave.

Disco? It was 1979! Disco was dead. Hadn't they already blown up that pile of disco records at Comiskey Park? Donna Summer was a pariah. Nobody was listening to disco!

And new wave? From Hall & Oates? Get real! New wave music had to be from Brits, or too-clever art students, or leather-clad punks. C'mon. Real new wave couldn't be from a seemingly over-the-hill pop band who had sung "Sara Smile" about (what seemed like) a hundred and fifty years earlier.

"X Static" was something of a bomb on its release. Only one very mild hit (the sublime "Wait for Me"). Yet, looking back, the biggest problem with this disc -- believe it or not -- was that it was WAY ahead of its time. A year or so later, with "Heart of Glass," Blondie would effectively meld disco and new wave into a dominant pop form, followed by the New Romantic scene out of Britain that did the same thing.

In retrospect, this is a great album of dance-pop. "Running from Paradise," "Who Said the World Was Fair," and "Portable Radio" are great dance tracks. "Woman Comes and Goes" is a fun little reggae-disco fusion experiment. ("Number One," a blatant Police sound-alike, plows the same turf much less effectively.) "All You Want Is Heaven" is a nice mid-tempo track. And the CD upgrade (if you had the foresight to buy the vinyl back in the day) is worth it for the bonus tracks "Time's Up" and de-evolution influenced "No Brain, No Pain."

This Album holds it's own with the best music Hall & Oates has ever done. You should never expect artists to do the same thing over and over again and this album is way diffrent from the others. This album for me ranks as Hall & Oates big album like "Rumours" to Fleetwood Mac or Supertramps "Breakfast in America". Just because a record company doesn't promote an album doesn't mean it's not worthy of that title. I could play this album over agian and again a must have for die hard fans