🎵 AotW Payola$ - NO STRANGER TO DANGER (SP-4908)

[LPJim]

Payola$
NO STRANGER TO DANGER
A&M SP-4908

Paul Hyde - vocals & guitars
Bob Rock - guitars & vocals; front cover concept
Lawrence Wilkins - bass
Christopher Taylor - drums
Mick Ronson - keyboards, vocals & producer

SIDE ONE

Romance 3:23
Eyes of a Stranger 4:54
Some Old Song 3:37
Rose (Paul Hyde) 3:59
Hastings Street 4:59

SIDE TWO

Youth 4:17
Lights to Change 2:27
Mystery to Me 3:04
Pennies Into Gold 3:06
Screaming 4:09
Rockers 2:46

All songs written by Hyde & Rock except as indicated
Published by Blotch Music/Irving Music BMI
Art Direction by David Andoff/ Front Cover Photo by Matthew Wiley

Guest musicians: Trisha Hawkins (vocals), Christopher Taylor (drums)

Released 1982

JB

 

[AM Matt]

Got the Payola$ "20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection" (Canadian Import)!! Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[jfiedler17]

Tried this album on a whim last year when I found it in a bin of 25-cent LPs at a flea market last year - knew nothing about the band, but I'll try most anything with the A&M logo on it, so I gave it a shot and quite liked the album. My favorite cuts are the two opening cuts, "Romance" and "Eyes of a Stranger."

 

[Rudy]

Bob Rock would later go on to much greater fame, as a producer. He worked on, among many other things, Metallica's self-titled breakthrough album (the one with "Enter Sandman", "Sad But True" and "Wherever I May Roam"). It's interesting to see their work earlier in their careers.

 

[dostros]

There are several references here and there to the band having been pushed into changing their name in an attempt to break through in the States. I've found a pretty good explanation of what happened:

"A&M (and the band) was disappointed that the album had made little headway south of the border and speculated that American radio stations, still sensitive to the earlier (payola) scandals, were snubbing them due to their name. The band did not want to drop their name, familiar now to Canadian fans, so a compromise was settled upon and their next album introduced them as Paul Hyde and The Payola$. The group was asked to change musical direction as well, shifting from new wave into more commercially-accessible mainstream pop. Big name Canadian producer David Foster was brought onboard to produce the album, Here’s the World For Ya (1985). Although the title-track and two additional singles released proved that the band and producer had delivered the goods, the album was a failure and many loyal fans of the band were lost in the shuffle. The band was up to its wits end in having to compromise themselves musically and had a falling out with A&M."

http://musiccanada.wordpress.com/tag/paul-hyde-and-the-payolas/

 

[jfiedler17]

Yeah, I've never heard the full World For Ya album, but I've got a 45 of the "You're the Only Love" single and it's got a radically - and I mean radically - different sound from anything on this AOTW - almost soft-rock, really. It's certainly not a bad record based on its own merits, but it's incredibly jarring to hear it back-to-back with "Eyes of a Stranger" (which is actually its B-side, bizarrely enough; I mean, the two songs sound absolutely nothing alike) and listen to how they mutated overnight from being a new-wave/alternative group to sounding more akin to, say, Franke & the Knockouts or Little River Band than their old selves. I can see why more hardcore fans would have bailed out at that point.

It's been nice to see Rock make such a name for himself as a producer since then, though. He's most famous for his work with Metallica, as you mentioned, but his range as a producer is unreal. It's always amazing to me to see a producer swing from one genre to another with equal skill, so it's fun to see him go from producing a hard-rock album like something by The Cult or Bush or Motley Crue to helming a Michael Buble album. (I think Rock has actually helmed the last four Buble albums, if memory serves me right.) That's impressive.