Wendy Waldman (don't worry, she's not dead)

[Mike Blakesley]

Any Wendy Waldman fans out there? I've enjoyed her music ever since discovering her via a Rolling Stone review of her album Strange Company. The review called it "a nearly perfect LP" so I had to give it a listen. It was produced by Mike Flicker, who had been working with Heart, so it had a nice rock edge. I like a lot of her other albums but that's my favorite.

Yesterday thru Facebook I learned that she has released two long-out-of-print CDs, Which Way To Main Street and Letters Home. They are both available at her website, wendywaldman.com.

Which Way was produced by Eddie Kramer who did some work with Kiss among others. The album has a "tougher" sound than any of her other albums. It has some terrific songs, including the original version of "Heartbeat" which was later made famous by Don Johnson, and my favorite, a rocker called "Fighting It Out in the Heart of the City."

Letters Home is more typical Waldman fare, kind of country-rock-ish. It has some outstanding tracks as well, with the title tune being a favorite.

Anyway....I've been looking for both of these for quite a while so it was a real nice surprise to see they're finally available, and not as downloads!

 

[Harry]

I would have bet money that I owned something or other by Wendy Waldman, but unless its buried in the closet with some old "basement" records, I see nothing in the collection.

Working for a soft-rock station for many years, I'm sure they played something by Ms. Waldman, but I can't recall what that would have been.

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I don't think she ever really had any hits under her own name, but she has a lot of hit songs recorded by other artists. She has one of those instantly-recognizable voices.

 

[JMK]

I loved Wendy growing up and always considered "Gypsy Symphony" one of the unsung glories of the singer-songwriter era (it's available through Collector's Choice IIRC). Wendy did have one minor chart hit of her own, "Long Hot Summer Nights," which got a *lot* of airplay in Portland and I was actually surprised when I got my first set of Whitburns to see that it hadn't really charted all that high (somewhere in the 70s of the Hot 100 IIRC). BTW, for you trivia fans: Wendy is the daughter of Fred Steiner, who wrote the iconic Perry Mason Theme. Fred died not too long ago.

 

[Brasil_66_Fan]

I believe Wendy did quite a bit of backup vocals for various artists such as Linda Ronstadt; I have on VHS an HBO concert of Linda from the early or mid '80s with Wendy as her only female backup, so she's been around for a while.....

 

[JMK]

Wendy was around long before the 80s as a solo artist, and her tunes were covered as early as the early 70s ("Mad Mad Me" by Maria Muldaur springs to mind, but there are probably others). I'm pretty sure her first Warner albums are all from the early to mid 70s, but I'd have to check.

 

[JMK]

Wendy's biggest hit is probably "Save the Best for Last" (which she co-wrote), made famous by Vanessa Williams.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Well it's time for a little "consumer advisory" here. I got my copy of the new CD release of Which Way to Main Street and while it's a great album as always, the CD release of it is terrible.

The CD is actually a CD-R with what looks like an ink-jet printed label (printed directly onto the CD). It does come autographed, which is a nice touch.

The audio quality is not good at all. It's obviously from an LP copy -- you can hear surface noise and the occasional "tick." Some of the fadeouts are chopped off and/or sloppily done. The whole thing has sort of a flat, muddy quality to it. The dynamic range has been squashed. Worse, the audio has been run through some kind of volume-limiter/equalizer which does weird things to the sound --- for example, on the opening of "Fighting It Out in the Heart of the City," the song starts with some guitar riffing and then a couple of bars in, the drums come crashing in. When the drums come in, you can hear the guitars quickly drop drastically in volume. It wasn't like that on the original record. There are other examples throughout the album. I think I could have gotten a better transfer by seeking out a sealed LP and doing the job myself.

Finally, the packaging. It comes in an unsealed jewel box and there is no tray card. The booklet is just a single-folded sheet containing an exact copy of the album cover -- with the backside type too tiny to read. None of the above would have been a big deal to me because I know this is a low-budget, self-marketed thing...but it could have been done better and would have been forgiven if the audio had been good.

After listening to the album I put on a different Waldman CD, Strange Company, which had a genuine record-label reissue a few years ago. What a difference! The vocals were crisp and clear and the sound was tremendous.

So...as much as I like the Main Street album, I have to say - buyer beware. I will go back to waiting for a proper remaster (which will probably never happen...this is the Summertime of Wendy Waldman albums).