🎵 AotW Level 42 - STANDING IN THE LIGHT (SP-4995)

[LPJim]

Level 42
STANDING IN THE LIGHT
A&M SP-4995

1. "Micro-kid" (Badarou / King/ P. Gould/ Taylor / Willis) – 4:44
2. "The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)" (Badarou / King / Lindup / P. Gould) – 4:15
3. "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind" (P. Gould / King / Lindup / R. Gould) – 5:12
4. "Dance On Heavy Weather" (King / P. Gould / Lindup/ Taylor/ Dunn / White) – 4:27
5. "A Pharaoh's Dream (Of Endless Time)" (King / P. Gould / Lindup) – 4:21
6. "Standing In The Light" (King / P. Gould / Badarou) – 3:42
7. "I Want Eyes" (King / P. Gould) 4:59
8. "People" (Lindup) – 4:55
9. "The Machine Stops" (King / P. Gould / Badarou) – 4:15

Personnel

• Mark King – vocals, bass guitar, percussion
• Mike Lindup – vocals, keyboards, percussion
• Boon Gould – guitars
• Phil Gould – drums, percussion, backing vocals

Plus:

• Wally Badarou – keyboards

Released October 1983 & issued on CD by Polydor Records
Reissued with bonus material by Polydor in 2014








JB

 

[jfiedler17]

I have really fun memories of this album. I was a college-radio deejay for many years, and one of the stations I worked at (WRRC at Rider University) didn't initially seem to have a whole lot of music on hand to play. There were always a few mail bins laying around full of CDs, but that was usually it. One night after I got off the air, though, the station manager and one of my dearest friends to this day, noticing my stash of vinyl I'd brought in with me from home, mentioned that the station had a huge vinyl collection that had gone untouched for years. This was news to me, so my face lit up, and he opened a door in the back of the station that led into two small rooms jam packed from nearly floor to ceiling with crates and crates of vinyl and CDs that had never been put in any sort of order whatsoever. There had to have been over two or three hundred crates' worth of music back in there, about a third of it in LP form. I was in disbelief that so much music could have just been sitting in this closet for years without being touched, and the station manager explained that there was just so much music back there that no one ever wanted to tackle the seemingly impossible task of actually organizing it into any kind of workable library. I thought it seemed like a really fun challenge, though, and volunteered to go through it all and sort it so that we could actually start making use of the music back there, so over the subsequent summer, I would come in during my free time and tackle another large group of crates of LPs or CDs. It naturally took quite a long time to go through and sort and catalog all of it, but it was also great fun. One of the first LPs I remember stumbling across was this Level 42 album. I was a big fan of their albums on Polydor (especially World Machine, the album that yielded their breakthrough hit "Something About You") but I'd never run across any of their A&M work before and was really excited to hear what it sounded like, so the next time I came to the station, I brought in a portable turntable from home and took it into the "library" with me and put the Level 42 album on to listen to while I worked and it quickly became one of my go-to albums to play whenever I was back there. To this day, I still can't listen to the album without thinking about digging through crates of unsorted vinyl and CDs!

A great album from a very underrated band. Full of great songs (and superb bass playing from Mark King, too), "The Sun Goes Down" being my favorite in the bunch. How these guys only managed two Top 40 hits in this country, I don't know. I've always thought they were one of the best pop bands of their era.

 

[AM Matt]

Singer Mark King (Level 42) & singer David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), lookalikes??? Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[AM Matt]

The title track "Standing In The Light" needs more cowbell!! Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[AM Matt]

I think that "World Machine" (1986) (Polydor) was their best effort. "Running In The Family" (1987) (Polydor) wasn't too bad either. Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[jfiedler17]

I'd agree, World Machine is their best. "Something About You" was an absolute knockout of a single, of course, but even the "filler" on that album is very strong, like "It's Not the Same for Us" or "Physical Presence" or "Leaving Me Now."

Incidentally, it hasn't been mentioned yet on this thread, but this album was actually produced, intriguingly enough, by Verdine White and Larry Dunn, both members of Earth, Wind & Fire. Very appropriate choice of producers, since both bands are very funk-flavored and Verdine White, like Mark King, is an absolutely incredible bass player.