Compilation Album Review: "100% Hits Volume 14"

Compilation: 100% Hits Volume 14
Released: 1994 – Warner Music Australia
Number of tracks:18
Number one singles: 1 – "I Swear" by All-4-One
Other top ten singles: 3
Best track: "Lucas With The Lid Off" by Lucas
Hidden gem: "Born Dead" by Body Count

Kicking off with almost-number-one "100% Pure Love" by Crystal Waters, 100% Hits Volume 14 begins rather aptly with a song with "100%" in the title. The strongest songs on here are the aforementioned Lucas track (whatever happened to that guy?); "Rockin' For Myself" by Motiv 8 which inspired several dance tracks to copy its signature bassline; Tinman's "Eighteen Strings" which has a very Nirvana-sounding guitar riff; and "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" by R.E.M. which I appreciate much more 25 years later than I did then.

Another song I didn't pay much attention to in '94 was "Regulate" by Warren G and Nate Dogg, but listening to it now, I can see what a landmark track it was in its genre. The inclusion of "I Love The Nightlife" by Alicia Bridges ain't bad either – it's good cheesy fun.

Ending with the Body Count track (the radio edit), it's a very unusual conclusion to this comp, but maybe the compilers wanted you to think about the struggles of minorities a bit before you take the CD out of the player.

Rating: 5/10

Compilation Album Review: "Hits Ride On"

Compilation: Hits Ride On
Released: 1989 – Concept
Number of tracks: 17
Number one singles: 2 — "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals, "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" by New Kids On The Block
Other top ten singles: 5
Best track: "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals
Hidden gem: "Nobody's Perfect" by Mike & The Mechanics

Happy birthday to me! And here's my present, arrived in the mail today. Hits Ride On is the first compilation in my collection from the 1980s (though no copyright year is given on it), issued by Concept Records – again, a rarity, as I don't think they released many of these. I like how the artwork shows a record player even though this is clearly a CD release. Just as well. Making variations of it would be pretty naff.

Guess what? In my twenties, I was pretty much averse to pop music from 1989. The little of it I'd heard was pretty forgettable, for the most part. It wasn't until much later I realized there was some ace stuff put out that year. Such as "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals, a song I heard back in 1989 and loved it, and still do now. One of the best songs of the '80s!

Another track on here is "Chained To The Wheel" by The Black Sorrows. This song always reminds me of doing aerobics on the lower playground in primary school. In 1990, when I was in Year 7, the Year 4 teacher Mr. Jennings would get the whole school to do exercises for just under ten minutes. He'd always choose the same two songs to exercise to, and this was one of them. (The other one was "Opposites Attract" by Paula Abdul, and I always expect that song to follow.)

I like Kate Ceberano's number 2 hit "Bedroom Eyes" now, but didn't think much of it at the time. Ditto "Baby I Don't Care" by Transvision Vamp, but it's a total "Wild Thing" rip-off, ain't it? On this CD they've faded it out at least a minute before the end (probably something done for space limitations on Side 1 of the vinyl release I'd guess). "Wait" by Gyan is also pretty solid, even if the lyrics read like a romance novel.

How on earth did New Kids On The Block get to number 1? Their music was bloody awful – they weren't much cop as singers, the lyrics were puerile, and the music was the same overproduced drum-machine crap. I guess the girls in my Year 6 class really did dictate the charts back then.

Speaking of those who aren't much cop as singers, Collette is on here with "Ring My Bell"! How she got a record deal, much less got to number 5 with this dreck is beyond me. The music video is worth watching just for the 'aesthetics' alone. My friend Jonathan's younger sister had Collette's album – on vinyl no less! We still give her shit about it today. Just kidding. I haven't seen her since 1992 or so.

Right at the end there's some stuff I'd never heard – "Touch The Fire" by Icehouse is one. Haha, those high notes are...really something. It also has a sax solo. Noice. Also, it doesn't have a fade ending. That's going against the '80s trend there. I'd no idea who Will To Power or Thirty Eight Special were, but I remember their names from an issue of Smash Hits. Will To Power do "Baby I Love Your Way", soon to be a reggae hit for Big Mountain in a few years.

Ride on, dude!

Rating: 7/10

Stationery: Brushes And Paints

More stationery, as promised! This time: a bunch of brushes from my personal collection. I'm no painter by any means (although I have done a few canvases), but a good variety of brushes are must-haves. The two stubby ones at the bottom left in this photo are stencil brushes, which I used to paint on cloth using fabric paint. The others are (from top) a sable fine brush from India, a fat Pentel from Japan, and the next two down I bought in Japan to try and write Japanese characters with. Finally, there are three water brushes – the two Pentel ones are indispensable for sketching in public. Very robust. The one at the bottom is a Korean one with a syringe-like 'plunger' system that is a bit unwieldy, but not bad.

 In this next photo are two paint sets I got in high school. These fairly battered yet robust tins are still my preferred way of carrying around a basic set of colours when needed.

And here is the interior of said tins, in case ya don't know what paints look like. The one at the bottom has been slightly modified over the years. And yes, 'THIS BITES' was written back in high school.

More stationery next time – rulers and stencils, to be precise.

Compilation Album Review: "Hit Machine 2"

Compilation: Hit Machine 2
Released: 1993 – Columbia
Number of tracks: 20
Number one singles: 2 – "Mr. Vain" by Culture Beat, "All That She Wants" by Ace Of Base
Other top ten singles: 5
Best track: "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jelly
Hidden gem: "More & More" by Captain Hollywood Project

With a decidedly video-game art conceit, it's the follow up to Hit Machine '93, giving the hint there would be many more Hit Machines to come. There would end up being 28 of them in fact, every single one of them topping the ARIA compilation album charts, until they were replaced by So Fresh – the most successful Australian compilation album series – with Hit Machine in second place. We're witnessing the birth of a behemoth here, friends. 

Anyway, back to the artwork. It says "Super Sonic" at the top and the drawing closely resembles a certain Italian plumber. Sonic and Mario were massive in 1993 – as a Sega owner I'd have to say Sonic more so, because of the massive recent success of Sonic 2. How this ties in to the music of they day is another matter; the Super Mario Bros. movie was still fresh in people's minds, so perhaps the thing that would link it all together is if the big ballad on that film's soundtrack, Roxette's "Almost Unreal", appears on here but unfortunately it does not. In fact it never showed up on any compilation, to my knowledge.

That aside, there are some standout tracks here. My personal faves are the demented metal-fest from Green Jelly (complete with memorable video – check it out if you wanna see the Big Bad Wolf get riddled with bullets courtesy of Rambo), Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name" (the safe-for-granny no swearing version), Ween's "Push Th' Little Daisies", 2 Unlimited's "Tribal Dance", Inner Circle's "Bad Boys" and Freedom Williams' "Voice Of Freedom". All good stuff.

Also good are the two aforementioned chart-toppers, Sub Sub's "Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use)", and Terence Trent D'Arby's "She Kissed Me". Jeremy Jordan and Dannii can go suck it. If you ignore those two songs as is deserved, you've got one fine comp here. Super sonics, indeed.

Rating: 8/10

Compilation Album Review: "Let's Do It 2"

This is it, readers. I've posted several of these retro compilation reviews, but this is a special one – I actually owned it when it came out. Well, technically my family owned it. My sister and I asked my mum to buy it for us on cassette back in 1990. I wanted it for the tracks by Aerosmith and Technotronic, and my sister wanted it for...I can't remember. Anyway, I searched high and low looking for that cassette, to no avail. But I was lucky enough to get this CD copy in pretty much mint condition for only a dollar on eBay! Enough talk: let's do it (2).

Compilation: Let's Do It 2
Released: 1990 – WEA
Number of tracks: 16
Number one singles: 2 – "Love Shack" by The B-52s, "Janie's Got A Gun" by Aerosmith
Other top ten singles: 10
Best track: "Janie's Got A Gun" by Aerosmith
Hidden gem: There are no songs here I hadn't heard before.

The Black Box album Dreamland didn't use "Ride On Time" as its opening track, which is a bit of a shame. Thankfully, Let's Do It 2 does. Such an iconic song definitely demands – and gets – attention when it kicks off a collection of songs. It didn't get to number 1, but it bloody well should have.

The song that follows it is the only low point of this compilation: The B-52s execrable number 1 hit, the first of the decade – "Love Shack". I could tolerate it then, but now I can't stand to listen to more than five seconds of that junky piss-poor excuse for a song. If I never hear that dreck ever again it will be too soon.

Right, that's the negativity over with! It's all good from here on in. You might be fed up of songs like Kaoma's "Lambada" and Lisa Stansfield's twee and nebbishy "All Around The World" (the next two songs that follow), but I don't mind them in small doses. Milli Vanilli and Bad English follow, and although I'm not a fan of those songs, they (and most of the other 16 songs on here) hold a special place in my heart because they were the ones occupying the top 50 when I started following the charts on a weekly basis).

"Janie's Got A Gun" is one of my favourite songs of all time and I still love it now. Pump was the first album I ever got, and I've got some other Aerosmith albums since and it's still my favourite song by them. Just a brilliant, haunting song. After Motely Crue (the Motley Crue tribute act who prefer budget accommodation) and Martika, comes the seminal house track "Pump Up The Jam" by Technotronic, my fave song after Aerosmith in those early days. The inclusion of these two songs alone makes it worth the price. Hey, didn't I just say that's why I asked my mum to buy it all those years ago?

Things then go into a lull with Alannah Myles, Phil Collins, Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville and Michael Bolton, before it picks up towards the end with accordion-featuring "The Love We Make" by Girl Overboard, which was the only song I hadn't heard when I listened to the cassette. I think it'd finished its chart run by thew time I started watching Rage. The final track is "Just Like Jesse James" by Cher, a song I didn't mind – I definitely preferred it to her previous single "If I Could Turn Back Time" (and probably so did she, from what I've read).

This is how you put a compilation together. Just about every song here did well on the charts, and 10 of the 16 songs here made the year-end Top 30 for 1990. The average chart position of these 16 songs is between numbers 7 and 8 (it works out to be 7.5), and includes two number 1s, four number 2s, two number 3s and two number 4s. Was this a lucky coincidence? Or was early 1990 just a great time for pop music? I'd like to think the latter.

Rating: 9/10

 

2020 UPDATE: On July 5, 2020 at an antiques and collectibles market in Bendigo, Victoria (that was so good I visited it twice), I found Let's Do It 2 on vinyl. I didn't get it, because I already own it on CD, so I took the above photos for posterity. You can see that the record only has 14 tracks – the Motley Crue and Cher songs were dropped. The lineup remains solid.