I`m actually drinking a bit of rocket fuel tonight, when you go
without booze for a while and then get on the Southern Com-
fort you feel pretty woozy. I`m not exactly getting pickled or
anything, just having a few shots with some ginger beer. My
brother actually was supposed to get this bottle of Southern
for giving me a lift to the airport a couple of weeks ago, but
he didn`t end up giving me a lift in the end so i`m stuck with
it. I dont know how i can possibly cope haha. Alrighty, lets
talk about music hey! Back in the hair band 80`s, not a lot
of bands had what you call a lot of grainy musical substance,
over-produced pop and pop metal were big on catchy chor-
uses and creating memorable hooks here and there, but not
too many matched glossy production and ear pleasing melo-
dies with real style and soul. One pop metal band that i had
a soft spot for always was a one-hit album band from the US
called Mr. Mister. The band formed in 1982 in Los Angeles,
the band consisted of Richard Page (lead vocals and bass),
Steve George (keyboards and vocals), Steve Farris (Guitar)
and Pat Mastelotto (drums). Page and George were in fact
session musicians backing the mega-successful AOR band
REO Speedwagon before forming Mr. Mister with Farris &
Masteletto. The production qualities of Mr. Mister`s three
albums owes much to Page`s and George`s time with REO
Speedwagon, but on the substance scale, Mr. Mister always
had a lot more in the tank than the soulless studio artistry
of Kevin Cronin`s crew. Mr. Mister would end up backing
up Tina Turner on her sell out world tour in the mid 80`s,
a gig that would catapult the band to stardom on the back
of their immaculately produced progressive pop rock mas-
terpiece `Welcome to the Real World`, which was released
in 1985. This was their second album, their warmup album
`I Wear The Face` produced the minor hit `Hunters of the
Night` but largely it sunk without a trace without achieving
much commercial success. Welcome to the Real World threw
up a few mega-hit singles, like radio staples such as `Broken
Wings`, `Kyrie` and `Run To Her`. One song off the album
which saw Steve Farris turn into a heavy rock guitar soloist
to good effect was the underrated `Black/White`. This song
sounds so much like beefed up Duran Duran, but the metal-
lic finale to the song by Farris puts him momentarily in the
same league as Steve Lukather or even Eddie Van Halen.
`Kyrie` of course is one of the bands most famous songs,
but unlike what a lot of people think, they`re not singing
about a girl. Kyrie is short for Kyrie Eleison, which in fact
is a exclamation which is recited during Catholic Mass. So
the song is actually very religeously inspired and not just
another airy fairy pop song like you might imagine. After
the cloud nine success of `Welcome to the Real World`, it
was always going to be difficult to match it commercially
speaking, if not artisticly as well. The band re-convened
in 1987 to record the album `Go On`, which despite be-
ing a commercial lemon was probaly their most accom-
lished album out of the three they made. `Go On` is a
lot dryer with production but much more soulful than
`Welcome to the Real World`. You`d be hard pressed
to find a better piece of white soul than the inspiration-
al `Healing Waters`. The song is a bit like `Tusk` from
Fleetwood Mac, takes a minute or so to get going but it
really becomes an epic as a result of choir like backing
vocals and sincerer than sincere singing from Richard
Page. `Watching the World` is a great big chorus rock-
er, more in the style of bands like Survivor and Night
Ranger than Speedwagon or Duran Duran, which Mr.
Mister was influened by the most. `Power Over Me`
is a slow paced keyboard led Genesis-like ballad that
is remarkable for its very unique bridge between the
first verse and the chorus, just have a listen to it and
you`ll know what i mean. Mr. Mister was attempting
to prove that they weren`t just another sugar coated
soft metal band from the 80`s. `The Tube` is a really
great piece of experimental progressive pop, it sounds
nothing like the rest of the album. `Something Real` is
probaly the most 80`s radio hit sounding tune on `Go
On`, while the synthesizer versus guitar extravaganza
`Man of a Thousand Dances` is the closest the 80`s got
to having a pop rock band doing cartwheels while play-
ing a real guitar, a real keyboard, a real bass guitar and
a real drum kit. Mr. Mister were at times totally unreal!
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