RICHARD PAGE COME UP WITH THE BEST THING WITHOUT MR. MISTER

    

Oh what the heck, late as late can be here and I was tempted just to post this without any words to go with it but I have enough compassion for RICHARD PAGE to not insult him like that (laugh). This guy would have to go down as one of the most underated singer/songwriters of the 80's.

Page had the greatest fame of his career by far as the bass guitarist/lead singer for the progressive pop rock/slightly AOR band MR. MISTER, a band of talented session musicians which also included guitarist STEVE FARRIS, better than he was ever given credit for, keyboardist STEVE GEORGE and drummer PAT MASTELOTTO.

Farris didn't feature on the band's totally forgotten about fourth and final album, which I don't even know the name of off hand, but that line-up applied for the band's first three outings, of which WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD was by far the biggest commercial success. Artistically though, GO ON, the third album from 1987 is to me the band's best album.

After the fourth album released sometime around 1990 sunk without a trace MR. MISTER was given a burial and all the band members indulged in some less than superstar status solo projects, Farris to my knowledge might have even ended up playing in the CBS orchestra band for THE LATE SHOW with DAVID LETTERMAN. I could be wrong but I remember my mate years ago saying he thought the MR. MISTER guitarist hanged out with PAUL SHAFFER (laugh).

By far the most notable post MR. MISTER 'project' from all the members of the band was the 1996 solo album of RICHARD PAGE titled SHELTER ME. For pure easy listening pleasure, the opening song, THE BEST THING, featured above, is the pick of the crop, instead of being a ballad speaking of lost love, as was so common during the melodramatic 80's, it's a song celebrating new love and a new beginning.

Plenty of other lovely tunes on here which are more soulful than AOR sounding, like MY OXYGEN, DEPENDENCE and a cover of STEVIE WONDER's little known HEAVEN IS A TEN ZILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY. Also featured is A SIMPLE LIFE, which JOHN FARNHAM made an excellent job of covering sometime in the 90's not long after SHELTER ME was released.