On the same night I went on a drunken trawl across eBay looking for Johnny Hates Jazz vinyl I also had a look around for some of my other 80s favourites and found this gem for just £9 - an absolute bargain!
This album got me into INXS in the first place via a snide copy on a TDK D90 at school. A mate told me that it was a new band from America that was going to be big. He was wrong about their country of origin but right about their eventual success.
Listening back now, you can hear the start of the stadium-filling, rock-swaggering, global juggernaut that INXS would become before the end of the 80s. Songs like ‘What You Need’, ‘Listen Like Thieves’ and ‘This Time’ point to the direction which would deliver the most success.
It isn’t all gold, there are a couple of tracks which seem to cling to the band's past punk days (‘Biting Bullets’ and ‘Red Red Sun’ for example) - angry, rowdy, not very sophisticated blasts.
Then there are bobbins like ‘Three Sisters’, a 4-minute instrumental seemingly destined to be the soundtrack to a cut scene in an episode of Miami Vice or some other glossy 80s TV show (it includes what sounds like tropical bird sounds for f-sake!)
On the whole, the album stands the test of time for me. There are an awful lot of good songs here and it is one of those records which acts as a Time Machine, taking me back to a time before work, mortgages and other responsibilities.
This LP is 38 years old and sounds great, barely a pop or crackle, I guess the previous owner was one of the many who didn’t appreciate it, I do!
If you fancy a copy it is available on eBay and Discogs, choose wisely and you could have a copy as good as this for not very much money.
Tracks To Try: ‘What You Need’, ‘Listen Like Thieves’, ‘Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down The Mountain)’, ‘Shine Like It Does’, ‘This Time’, ‘Same Direction’.