“suzanne, if sex were fast food,
there’d be an arch over your bed!”
(or: may 26 — a thumbnail sketch)
posted at 5:29 pm by brandon in tuesdays in the record store with brandon
We close out May with only a handful of major releases, but don’t be fooled by quantity this week: they’re diamonds, all.
Island Def Jam teams up with those mad geniuses over at Ultra Records this week for the sterling new compilation Just Dance, and the star power contained herein is mighty impressive: remixes from The Killers (with Armin Van Buuren’s strong reworking of their trippy gem “Human”), Lionel Richie (with his terrific new single “Just Go”), Rihanna (the painfully catchy “Disturbia”), and Duffy (the instant classic “Mercy”) pop up alongside the likes of Pitbull (who offers up his irresistibly stupid new smash “I Know You Want Me”) and my old fave Anastacia (back, thankfully, with a brilliant new single, “Absolutely Positively”), and while, sadly (and a bit misleadingly, given the album’s title), my new fave Lady GaGa is nowhere to be found on this disc, the intoxicating spirit and sense of fun that she has brought roaring back to the radio is alive and well all over it.
In a foolish but wholly predictable development — because, you see, way too many program directors refuse to understand that she left her inane teenybopper roots behind years ago — the set’s magnificent (and insanely catchy) lead single “I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week” has yet to generate much heat at radio (at least as of this writing), but I have total faith all that madness will be dispatched when
Amanda Leigh, the sixth studio album from one of my favorite people on the planet, the sensational Mandy Moore, hits stores this week. Produced by Mike Viola of Candy Butchers fame, and co-written entirely by Moore herself, Amanda also features a return visit from the glorious Lori McKenna, who helped shepherd Moore’s previous record, 2007’s incredible Wild Hope, toward greatness. Should be killer.
Much like “All in the Family” had a generation prior, it proved definitively that a situation comedy can be simultaneously relevant and raucous; and also much like “Family,” it boasted one of the most remarkably talented four-pronged acting ensembles in the whole damned history of the medium. And it has taken its sweet time properly making its way to DVD, but I’m about to testify that it was absolutely worth the wait, and that the wait is finally over this week with the much-anticipated arrival
of Designing Women: The Complete First Season. This four-disc set arrives just in time, too, as my self-recorded VHS copies of these very episodes, many of which are at least twenty years old, are sadly showing their age.
Following the hilarious exploits of four modern Southern belles who run an interior design firm in Atlanta, “Women” took a while to hit its stride, both creatively and commercially, but you’ll need look no farther than the very first episode, broadcast in 1986, to see all the elements that made the show such a smash at its peak: distinct, instantly identifiable characters; witty one-liners (“Here, Suzanne, have a whore d’oeuvre”) delivered with go-for-broke gusto by four actresses — Dixie Carter, Annie Potts, Jean Smart, and the ridiculously ribald Delta Burke — at the very top of their games; an easy, natural rapport among the show’s four leads; and a wince-inducing diatribe from the inimitable Carter, whose merciless tongue-lashings would go on to become one of the show’s hilarious hallmarks.
I plan to be at the store bright and early tomorrow morning with my face pressed to the glass waiting for them to open the door so that I can procure myself a copy of this collection that I have literally been waiting twenty-three years to be able to purchase. Do yourself an immense favor and follow suit. (And I swear I don’t mean that bitchy!)
Also noteworthy this week:
- Rock’s master madman Marilyn Manson returns with his latest effort,
The High End of Low
