Forgotten Music Thursday: I-Ten - Taking a Cold Look (1983)

In 1983 songwriters Billy Steinberg (guitar/vocals) and Tom Kelly (guitar/keyboards/vocals) formed the short-lived hard rock/AOR band I-Ten.

Steinberg and Kelly have quite an impressive resume as songwriters, having penned the hits Alone for Heart and Like a Prayer for Madonna among several others they had significant cred in the music industry.

Although MTV was still in its infancy, video had already killed the radio star... If this album had been released in the pre-image concious age of music videos, it very likely would have been a hit.

As it is, 3 of the songs on this album ended up being covered by other bands-- the aforementioned Alone became a hit for Heart, Taking a Cold Look was shortened to Cold Look and covered by Canadian hard rockers, Honeymoon Suite, and I Don't Want to Lose You showed up as a bonus track on REO Speedwagon's The Hits.

The original versions have a certain fire in them that, aside from Heart's Alone, is sorely lacking in the cover versions perpetrated by other artists. Steinberg and Kelly's vocals, while not extraordinary, are certainly of a professional calibre that warrants taking them seriously and giving them further consideration than they ended up receiving.

This album seems to go in and out of print.  When in print it's in the steep but reasonable $20 range (or used for only $12) when out of print I've seen it listing over $100!!  I recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to get this album while it's in print at a much more reasonable cost.  This album is a musical time capsule of all that was GOOD about music in the early eighties. For the quality of music on this album, it remains somewhat of a mystery to me why I-Ten weren't more well received at the time of this release. If the opportunity to listen to this lost gem ever presents itself to you, by all means open your ears, close your eyes, turn up the volume and enjoy!

Related Media

One Track Mind (Squared): Marillion - Kayleigh & Lavender (1985)

Much like with tomato soup & grilled cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, and Queen's We Will Rock You & We Are the Champions, Marillion's Kayleigh & Lavender are inextricably linked.

Listening to Marillion's Misplaced Childhood album it's easy to see that this was by design as Mark Kelly's beautiful keyboard solo acts as a segue from Kayleigh into Lavender.

Both songs are rife with Fish's brilliant image-laden lyrics:

Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall?
Do you remember dawn escapes from moon-washed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square?
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in her hair? - Kayleigh

I was walking in the park dreaming of a spark
When I heard the sprinklers whisper,
Shimmer in the haze of summer lawns.
Then I heard the children singing,
They were running through the rainbows.
They were singing a song for you.
Well it seemed to be a song for you,
the one I wanted to write for you, for you, you. - Lavender

Both songs also feature a biting and at times even menacing sarcasm in Fish's vocal delivery that twists and darkens the mood of both songs.

By the way didn't I break your heart
So sorry, I didn't mean to break your heart... - Kayleigh

You can hear the venom dripping from his broken heart. He's been hurt and he wants to hurt the one who hurt him. Anyone who has had a broken heart is familiar with that sentiment and Fish captures it absolutely brilliantly not only in his choice of lyrics but in how he delivers them.

While Lavender begins with a lighter tone it doesn't last:

A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I owe you for your love
I owe you for your love- Lavender

If anything Lavender is even more stark in the difference between the lighter tone of the lyrics vs. the harsher delivery of them. Sung by someone else the song could be considered light and even whimsical. Sung by Fish the connotations behind the lyrics are considerably darker.

I "discovered" Marillion in 2002. An online friend of mine who shared some of my other musical interests (Chicago and Dream Theater) recommended Marillion to me. I started with Misplaced Childhood and perhaps it was due largely to impeccable timing-- I was going through a rather rough case of heartbreak myself at the time-- but the album really spoke to me... especially Kayleigh and Lavender. Granted the girl who had broken my heart inherited her name from a Barry Manilow song that had been playing in the car when her mother was on the way to the hospital and not the Marillion song-- but the bitterness of both of these songs spoke to me at that point in my life.

One of the things that I really enjoy about Marillion on the whole is that they twist and turn on its head the negative stereotype that prog-rock is overly technical at the expense of emotion. If Marillion's music is bland and emotionless then I'm a vernicious knid.

Related Links
Marillion Misplaced Childhood (1985) review

One Track Mind: Chicago Transit Authority - Introduction (1969)

While I'm part of what is considered the "second wave" of Chicago fans in that I became a fan of theirs in the eighties when they were riding high on hits like Hard to Say I'm Sorry, You're the Inspiration, Hard Habit to Break, Will You Still Love Me, and to a lesser extent Look Away, it was inevitably their back catalog that held my interest and kept me a fan all these years later. 

I remember, Christmas 1991.  My parents got me my first computer and Chicago's 4 cassette box set, Group Portrait.  I was already intimately familiar with everything Chicago had recorded since 1981 (Chicago 16-21) but I was still rather new to their older material. 

I popped in that first casette and was blown away by the opening track, Introduction, which had been the lead track on their debut album back in 1969.  Terry Kath's soulful vocals and searing guitar, that wall of brass from the horn section, and a tasteful Lee Loughnane trumpet solo that was followed by a fiery Terry Kath guitar solo.  I was hooked!

About a year and a half after that, the summer of 1993, my father took me to my first Chicago concert at the Starlite Theater in Latham, NY.  Latham was about a 3 1/2 hour drive from my hometown.  On that tour they were opening their sets with... Introduction.  The faces and voices had changed somewhat.  Terry Kath had died in 1978, Peter Cetera had left the band in 1985 to pursue a solo career, and drummer Danny Seraphine had unceremoniously and somewhat acrimoniously been fired in 1990.  In their places were Bill Champlin (vocals & keys), Dawayne Bailey (guitar & b/g vocals), Jason Scheff (bass & b/g vocals), and Tris Imboden (drums).  The horn section was still intact though as was original keyboardist/vocalist, Robert Lamm. 

My father & I made the same pilgrimage in 1994 and I had the joy of meeting many of the members of the band including guitarist Dawayne Bailey, bass player Jason Scheff, trumpet player Lee Loughnane, keyboardist Robert Lamm, trombone player Jimmy Pankow, and the 2 guys who were arguably the most gracious with the fans) trumpet player Lee Loughnane and drummer Tris Imboden. 

Since then my knowledge and familiarity with Chicago has grown substantially.  I know their back catalog front, back, left, right, upside down, and inside out.  Some of their material has aged well, some has not.  But Introduction-- no matter how many times I listen to it, it's like hearing it for the first time all over again.  There's a timeless energy to it.  That these guys were in their early twenties when they recorded it.  None of them had even graduated college that they were able to compose and perform material like this just blew my mind. 

And now whenever I hear that song, my mind goes back to those long road trips with my father (my mother joined us when we went to see them in Saratoga Springs, NY with CSN in 1996 and in Toledo, OH in 1997 when they came to visit me while I was working at Cedar Point Amusement Park.  But on both those tours they had dropped Introduction from the setlist).

I opened with a clip of the original line-up of the band performing the song in 1972.  So it seems only fitting that I close with a clip of the band, as I would have seen them in 1993, performing the song in Toronto: