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Various Artists - Pure '80s #1s
- I'll admit to being a nostalgia hound. Not that I know exactly what being such a beast would imply, but I know it probably involves poor hygiene and an ability to fondly recall good times that never were. Ah, the 1980's, truly a period for poor mutts like me. A time which apparently had such a high cheese factor things would come out of the factory or appear on the screen with an air of frivolity unmatched in our modern era of over-stimulated, over-caffeinated terrors. Foreigners were wacky, gang-warfare an enthusiastic spectacle usually involving blades, dance and shots of rippling, sweat-flecked chests. The fact that cash was king was more often celebrated than maligned, and even when rampant consumerism was cast in a negative light it was usually played off as a bit of harmless fun on the eccentricities of the overly-self-indulgent (“Hey, look what rich stupid bought! Isn’t stupid dumb.)
Now, some of you are probably wondering what this high school American History textbook amalgam of various ‘80s stereotypes has to do with this CD. Well, not very much, but what more can I possibly say about the collection presented to the consumer in Pure ‘80s #1’s? If you just don’t like 80’s pop music, if you just can’t stomach these light, fluffy dance floor oldies, then you have no reason to buy this CD. If you really love this kind of music, then you have no reason to buy this CD because odds are you probably already have a CD with these tunes or have downloaded the collection from one of the thousands of pay-sites on the web (That’s right, “pay”-sites. We don’t cotton here to you pirate-types…not officially, anyway.)
There is absolutely nothing new to be said for this collection of reliable, standard hits. The whole story behind this CD can be summed up as follows: Utv Records has lots of money, so they buy the rights to a bunch of #1 Billboard hits, “re-master them,” bending the songs to their wily wills, and then release these old hits back into the public and watch the bucks roll right into their pockets. Again, I’m not rating the songs here. If you really didn’t catch any of the 900 previous releases of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” or Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It” then by all means run, don’t walk to your nearest music provider and get this baby right away (Or, better yet, why run when you can get it all done by just clicking on the conveniently added link to Amazon.com. Then again, your finger isn’t about to expend so much energy on such a labor when you can just have your robot butler do it. Igor-bot! Oh, he’s never around when you need him…)
So, there you have it in a nutshell. If you have no 80’s music and confess to liking 80’s music then this is all you, bro. Also makes for a nice, catch-all gift for friends or relatives. However, if you already have these songs collected on CD or have an mp3 player I can’t recommend this as being anything more than a corporate cash-cow. It would be like buying the latest release of the “newly re-re-mastered” Star Wars DVDs so that they might share a space with your 20 copies of the same films—a tribute to absolute excess. Then again, I guess that’s what the 80’s were all about, sort of.
Reviewer: Alexander Rogers
new
Reviewer's Rating: 6
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
Added: 9-May-2006
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