Ah, Valentine’s Day. The possibilities of items to review seems
\nendless. The wife thought we should tackle Boyz II Men today,
\nbecause they are such a romantic group. I originally had Tom Petty
\n& The Heartbreakers lined up, but a phone call from fellow
\nreviewer John Wells changed that plan.
\n(Editor’s note: Who is John Wells, you may ask? He was an
\noriginal panel member who never did submit anything to the
\nsite.)<\/i><\/p>\n
John had just emerged from a knock-down, drag-em-out argument
\nwith his fiancee, and his mood was not a great one. “Man, lemme
\ntell ya,” he said, “love sucks.”<\/p>\n
The light bulb went on – of course! How could I be so blind to
\nignore J. Geils Band’s 1980 release
\nLove Stinks<\/i>? I gave John a few 900 numbers to soothe his
\nmale ego, and went scavenging through the Pierce Memorial
\nArchives.<\/p>\n
Turns out I should have listened to my wife in the first place.
\nWhile this album holds a few treasures I had forgotten about, the
\nalbum is mostly pop-like filler that ruined rock radio in the early
\n’80s.<\/p>\n
Two songs I had totally forgotten about on
\nLove Stinks<\/i> are “Come Back” and “Night Time,” the latter
\nbeing a cover tune. With Geils’s guitar solidly providing a back
\nbeat and Peter Wolf’s vocals powering the band, these tracks
\nprovide an insight into the popularity the band was about to
\nexperience with their followup album,
\nFreeze-Frame<\/i>, and make the album seem like it has some
\npromise on it.<\/p>\n
Problem is, that promise disappears after those two songs have
\nfinished. The band seems to be caught in an identity crisis. They
\ndon’t know if they want to be an R&B band (“Night Time”), which
\nthey were capable of being, a rock band, or a freaking novelty act.
\nWhen I was 12 years old, “No Anchovies, Please” was a laugh riot.
\nNow that I’m older and have achieved Buddha nature, I realize what
\na waste of vinyl this track is. Funny? Yeah, about as funny as a
\nbox of hammers.<\/p>\n
And then there is the title track. In some ways, it reminds me
\nof “Centerfold” – it is an irreverent look at a subject. But,
\nunlike “Centerfold,” this track is humorless, and drags on
\nneedlessly.<\/p>\n
\nLove Stinks<\/i> is remembered for tracks that aren’t worth the
\ntime, and has treasures that have been forgotten about. I won’t go
\nso far as to say tha album stinks, but
\nLove<\/i> disappoints.<\/p>\n
And John? He and the future missus are back together, and he’s
\nsinging a different song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5653],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-35529","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-j-geils-band","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35529"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35529"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}