There is a small but tragic group of artists in pop music
\nhistory — the groups who because of one great monster of a
\nbreak-out hit have the rest of their musical catalog utterly
\noverlooked. Artists like Slade, Dream Theater, Status Quo, even
\nclassic artists like Harry Chapin, get remembered for one song —
\nand get a whole body of work forgotten. Perhaps the most painful
\nfor yours truly is that of 80s progressive pop duo Wang Chung. They
\nproduced five albums of really solid work, but if you mention their
\nname to anyone — well, suffice it to say I don’t bloody know HOW
\nto “Wang Chung tonight,” and I don’t want to know.<\/p>\n
One of these casualties is Wang Chung’s 1985 soundtrack to
\nTo Live And Die In L.A.<\/i> The movie itself is worth mention; a
\ndark, obsessive film noir about one cop’s descent into lawless
\nvengeance, starring William Petersen (now better known as Grissom
\non “CSI”), Willem Dafoe, and John Turturro. Good film. Tough film
\nto put a soundtrack to. Wang Chung manages, pretty damn well.<\/p>\n
The soundtrack is half vocal selections and half instrumentals.
\n(I found it really ironic that one person on the IMDB bitched about
\nthe songs in one breath and loved the instrumentals in the second
\n— and didn’t seem to know they were the same band). The vocal
\nselections are serviceable to quite good; I admit to being unable
\nto warm to the faux swing of “Lullaby”, but the driving pop of
\n“Wake Up Stop Dreaming” and “Wait” is some of the best examples of
\npop music from this era. The real centerpiece, however, is the
\nwistful eerieness of the title track; from the first bars of the
\nintro, a chill settles on you. This is desperate nihilism in a way
\nthat The Cure only
\nwished<\/i> they could manage, and when set against the backdrop
\nof the movie it’s damned effective.<\/p>\n
The instrumentals are even better. Wang Chung had a strong
\nprogressive rock influence, and it shows here. “City of The Angels”
\nand “Black-Blue-White” are the highlights, though all are
\nexcellent.<\/p>\n
The long and the short of it is that
\nTo Live And Die In L.A.<\/i> is a forgotten gem of ’80s
\nprogressive pop, and fans of the genre should check it out. There’s
\nmore to Wang Chung than one tired party tune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6038],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37504","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-wang-chung","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37504","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37504"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37504"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}