Back in 1984, Frankie Goes To Hollywood discovered that scandal
\nwas the best form of popularity. Their single “Relax” had been
\nbanned by the BBC, leading to people scooping it up out of the
\nstores and helping it hit the top of the charts. Thanks to music
\nvideo stations in America, people like myself got interested in the
\nband.<\/p>\n
Of course, being 13 years old (meaning I was young and stupid),
\nI had no idea that the song espoused gay sex (or so the stories
\nsay). Blissfully ignorant, I trudged down to the local record store
\nand dropped two weeks’ allowance on their double-LP debut
\nWelcome To The Pleasuredome<\/i>. Fourteen years after it came
\nout (and 10 years since the band broke up under tense
\ncircumstances), it remains a decent, but incomplete, first effort
\nthat still holds a lot of pleasure.<\/p>\n
Of the four sides of this album, the one that will interest most
\npeople is side two, which features the two hits “Relax” and “Two
\nTribes”. Frankly, I could care less what “Relax” is about (though
\nlines like “Shoot it in the right direction” now are a bit clearer
\nto me), fact is that it’s still a great song with a danceable beat
\nthat rivals much of today’s dance music. Likewise, “Two Tribes,” a
\nstatement against nuclear war, possibly was even a better song than
\n“Relax” was – it’s certainly more complicated musically. (I could,
\nhowever, have lived without the discussion of orgasm about 15
\nseconds after “Two Tribes” ended.) The other song on this side, a
\ncover of Edwin Starr’s “War,” is an interesting modern take on the
\nsong that is just as powerful as the rest of the music on this part
\nof the album.<\/p>\n
\nWelcome To The Pleasuredome<\/i> also featured some highly
\nexperimental music. The whole first side could be seen as one song,
\neven though it was broken up into parts like “The World Is My
\nOyster” for no apparent reason. The title track is a tour de force
\nof electronic, dance and rock music that takes some time to really
\nget into, but is worth the effort and time. (The whole side only
\ntakes about 15 minutes, so it’s not like you have to book out a
\nwhole weekend to get into it.)<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, a good portion of the second half of
\nWelcome To The Pleasuredome<\/i> is either cover versions or
\nfiller. It’s not that the cover versions are bad – “Born To Run”
\nand “San Jose (The Way)” both stay pretty true to the original
\nversions, while “Ferry”, a version of Gerry And The Pacemakers’
\n“Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey,” would have been better had it been the
\nwhole version. Lead singer Holly Johnson gently delivered the
\nvocals on this one, even more so than the original.<\/p>\n
The remaining music, such as “Krisco Kisses,” “Wish (The Lads
\nWere Here)” and “The Power Of Love,” don’t live up to the stronger
\nmaterial that makes up the first half of the album. And one has to
\nwonder what the sound bite on the background of “Including The
\nBallad Of 32” is really of -it’s some kind of sexual activity. The
\nalbum’s closer, “bang…”, seems to bring the whole concept – album
\nand group – to a solid conclusion. (Frankie Goes To Hollywood would
\nbring out one more album,
\nLiverpool<\/i>.)<\/p>\n
This is still a very good album, though it could have easily
\nbeen just a single album and been just as strong. Still, once you
\nplow through the filler,
\nWelcome To The Pleasuredome<\/i> proves to still be a worthwhile
\nalbum to search out and pick up. (Last time I heard, this one is
\nout of print.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7547],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39336","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-frankie-goes-to-hollywood","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39336","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=39336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39336"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}