Genre: rock
Rating: 3 stars ***
Title: Imitation Life
Company: Warner Brothers
Catalog: BSK-23537-1
Year: 1980
Country/State: Boston, Massachussets
Grade (cover/record): VG / VG
Comments: small cut out notch along open edge
Available: 1
GEMM catalog ID: 16
Price: $7.00
I
"Imitation
Life" track listing:
(side 1)
1.) Send Me an Angel,
2.) What the People Are Doing,
3.) Imitation Life,
4.) Say Goodbye,
5.) No Control.
(side
2)
1.) Rather Be Blind,
2.) Solid Rock,
3.) Pretty Mala,
4.) Idiot,
5.) For You.
Inspired by L.A.'s folk-rock scene during the
'60s, Robin Lane worked with Crazy
Horse and sang backup vocals for Neil
Young, but re-emerged in the early '80s as a new wave bandleader.
Another comeback in the '90s featured a more stripped-back, folky sound
reminiscent of Young
himself.
Lane, born and raised in Los Angeles, was the daughter of a songwriter and
an actress. She began performing in clubs around L.A. while still in her
teens, and a hook-up with Crazy
Horse led to her appearance on Neil
Young's Everybody
Knows This Is Nowhere album in 1969. During the '70s, she worked on
her songwriting while living in Pennsylvania and later Massachusetts. By the
end of the decade, she formed the
Chartbusters with Leroy
Radcliffe and Asa
Brebner (formerly of the
Modern Lovers) and signed with Warner Brothers. Her self-titled debut
album featured the single "When Things Go Wrong," which scraped
the national charts in July 1980. It was her only charting single, and
Warner dropped her after the following year's Imitation
Life.
She released one additional album, Heart
Connection for Recon in 1984, and then semi-retired. During the late
'80s and into the '90s, Lane contributed songs to Susannah
Hoffs among others, and supported Warren
Zevon, Taj
Mahal and John
Hiatt in concert. She returned in 1994 with Catbird
Seat, recorded for the Ocean label by her husband, Ducky
Carlisle.
The bane of many a band from Boston is the curse of bad record production, and that curse struck Robin Lane & the Chartbusters perhaps more than any other group. Where the Atlantics and Private Lightning only got one opportunity, Warner afforded the Chartbusters two albums and a five-song live EP. All three featured phenomenal songs that were not recorded by the label with the love and care that the artist deserved. The three-song EP, released on manager Mike Lembo's Deli Platters label, had all the elements that pointed to stardom for Robin Lane. A great original entitled "The Letter," not the song performed by Alex Chilton and the Box Tops, did not get re-recorded by Warner Bros., and the sound is dramatically different from the slick treatment "Rather Be Blind" gets on this album, Imitation Life. "Solid Rock," resplendent in Flaming Groovies riffs and girl group possibilities, gets lost in Gary Lyons souped up engineering. Tim Jackson's drums sound lightweight, and there are more references to angels, like the very Patti Smith-sounding first track on this album, "Send Me an Angel." Where the bands self-titled debut the year before should have had more of the lush Byrds twelve-string guitar sounds, this album takes the group even further from that format. The guitar solo on "Pretty Mala" is almost heavy metal, so far removed from what this group was all about. The band had its own identity, but the attempts to get it to sound like the Patti Smith Group by way of the Pretenders strips away the heart and soul of a truly creative entity. Drummer Tim Jackson co-writes "Idiot" with Lane, and it is one of the strongest tracks on the disc. With better production it would have hit single written all over it. It has a neat little guitar riff, summery pop melody, and easy vocals by Lane. Just a year later she would put backing vocals on Andy Pratt's superb Fun in the First World album produced by the Chartbusters' guitarist Leroy Radcliffe, who was also Lane's significant other for awhile. Radcliffe's production of Andy Pratt is everything this album needed, exactly what is missing on songs like "For You," the moody final track with Lane's beautifully melancholic vocal set somewhere between the instruments and not far up enough in the mix, too many effects keeping the words from being distinctive. The first album's inner sleeve contained all the lyrics, and this second LP has etchings by guitarist Asa Brebner, which, although humorous, might've been better as a promo. Brebner's solo album, I Walk the Streets, released almost 20 years later, contains the sounds that should've been inserted into these grooves. "Rather Be Blind" is a driving pop tune with guitars that cry to sparkle and sound so subdued and lost in some reverb quagmire. This album is a heartbreaker, such a great performance lost in the mix. Producer Gary Lyons worked with Foreigner, Queen, and the Outlaws, a prescription that makes for an album as hard to take sonically as Extreme's first major label disc. "What the People Are Doing" has a great spy movie guitar riff and haunting vocals, the guitar bursts at the end of the song really striking. It's an epic that fades into the Ramones-ish title track, "Imitation Life." Robin Lane's vision was stifled by poor recording and imitation art that the band and she cannot be blamed for. Imitation Life, by producer Gary Lyons, and Joe Wissert's ideas for the first album, Robin Lane & The Chartbusters, were forces that did nothing to further this important group's career. The song "Say Goodbye" is classic Robin Lane, and Warner Bros. should invest in remixing both these potentially classic albums for compact disc. There are great songs here that could be rerecorded decades later by artists in need of hits.
ROBIN LANE AND THE CHARTBUSTERS (Buy
CDs by this artist)
5 Live (Warner Bros.) 1980
Robin Lane and the Chartbusters (Warner Bros.) 1980
Imitation Life (Warner Bros.) 1981
Based in Boston, Robin Lane and the Chartbusters boasted a pedigree of sorts: she appeared on Neil Young's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere; guitarist Leroy Radcliffe was a former Modern Lover; other band members were veterans of the New England music scene.
The chiming guitars that kick off "When Things Go Wrong," the first track on the band's debut, immediately identified Lane as a godsend to oft-neglected folk-rock fans. Throughout the LP, they mix the stylistic grace of the Byrds with the folksy directness of early Fairport Convention. Where many kindred spirits fall into a poised monotony, Lane varies the mood from track to track. "Waitin' in Line" mixes blues with 12-string licks, while "Many Years Ago" and "Don't Wait Till Tomorrow" builds up a head of steam that lends special urgency to Lane's middle-range vocals.
5 Live is what the title says: five live tracks. Since the Chartbusters were much more ragged onstage than in the studio, this one is strictly for the faithful.
Imitation Life ups the ante considerably, creating an atmosphere of tension so heavy it's almost tangible. The band plays more roughly, especially drummer Tim Jackson, and Lane sings like a driven woman, whether the subject is lust ("No Control") or her deepening Christianity ("Solid Rock"). Producer Gary Lyons makes the sound sizzle without resorting to gimmickry. Rather than life, the LP imitates a bomb about to explode.