Tag Archives: Pretenders

Jan 05 2022
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CD, Skratchdisc, vinyl

Pretenders • Pretenders II [CD]

[Review originally published 1/18/2011 on Skratchdisc]

The holidays and a little bit of travel kept me busy for the last month, and though there are some new releases I’d like to get to, I listened to this gem on the plane and I can’t help but want to give Pretenders II its due.

Now I know most of you, if you’re a PRETENDERS fan, like the first album better. And what’s not to like about that album? Every song’s a winner; it’s hard to beat “Mystery Achievement,” “The Wait” or their cover of “Stop Your Sobbing,” let alone the truly sublime “Brass in Pocket.” But Pretenders II is just as brilliant, just as rockin’, and in my book, a better collection of songs. From the opening beats of “The Adultress,” all the way through “Louie Louie” (not the Kingsmen’s hit), II is a rock ’n’ roll coup.

Can you beat “Message of Love” for a song that is so sensually poetic, and yet still kicks you in the nuts? Chrissie Hynde’s lyrics are so good, even when she lifts others’ lines like “Now look at the people, in the streets, in the bars / We are all of us in the gutter, (but) some of us are looking at the stars,” she’s an original. “Talk of the Town”? Brill. “I Go to Sleep?” Hynde & Co. pick another sleeper of a Ray Davies tune and make it their own. “Bad Boys Get Spanked?” Oh my, how I wished I was getting a spankin’ from Chrissie back then. Yes ma’m, no ma’m… whatever you say, Ms. Hynde!

And what about “Birds of Paradise”: “I wrote a letter to you my friend, so many letters that I never send / I think about you at day’s end, the time that we had / I laughed in my bed, the stupid things you said / We were two birds of paradise.” What a gorgeous song. The band at that time, Chrissie, James Honeyman Scott, Pete Farndon and Martin Chambers, were probably the best unit going at the time. Their intertwining guitar and bass lines on this song, with Chambers’ tasteful percussion, are a showcase for how they could tone it down and still pack a wallop. So, with II, we now had a pair of absolutely stunning albums and then, boom, two of the four [original band members] are gone. It’s sad to say that Pretenders II was the last page in that unmatched opening chapter, but it was, it is, and life goes on.

Chrissie, of course, continued on with Learning to Crawl, also a nice piece of work, but the band from that point on became a bit of a revolving door with its members. Whatever… She still does great work. But if you haven’t given II a spin in awhile, please do. It really is amazing. – Marsh Gooch
5/5 (Sire/Real SRK 3572, 1981)

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Aug 30 2020
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colored vinyl, Limited Edition, live, record store day, vinyl

Pretenders • Live! At The Paradise Theater, Boston, 1980 [LP]

Once released as an LP sent to radio stations only as a promotional item to help sell the band’s debut album, Live! At The Paradise Theater, Boston, 1980 is PRETENDERS at their livest best. The show was recorded on March 23 of that year just a few months after Pretenders was released to critical acclaim. Already the band was touring the USA, and within a year or so they’d released a stop-gap EP and then their second full length, the imaginitively-titled Pretenders II. To say things seemed to be happening for them is an understatement – and yet that momentum came to a pretty swift halt soon after. The stories have been told elsewhere of how guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon went down the well-traveled drug death road that so many rockers have, so let’s just say there’s no telling what the band would have done had the original lineup stayed intact. Not that the Pretenders didn’t end up achieving a pretty solid career…

Anyway, for Record Store Day 2020 (Drop 1), Sire/Warner Bros. has issued that for-broadcast-only concert on a real cool clear/red vinyl LP that comes in a clear PVC cover*. The 11-song set list is made up primarily of tracks from the band’s first album, so you’ll hear “Precious,” “Kid,” “Mystery Achievement” and “Tattooed Love Boys,” for instance, and early versions of “Talk of the Town” and “Cuban Slide.” Recording-wise, Live! At The Paradise Theater is of a quality I’d call “better than soundboard,” as in it’s lacking some shimmer in the high end and could stand a little more bottom, but otherwise much better than if you’d taped it from the radio back in the day. Of course, big time (real?) Pretenders fans would have looked for a copy of the original promo release, but those are fairly rare and not exactly on the cheap side. So now RSD comes to the rescue – or to the delight of those who had no idea this item ever existed at all. I don’t tend to listen to live albums all that regularly, but this one I’ll put on more frequently than, say, this RSD’s live Bowie release (the 1974 tour recording, reviewed here). If you’ve been trying to hunt down that original release, it is time for you to stop all of your sobbing and grab one of these.

3.5/5 (Sire RCV1 114, 2020)   * Do yourself a favor and keep the record itself in a regular paper or audiophile sleeve; over time records get baked into PVC sleeves and become unplayable.

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Feb 16 2016
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book

Chrissie Hynde • Reckless: My Life As a Pretender [Book]

CHRISSIE HYNDE has a way with words. I really liked her lyrics early on, especially on Pretenders, Pretenders II and Learning to Crawl. She could be biting but then she could also be quite tender, which is a real talent – some of us try pretty hard and are neither. So when I heard about her memoir/autobiography, I was hoping that talent would carry over into the book. And some of it does show up in Reckless.

hynde-recklessHynde takes us in a pretty linear fashion through her life, growing up in Ohio, heading off to Mexico, England, France, back home to the States and then back to Europe. She spends over half of the book (which is 312 pages) before the Pretenders even show up, and that made getting that far a bit of a chore. Granted, some of the anecdotes about her growing up were pretty amusing or sad (the one biker gang story especially), but when you consider that the book ends just after (spoiler alert if you don’t already know this) half of the original Pretenders lineup dies, it makes you wonder whether: a) She doesn’t consider anything that’s happened to her since to be important; or b) There’s a second volume coming. My problem is, whenever I start a biography like this I devour it quicker than I can read a “Stop” sign, so I’m almost always wanting more.

Still there are some great stories here and a wealth of photos to look at – and the book, indeed, is aptly titled. Maybe she’ll do a second volume that overlaps with this one so we get even more stories of her and the Pretenders in their heyday.

3/5 (Doubleday)

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