At first glance, you might think this is another card for Alannah Myles (#80-81), but nope, it's Tiffany. Seems this must be from a period when she was rebelling against her bubble gum 80s image, attempting to rebrand as a more serious artist.
I don't know much about Tiffany that isn't mentioned on the back of her lone MusiCard. I'm really only familiar with her one popular song, but I like it fine.
Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now"
"I Think We're Alone Now" was Tiffany's biggest hit, but as the back of the card mentions, her follow-up single "Could've Been" rode the momentum to #1 as well, so you can't call Tiffany a one-hit-wonder and get away with it to a music know-it-all.
Tiffany - "Could've Been"
But yeah, that dull ballad isn't quite as memorable as her peppier number one that has become the unofficial anthem of 80s mall fashion. I didn't even realize back then that "I Think We're Alone Now" was a cover of a Tommy James & the Shondells hit from 1967.
Tiffany Darwish has kept busy over the years. She still performs occasionally and released her 11th album in 2022.
Maybe Tommy James and/or the Shondells deserve a shot at a MusiCard-- they got some bangers like "Crimson and Clover" and "Draggin' the Line"-- but I'll go in another direction and make a custom for a fictional character inspired by Tiffany's "now-celebrated 1987 shopping mall tour".
This card is essentially an inside joke for those of us who've watched the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. In a memorable 2006 episode of the show, it's revealed that mild-mannered news reporter Robin Scherbatsky (played by Cobie Smulders) has a secret past: Turns out she was briefly a Canadian pop star in the 80s whose big song was "Let's Go to the Mall". There's a cheesy music video for it and everything.
Robin Sparkles - "Let's Go to the Mall"
While that one was clearly a Tiffany-inspired parody, Robin Sparkles returned the following season with another unearthed song, "Sandcastles in the Sand", which took its queues from 80s pop ballads by three other artists we've already seen on the blog: Belinda Carlisle's "Circle in the Sand", Debbie Gibson's "Foolish Beat", and Martika's "Toy Soldiers".
Robin Sparkles - "Sandcastles in the Sand"
I don't think I've watched an episode of HIMYM since the finale (which I liked, btw, though my wife hated), and honestly I've forgotten most of that show's run, but those Robin Sparkles episodes were a treat. Maybe I'll do a re-watch of the series at some point? It was my wife's favorite show for a while back then and we own at least a couple seasons on DVD.
That'll wrap up this month's post. I wouldn't expect any of you regular readers to be big Tiffany fans, but who knows! Ha. Let me know in the comments if you've got thoughts to share regarding her or How I Met Your Mother.
Here's Sting at #95 in the 1991 MusiCards checklist. The sinister smile and black turtleneck calls to mind the old "Sprockets" sketch from Mike Myers on SNL. This card also appears in the UK edition (with the logo dropped to the opposite corner, as they do). The Police have a pair of cards coming up later in series 2, but for now it's just Sting's solo career being featured.
The Soul Cages is the only Sting album I've ever owned, picking it up on cassette back when it was on the charts. I think "All This Time" was the single I liked enough to justify the purchase. Honestly, it was never one of my most-played tapes, and I'm not all that sentimental about it today, but it's a solid album. I also had a greatest hits cassette of The Police around that time, and later got their first album used on CD.
Sting - "All This Time"
Among other favorite Sting tracks for me are "Fortress Around Your Heart", "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You", and "Fields of Gold". He's continued putting out solo albums over the years, as well as a bit of acting here and there, with a big Wikipedia entry if you'd like to learn more. The Police did a reunion tour in 2007-2008 that was a huge financial success, though the guys decided not to carry on after the tour but rather split again.
We'll talk about The Police more when we eventually get to their pair of MusiCards in the second series. I thought about maybe making a custom for Dire Straits, seeing as Sting has a notable guest spot on "Money For Nothing", but turns out Dire Straits have a real MusiCard already, over in the UK edition. I'll just keep this post a short one instead.
Sting - "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free"
Thanks for reading and please speak up in the comments if you've got anything to add. Any particular Sting songs you dig?
Simple Minds has card #94 in the '91 MusiCards set, though only frontman Jim Kerr is featured in the photo. Anyone know the significance of the picture in the background? This card has a twin in the UK edition (which unlike the US counterpart, is gracious enough to at least name the other bandmembers on the back).
Wordmark/logo on the back in lue of a second photo; that's somewhat of a rarity in this set. Simple Minds are a bigger deal across the pond; While they might be thought of by some in the States as a one-hit wonder, they've had five #1 albums in the UK.
Simple Minds - "Don't You (Forget About Me)"
The Breakfast Club soundtrack was one of the first cassettes I bought for myself, circa '88 (old news by then, as the film premiered in early 1985, but I was a kid catching up). You gotta love "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and its iconic use there. The 1989 album mentioned in the card's blurb didn't really hit in America, but I suppose the band further justified their case for Pro Set's inclusion when their 1991 album Real Life saw modest success with the singles "See the Lights", "Let There Be Love", and "Stand by Love". I remember hearing them on the radio often back then, but never saw them on MTV besides maybe "(Don't You)".
Simple Minds - "New Gold Dream"
Around that time, I borrowed an old cassette of their 5th album, New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84), from my cousin and copied some songs off it. A couple years later I picked up a used greatest hits CD (Glittering Prize), and it got regular rotations from me as a teen and twenty-something.
The lineup may have changed a bit, with only Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill remaining as original members, but Simple Minds have done their best to make sure you don't forget about them, still alive and kicking all these years later. Their most recent studio album-- their 19th-- came out in 2022.
CUSTOM CORNER
When thinking of a band to pair up with Simple Minds, seems like the obvious choice is to go with Talking Heads, so let's do that. (Lou Reed, referenced on the card's back, would also have been a good one, but we'll save Lou for another day.)
Kind of surprising the Talking Heads didn't get a real MusiCard. They didn't formerly disband until December '91, but the writing was on the wall as the 80s came to a close and David Byrne wandered off to do other things.
Talking Heads - "Burning Down the House"
But yeah, they were big in the 80s. My mom didn't listen to much "cool" music when I was growing up-- more into classical music with some "easy listening" adult contemporary on the side-- but I remember Talking Heads right along with the Beatles and Paul Simon filling the living room among my earliest exposure to music that got my attention. Little Creatures is probably the album we listened to the most together, often played on the stereo on a weekend afternoon while choring. Funny enough, I'd later come to find out that my favorite song on that album is herleast favorite ("Television Man"). The 2CD collection Sand in the Vaseline also got a lot of play at home back then, as did the live album Stop Making Sense (where again, my favorite song was her least favorite ["Burning Down the House"]).
My aunt (the mom of the cousin I borrowed the Simple Minds tape from) was (still is?) also a big fan of the band. I remember one year for Christmas in my teenage years, I got her a live bootleg CD (Memories Can't Wait [Boston '79]), and I made sure to make myself a copy when I got a chance. And at least a couple times back then, I'd get her or my mom the latest David Byrne CD if I needed a gift idea. My best friend Doug thought they were a little weird at first-- resistant the first time I tried to play them while we hung out together-- but he came around.
Talking Heads - "Once in a Lifetime"
But enough of my personal reminiscences-- to give a quick bio, Talking Heads got their start in New York City in 1975, with the band consisting of David Byrne (vocals and guitar), Chris Frantz (drums), Tina Weymouth (bass) and Jerry Harrison (keyboards and guitar). With Byrne at the helm, the band's output evolved from a raw punkness in their early days to lush worldbeat soundscapes by the end.
Byrne has kept it up as a solo artist and has also done some notable collaborations with Brian Eno and more recently St. Vincent. The other 3 continued to work together for a while (Tina and Chris have been married since '77, btw), but interpersonal conflicts and bad blood prevented any substantial Talking Heads reunion. One tidbit from their Wikipedia page is that the band was offered $80 million earlier this year to do a reunion tour including a performance at Coachella, but they (he?) turned it down. As it stands, the band's only reemergence since the original run was in 2002 when they performed 3 songs at their own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
Ok, we'll wrap up the post here. Please let me know in the comments if you've got any thoughts to share regarding Simple Heads, Talking Minds, or whatever. :)
Roxette has card #93 in the 1991 MusiCards set. They'll make a return appearance with a card in series 2, plus they've got three cards in the UK edition. I'd say this card here is another rare occurrence where the photo fits ok with the unwieldy border design.
That's an interesting quote, though a little strange to fill up the blurb. I don't remember "Dressed For Success" being the hit that the card claims, but "Listen To Your Heart" was huge, as was "It Must Have Been Love" from the Pretty Woman soundtrack. I got a bit tired of those couple songs getting played so much, but liked Roxette overall.
Roxette - "The Look"
After hearing "The Look" a few times in '89 and really liking it, I used some allowance money to buy Look Sharp! on cassette and listened to it a bunch back then. I still give the album a spin every so often and would put it right there with Forever Your Girl as an enduring personal favorite from my stint as a kid at the time listening to pop music. (Hesitating to use the term "guilty pleasure".)
By the time the follow-up album Joyride came out in 1991, my musical interests had shifted mostly to alternative rock, though I did kinda like the cheesy/catchy title-track.
Roxette - "Joyride"
They didn't get much attention in the US after that album, but the duo was active on-and-off over the years with scattered releases and live performances until Marie Fredriksson sadly lost her fight with brain cancer in 2019. The guy, Per Gessle, has been keeping the name Roxette alive by sharing rare tracks and the like, recently bringing in another Swedish singer, Lena Philipsson, for incarnation 2.0 of Roxette as an active act, with some touring planned for 2025.
For further information, there's a pretty massive Wikipedia entry for Roxette. We'll revisit when we get to their card in series 2, but that's probably enough for now.
CUSTOM CORNER
I figured I'd pair up Roxette with another musical favorite boy+girl dynamic of mine.
Funny thing here is I actually photoshopped up this custom way back in 2019-- the before times! Yeah, I had originally planned to feature them as the Custom Corner bonus for the John Lennon card in the Legends subset-- the loose connection being RK covered a John Lennon song live once-- but then changed my mind and had this custom waiting around for its time to shine. I thought I was pretty clever working the logo into an arm rest.
Rilo Kiley has been a huge part of my life, as far as bands go. I've already written about them a few times on my baseball card blog, showing off some autographs and stuff while talking about how I got into the band, so I won't rehash it too much here, but the short version is they were my favorite band of the 00s (or maybe second only to Neutral Milk Hotel) and I ended up meeting my wife through our mutual appreciation.
Rilo Kiley - My Slumbering Heart
Quick bio: Former child actors Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett started playing music together in the late 90s, filling out the band with Pierre "Duke" de Reeder and drummer Dave Rock (later replaced by Jason Boesel). They put out a few CDs and eventually signed with Warner Bros. for their major-label debut which turned out to be their swansong. Jenny Lewis has gone on to modest success as a solo artist, while Blake has kept busy and done some producing.
But yeah, they were a fun band in the aughts to follow and be a part of their fanbase (I was a moderator on their main fan forum, which was pretty hoppin' for a few years there). I had a lot of fun attending their So. Cal shows (I think I saw them 8 times) and-- in addition to meeting my wife-- made a lot of friends in that community, some of which are still online pals today.
I've lost touch with my buddy Vegan/Greg who took this photo, but I'll be forever grateful to him for documenting an incredible moment in my life when Jenny sauntered up to me in the front row and we sang a few bars of "With Arms Outstretched" together at a show in January 2004. I also have video of the entire set and shared it on YouTube earlier this year for the 20th anniversary. Not even counting my big moment in the sun (which didn't really get caught on the video), it would rank high among my favorite live shows. Fun band. It might be nice if they did the whole "reunion tour" thing someday.
Rilo Kiley - Wires & Waves
How about you readers? Ever listen much to either Roxette or Rilo Kiley? Feel free to let me know in the comments and thanks for stopping by.
Got a double dose of Lionel Richie for ya today. Card #91 here features a fun live photo, though a bit grainier than ideal. The border cutting off Lionel's outstretched hand is another knock against the card, but I suppose you can get a chuckle by pretending he's flipping the bird or something.
I watched the doc on "We Are The World" earlier this year and was fascinated by how that all came together. I hadn't previously realized just how much Lionel spearheaded that project with Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson.
USA For Africa - "We Are The World"
Card #92 has another pic from the photographers area by the stage of a live performance, similar vantage point of the previous card, but this time we get to see both hands in action. Seems to be from the same show as the back photo of #91, evidenced by the striped jacket.
A standard promo headshot breaks the string of concert photos. I didn't know he started as a saxophonist. That's cool.
Lionel Richie - "All Night Long (All Night)"
As a kid, I remember Can't Slow Down being one of the first CDs we had in the house. I loved "All Night Long", but otherwise didn't play the disc much, just remember always seeing the album cover as I'd flip through my mom's small collection of non-classical CDs.
I also dig that song's spiritual successor, "Dancing on the Ceiling". "You Are" is another upbeat Lionel Richie fav of mine. And his hit ballads are fine in moderation too-- talking 'bout the likes of "Hello", "Endless Love", and "Stuck on You". I think he's been a judge on one of those singing competition shows for a while, and otherwise keeps busy these days with charity work and occasional live performances.
By the way, the Commodores also have their own MusiCard, so we're penciled in to give them a closer look at card #295 in Series 2.
INCOMING CORNER
Instead of a Custom Corner today, here's a surprise PWE I got recently from ol' blog buddy, Zippy Zappy. Normally cardboard maildays like this would be covered on my main blog, Baseball Card Breakdown, but since all five of the cards in the envelope were music related, I figured I'd bump the content over here to my music-focused outlet.
Tupac 2013 Panini Black Friday - HRX - Cool card of a legendary name in hip hop. Digital Underground (an act Tupac worked with coming up) has MusiCards, but I don't think he's featured in those photos.
J. Cole feat. Wale 2013 Mann Center - I'm not all that familiar with these artists, but love the concert promo cards that the Mann Center (an outdoor music venue in Philadelphia) put out for a while a decade ago featuring cartoon art on classic card designs. I suggest you do an eBay search for "Mann Center trading card" to check out some of the others.. trust me; fun stuff for card dorks like us! I've already got the Neutral Milk Hotel card from the set and wouldn't mind adding others.
Joe Guese / The Click Five
Turns out the Click Five were a power pop band out of Boston in the aughts who put out an album called Greetings From Imrie House (2005), with at least some copies coming with promo trading cards of the band, such as this one featuring lead guitarist Joe Guese. Gotta respect the Mod style commitment of rocking out under hot lights in a suit and tie.
Barry Manilow 1991 Starline Hollywood Walk of Fame
Manilow doesn't have a MusiCard, and this '91 Starline card is the most "mainstream trading card" release of the few collectible items listed at TCDB under his name. Not sure what Kenny was doing with this one! Ha. But yeah, Barry's got some fun songs in his iconic songbook.
The Rolling Stones 2014 Topps Heritage - News Flashbacks
This one's a baseball card, technically. The Stones have a MusiCard but only in the UK set. Heritage gave them back-to-back News Flashback inserts. I already had the 2013 card, and this one from '14 completes the pairing for me. Nice!
Here's a photo of the backs.
Thanks a lot, Zippy! Solid additions to my modest collection of various music trading cards.
Anywho, I hope you readers are having a pleasant-enough summer! Please chime in down in the comments if you've got any thoughts to share on Lionel Richie or any of the zapped cards above.
I can't imagine kids of the early 90s ripping packs of MusiCards, pulling this card, and finding it at all desirable in any way, no offense to the men of Poco. Just an awkward shot of four average-looking middle-aged men.
Ha, I gotta admit I'm not super familiar with Poco and I was kinda under the impression they had an 80s hit with a cover of "Puttin' On the Ritz"... but I was confused and that artist was actually Taco.
Poco? Taco? Falco? What's the difference!? lol
But no, it turns out Poco were a band known for helping pioneer the Southern California country rock sound.
After skimming their Wikipedia entry, seems this band had a lot of quality musicians pass through its ranks over the years, though commercial success was elusive, perhaps because they called themselves Poco instead of something cooler.
Poco - "Call It Love"
Their reunion album, Legacy (1989), contained two top-40 singles, "Call It Love" and "Nothin' to Hide", good enough to earn a MusiCard apparently, but the accompanying tour flopped and the band was dropped from their label by the time packs were on shelves.
Poco was inactive for most of the 90s before being revived in the new millennium, spearheaded by Rusty Young, the only original member remaining by that point. He passed away in 2021, which seems to have closed the book on Poco.
One "fun fact" I knew about Poco is that the late, great Phil Hartman did the artwork for a couple of their albums, including the horse illustration on the back of the MusiCard above. Doesn't that blow your mind a little? Phil Hartman from SNL, The Simpsons, NewsRadio, etc., cranking out album covers in his younger days. Heck, I should toss a dupe of this Poco card into my Pee-Wee Herman subcollection as a little tribute to the renaissance man behind the character of Captain Carl and co-writer of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. No fooling, he was my favorite actor back in the 90s. Him and Kurt Cobain were probably the celebrity deaths that rocked me the most while growing up.
Anyways, despite being half-tempted to do a Custom Corner for Taco, or even Falco, let's call the post good here with the Phil Hartman custom I whipped up a couple years back.
Do you readers have any thoughts to share about Poco? Listening to their top-rated tracks while drafting this post reminded me of hearing "Call it Love" on the radio here and there over the years. Nice song. Nothing else rang a bell with me, but they've got a few solid tunes reminiscent of easy listening stuff from the likes of The Eagles and America.
Poco - "When It All Began"
Thanks for reading. Since #90 was covered in the previous (Party) post, next up we jump to #91 for a double dose of Lionel Richie.
We've got a few cards to hit today. In a first for the blog, we'll be jumping order a little bit because of a hiccup in the 1991 MusiCards checklist. (We're skipping unrelated #89 and will backtrack to it next post.) Plus-- unrelated to the checklist order misstep?-- there's an error variation mixed in with this group of cards, so heads up.
For a visual aid, here's this Pop portion of the (mostly alphabetical) checklist with my added notations:
84Nelson 85New Edition 86.1Maxi Priest (Yes, this card should be #86.) 86.2The Party (Whoops, no; while this card is numbered #86 on the back, that's an error. A later variation of the card corrects the number to 90. This makes it tricky to sort a master set of 1991 MusiCards; Like, do you sort this card in at #86 or #90?) 87The Party (Their 1st card out of 3) 88The Party (Their 2nd card out of 3) 89Poco (Hey, why the heck did they pop Poco in the middle of The Party's run? Weird!) 90The Party (Yes, there is only one MusiCard #90 and it is in fact The Party's 3rd card, though it's "out of order" in the checklist, and that same card also has an error variation that mistakenly has the wrong number [#86] on the back but is otherwise the same as the only card that's actually numbered #90 on the back [though that card probably should have been #89, but Poco snuck in at #89 instead for some reason].) 91Lionel Richie 92 Lionel Richie
Does that all make sense? Or did I just make it more confusing than it needs to be? One thing that's clear is that whoever it was at Pro Set's creative department whose job it was to order the individual cards into number was in over their head! It's like they had a good checklist in a box of index cards, but the fool tripped on the way to the design department and those index cards that were in logical order got shuffled around just enough to the point where if anyone bothers to actually take a good look at the checklist, they'll inevitably come to the conclusion that whomever it was at Pro Set's creative department whose job it was to order the individual cards into number was in over their head.
Ok, enough smack talk about the MusiCards production team's checklist guy. (I wonder if it was the same guy who thought it'd be a good idea to have an odd shaped photo area in the design, and not allow for any flexibility such as swapping around the design elements any further than the choice between vertical and horizontal, or by mercifully allowing any part of the photo poking over those odd-shaped borders. I can't help but feel like they shot themselves in the foot. Maybe I'm just being cocky, but I'd love to take a time machine back to 1990 when these cards were being designed and use my pocket phone/camera/computer to convince them that I'm a magician from the future or whatever so they'll let me run the MusiCards project, and I'm not saying that I'd for-sure lead the team to heights warranting a follow-up set... but damn it, I'd at least run a tighter ship with the order of my checklist!)
(And this is not even the worst of the checklist order's several blunders! That honor has got to go to the one random hair metal band smack dab within the R&B-and-Rap portion of the set.. but we'll worry about that down the road at card #114.)
We'll hit that fake #86 in a moment, but for now here's MusiCard #87:
Funny thing, this card gave me a minor "mind blown" moment because I have never heard of the group called The Party other than vaguely knowing they're in the 1991 MusiCard set. But it turns out I've been searching eBay for the person on the left's autograph every day for the past year!
Reading the back, I was like.. "Wait a minute, (first person mentioned) Deedee Magno [Hall] is a voice actor on a favorite animated show of mine, Steven Universe." Then I looked it up, and yep. it's the same person. What a trip: Pearl, the Crystal Gem, appears in the 1991 MusiCards set! Wow. I won't blather on too much here, but I talked more about my Steven Universe stuff in an underperforming post on Baseball Card Breakdown last year. I've since snagged a few more autographs I'd been targeting from that set (chiefly Amethyst, Garnett, and Lion), but Pearl (Deedee) is still a need.
But back to her days as a fledgeling musician, here's card #88:
Per the outfits, this pic is from the same photoshoot as the previous card. I can't really tell if Pro Set manufactured that blurry column on the left to artificially make the photo work better with the design or if there was actually a thing there during the shoot.
The back photo here is the same as that of the previous card, cropt differently. And I still don't have much of an idea what this group's music sounds like, but hey, the quintet's members are all featured on the only album they had released at that point. Good for them. lol
Skipping #89 here because it's a different act, as previously mentioned, but then here's The Party back for more (in the same clothes) at #90:
Either they rocked trademark outfits a lot back then or else they really got a lot of mileage out of this photoshoot. All their photos in this post-- front and back-- all feature the other lady (Tiffini Hale) in the same distinctive hat, and there seems to be a big red jacket that a couple of the guys take turns in.
Of course I had to check out some tunes from these guys, and lo and behold there's yet another shot from this photoshoot on their Spotify homepage:
The above (apparently reversed) image wasn't used on a MusiCard, but it's very similar to the front of card #87.
Anyways, card #90 is technically the rarest card you'd need to find if you wanted to put together a full set of series 1 MusiCards (since the correctly numbered card wasn't actually included in series 1 packs). But since The Party don't have much of a mainstream following today, there isn't really any premium on the card's typical price, far as I can tell. If it was like Tom Petty, Ozzy Osbourne, or somebody else popular, a scarce variation like that might've been a bigger deal.
Oh, ok.. now we get some context. Turns out, these young performers were cast members on a late-80s Mickey Mouse Club reboot that were then thrown together as a musical act by a marketing department or something, Monkees-style, and the name The Party ("Positive Attitude Reflects Today's Youth") was the winning entry from a contest to name them.
The Party - "In My Dreams" (a Dokken cover) ...the most successful of their few singles to chart.
That powerful Disney influence behind the scenes likely played a part in them being granted 3 cards in this set. Wikipedia also tells me they cranked out a CD per year for four years, 1990-1993, before splitting, later regrouping in the mid 2010s and are still occasionally active, doing a handful of live performances in 2023. Sadly, however, Tiffini wasn't involved in the reunion, as she battled schizophrenia for years before a cardiac arrest lead to her death in 2021.
VARIATION ALERT
Here's the same front again, but it's the error card, numbered 86 on the back:
Same card other than the number in the corner.
The Party toured as openers with Taylor Dayne and then Vanilla Ice back when that meant something, and that helps give you an idea what to expect with their music. Honestly, I couldn't get through any of their songs I tried to check out while drafting this post. In their defense, I'm clearly not their target demographic. I don't recall ever hearing their stuff back then-- like, when I was in their demographic-- so there's no sentimental attachment for me either. Regardless, it's been interesting learning the group's backstory, and again, the Steven Universe connection was a trip for me to discover.
CUSTOM CORNER
This is already a longer post for the blog, but I wanted to squeeze in a custom, too.
The Party might not be my speed, but World Party on the other hand is a band I really like. I was heartbroken hearing that frontman Karl Wallinger passed away just a couple months ago at age 66. The band had been inactive for nearly a decade, and he had dealt with serious medical issues dating back to a brain aneurysm in early 2001, but fans hoped that the songs he had been tinkering on for the past several years would wind up as a World Party comeback album soon, but alas. Perhaps Karl's estate will be able to work up a posthumous farewell album from the new material he left behind.
After making a name for himself helping out in The Waterboys in the mid 80s (see the tremendous "Whole of the Moon"), Wallinger spread his wings as World Party in 1986, scoring a minor hit with "Ship of Fools" off their debut, Private Revolution. I remember catching the video for "Put the Message in the Box" from their second album, Goodbye Jumbo, a couple times on MTV circa 1990, but it was hearing "Way Down Now" on the radio a couple years after the fact that really caught my attention.
World Party - "Way Down Now"
Those minor hits in the late 80s and 1990 would seem to make World Party a strong candidate for inclusion in the 1991 MusiCards set, but nope.. not even in the UK edition. Bummer.
1993's Bang! was another banger, and I dug the cut "Is It Like Today?" enough to pick up the CD after hearing it on the radio a few times (and it's still an all-time favorite of mine). Egyptology (1997) made less of a splash, but included the song "She's the One", which went on to be covered by Robbie Williams, going all the way to #1 on the British pop charts. (Robbie was a dick who sometimes falsely claimed to have written the song himself, but the royalties helped a lot when Karl was recovering from the aneurysm, unable to work.) Dumbing Up (2000) ended up as World Party's final studio album, though fans got a nice treat in 2012 with Arkeology, a big collection (5 discs) of unreleased songs, live stuff, and covers (including some tight Beatles renditions). It really sucks that we lost him too early.
World Party - "Is It Like Today?"
💔
That'll do it for this post. Please let me know in the comments if you've got any thoughts to share regarding either parties covered here today. Thanks!
Due to a Pro Set numbering error, 1991 MusiCards [Series 1] came packed out with two different cards at #86. One of those was supposed to be #90, and was corrected for the updated packs of Series 2. We'll tackle that blunder soon enough, but today let's take a look at the correct card #86, Maxi Priest.
Solid, well-framed photograph of Maxi. It's a rare instance where the intrusive "totally radical '90s" design actually compliments the photo, one might venture to say.
Maxi Priest is an artist that I like fine based on the small handful of songs I've heard from them, though never bothered to dig deeper than what the radio/MTV played me. "Close To You" is his biggest hit, going all the way to #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early October of 1990.
Maxi Priest - "Close To You"
The card's write-up mentions that song's album, Bona Fide (released June 29, 1990), but not the smash hit from it, instead noting 1988's "Wild World" cover. This all indicates the blurb was likely typed up sometime around July-September 1990. (Always fun trying to pin down stuff like that.)
Anyways, I also like that Cat Stevens cover and the version of "Set the Night to Music" he did with Roberta Flack.
"Set the Night to Music"
Maxi Priest is in his 60s now, still releasing music every once in a while and performing. He notched his third nomination for "Best Reggae Album" in 2021. Here's his Wikipedia entry for further reading.
Truth be told, I wanted to cover the other card #86 in this post too, pulling a bit of a blog double-header, but.. well, I ran out of time before hitting my self-imposed monthly deadline here at the end of April, so it'll have to wait!
Thanks for reading and please share in the comments if you've got anything to say about Maxi Priest.
New Edition here at #85 is a rare case of an inactive act getting a MusiCard in 1991. Besides the gold Legends subset with the likes of Bob Marley and Led Zeppelin, I can't think of other examples off hand.
New Edition - "If It Isn't Love"
We've already seen Bobby Brown in this set at #35, but these photos seem to be from the post-Bobby lineup from the late '80s as a 5-piece with Johnny Gill added. Gill gets his own MusiCard coming up at #121, with Bell Biv DeVoe having a pair at #109 and 110. Ralph Tresvant has to wait until Series 2, but we'll eventually see him at #297 and 298. So considering Pro Set was fully covering the fellas, I suppose it made sense to also give a card to their group that was splintering at the time.
All six men have reunited as New Edition after years apart, still occasionally touring and even doing Vegas residencies as recently as right now. That's pretty impressive, especially since they started out as a "boy band" after all. From looking at a recent show's setlist on YouTube, the fellas mix in their non-New Edition hits as well, such as Bobby's "Every Little Step" and Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison", so looks like they give you good bang for your buck when you see them live.
New Edition - "Can You Stand the Rain"
New Edition's heyday was a little before my time, though I've always liked "Can You Stand the Rain" and "If It Isn't Love". For further reading, here's their Wikipedia entry link.
Changing gears for some Photoshop fun, my favorite "New (something)" artist has got to be New Order (...though I also like the New Pornographers a lot). I've mentioned before that receiving the New Order cassette Substance as a Christmas gift from my older cousin circa 1989 was a turning point in my musical journey or whatever. Kind of surprising they didn't receive any MusiCards. "Blue Monday" was unavoidable in the mid 80s, while their latest album at the time, 1989's Technique, had gone to #1 in the UK (#32 US), so New Order was definitely popular enough to warrant inclusion, but perhaps Pro Set wasn't able to secure licensing. Let's at least give 'em a custom mock-up here these many years later.
They were still riding high in the early 90s, with 1993's Republic being a big hit, and stands as New Order's best chart position in the States, hitting #11 on the US Billboard 200.
New Order - "Regret"
I bought Republic on CD when it was new and listened to it a ton, later going back and getting into their early stuff too (not to mention Joy Division). Frontman Bernard Sumner is a bit hit-or-miss for me, with his vocals and lyrics sometimes falling short (I have no idea what any New Order song is about, as the lyrics generally seem to be random phrases thrown together willy-nilly), but overall I'm a big fan. His side-project with Johnny Marr called Electronic had a few bangers in the 90s, too.
I haven't done it in a while, but the blog's Desert Island Disc recurring feature is where I fill up a theoretical CDR with my favorite songs from one band I love. I'm dusting it off with a name change for this post. These songs are not ranked in order, but rather it's just a playlist of songs to help me to cope with the ol' desert island isolation, were I limited to about an hour of New Order material to bring with me. Actually, I'm cheating here as I would probably just bring Substance (disc 1, which is the same as the cassette; the CD release included a second disc of b-sides), so this is a "besides that" playlist.
New Order - Desert Island Playlist
1. Dreams Never End 2. Age of Consent 3. Your Silent Face 4. Love Vigilantes 5. Elegia 6. Face Up 7. Regret 8. World 9. Special 10. Hellbent 11. Restless 12. Love Less 13. Round & Round 14. Run 15. Vanishing Point 16. Touched By The Hand Of God 17. 1963
Yeah, that could maybe use a little tweaking, but a good enough mix of songs for me. Length comes to just about 80 minutes, so that would likely squeeze onto a CDR.
I figured I'd change this feature to a "playlist" rather than "disc" to update for the times. My new car now is the first for me that doesn't have a CD player-- well, I suppose my first car didn't have a CD player either, just radio and cassette player-- so it's an end of an era for me spinning discs as I drive. I dislike commercials too much to listen to the radio very long these days, but I've been making myself "best of" playlists on Spotify for a while now, mainly for tunes when I walk the dog, and looks like I'll be using these playlists in the car now too.
As a card collector, I similarly like having a "music collection"-- like a stockpile of CDs, or even folders upon folders of mp3s backed up on an external hard drive-- but that doesn't jive with streaming services like Spotify (who have a reputation for being terrible at compensating artists). But oh well. Gotta get with the "new order" of things, I guess. lol
New Order - "1963"
Back on topic to wrap up, New Order still exists as a band today, but they're not quite the same since acrimoniously parting with bassist Peter Hook years back. At least the gal on keyboards, Gillian Gilbert, returned to the fold after taking a decade off to be a mom.
Are any of you readers into New Edition or New Order? Got favorite songs of theirs? Sound off in the comments if you wanna, and thanks for reading!
Nelson has 3 consecutive cards in Series 1 plus a "different font" promo for a total of 4 MusiCards for us to check out in this post. Above is the only card where the rest of the band is featured in the photo, not just the titular twins. The redhead in the middle looks a bit like Emma Stone, but don't let the long hair fool you; that's a man, baby.
Entering today, I know just a couple Nelson songs: "(I Can't Live Without Your) Love & Affection" (which I could live without) and "After the Rain" (which I do like). They seemed like the last new "big hair" rock band to emerge before that genre went the way of the dodo in the wake of Nevermind.
Nelson - "After the Rain"
I was intrigued by the SNL tidbit on the back of the card. Wikipedia has some more context on that early performance:
During the 1980s, Matthew and Gunnar played as Strange Agents and as The Nelsons, with which they played the Los Angeles club scene. A year after the death of their father in a plane crash, Lorne Michaels agreed to have the Nelsons as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live, at the request of their manager at the time. They became the first unsigned band to play on the show. During this iteration of the band, Matthew was the lead singer and bassist, while Gunnar played the drums. As they returned home from the show, Gunnar claims he had what he called "an epiphany", which he shared with his brother. He told him that they should break up the band as it was and start sharing the front stage together. Gunnar promised to learn to play guitar and did so in a year. (source)
Here's a shot of them holding their guitars.
The band members get name-checked on the back of card 83. If it were me putting the set together, I'd maybe swap backs with the full-band photo of the previous card (that actually shows all those guys), but whatever.
Deja vu. The unnumbered promo version of card 83 can be distinguished by the casual "Pro Set MusiCards" font in the black box. The crop is also slightly different, with that box touching hair here, plus we see the tip of the lower guitar now. And of course the back is different:
The blurb is a little more.. effusive?.. than we're used to with this set. That opening sentence, jeez! "Uniquely 1990s music" was close, but turned out to be uniquely 1990, specifically. Done by '91.
Nelson - "Love & Affection"
Nelson's last card features a tight headshot of the duo split by a beam of flowing blond hair.
The other band members bookend the Nelson cards, showing up again on the back photo of card 84.
I really doubt the other fellas are still in tow, but the Nelson brothers never stopped rocking. I gotta admit I could've sworn I remember hearing about Gunnar Nelson passing a few years back, but I may have conflated him with someone like Jani Lane from Warrant, because yep, at least as of Leap Day 2024, they're both still kicking. Nelson has released new music as recently as the mid 2010s and still perform live on occasion. They also have a separate tribute act for their dad called Ricky Nelson Remembered, and sometimes play in a celebrity all-star rock band called Scrap Metal.
Let me know in the comments if you've got any thoughts or memories connected to Nelson to share.
Alannah Myles parlayed her #1 hit "Black Velvet" into a pair of MusiCards in 1991.
Per ASCAP, it was the most played song on radio for 1989 and 1990, so that's pretty impressive. Like most Americans, I liked the song, but never really heard from her again after it faded from the airwaves.
I hadn't realized (or maybe I just forgot) she was Canadian, but I guess her being known for that bluesy Elvis tribute tricks you into thinking maybe she's from down south. She's got a robust Wikipedia entry with lots of accolades from north of the border, though in the US she just could never get out of "Black Velvet"'s shadow.
Here's the other card Alannah Myles got. Neither was reprised in the UK edition, so she's just got the two regular MusiCards. Not much to say about the photos used-- typical promotional headshots-- though both cards look like they would have been better served by having the Super Stars logo bumped to the opposite corner (but for some reason Pro Set only dared do that for the UK edition, or for the occasional Series 1 cards that got an updated variation included in Series 2 packs).
Alannah turned 65 this past Christmas and seems to have slowed down her music career, though she still works on music here and there, in recent years re-recording her old songs, sorta like the Taylor Swift thing, re-recording your music so then you own the recordings instead of slimy industry dudes.
I'd be curious if any of you regular readers have heard an Alannah Myles song besides "Black Velvet"..? I took a curious listen to some of her other songs on Spotify and they were solid but nothing else really stood out too much for me. Here's one that's not too bad:
Alannah Myles - "Why Have Angels Denied You"
CUSTOM CORNER
Feels like I gotta pair up Alannah Myles with another female singer from Ontario who also did some child acting before becoming a rock star, and who coincidentally happens to have a similar name.
This custom fudges not only Pro Set's borders, but also the timeline of Alanis becoming a star. Her debut album didn't come out until 1991, with a quick follow-up in '92, but those were Canada-only releases. Then in 1995, Jagged Little Pill was a worldwide smash, selling over 33 million copies. You gotta imagine that had MusiCards endured as an annual release instead being one-and-done, Alanis would have likely been all over those theoretical mid/late-90s MusiCard sets, probably even featured on the box.
I still remember when she burst onto the scene with "You Oughta Know". For a guy like me mainly into alternative rock back then, the track was notable for featuring Flea and Dave Navarro, bandmates at the time in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The story I remember hearing is that they only agreed to do it as anonymous session work, and after a bit of legal posturing when the news leaked, the two guys ended up getting points on the album, resulting in Navarro making more money from that one song than the entirety of the rest of his tenure in the Chili Peppers, funny enough.
I'd consider myself a casual fan of Alanis Morissette, but have never bought an album or seen her live. "Hand in My Pocket" and "Ironic" are a couple other hits of hers I dig, both also off Jagged Little Pill. Acting-wise, she was cool to see in Dogma and a run on the show Weeds, plus a recurring part on the fun animated show The Great North. I also watched a lot of You Can't Do That on Television as a kid (despite it being kinda controversial at the time), though I don't particularly remember young Alanis' brief stint in the cast.
Anyways, her most recent album came out in 2022. For further reading, you can peruse her Wikipedia entry.
"Thank You"
READER APPRECIATION
I wanted to do a little reader appreciation now that 2023 is in the books. I hit my MusiCards Blog goal of posting at least once a month for the year.. though fell short of my stretch-goal of posting more than once per month. But I still count it as a victory after only 5 posts in all of 2022.
I like to offer a vague incentive for readers to chime in about the artists we cover here, so sometimes I get around to doing a little mail-blast to the regulars. Thanks and congrats to these five fellas who all commented on at least half of the 12 posts here in 2023:
Brett Alan Fuji Jon Matt (Red Sox) Night Owl
It goes without saying I appreciate anyone who reads this little blog, and especially these 5 guys for their continued active participation. If there's a chance I don't have a current mailing address for any of you guys, please hit me up. Nothing too exciting, but I'm planning to send out thank-you cards your way soon/eventually.
No promises for a similar promotion next year, but definitely maybe. If you're a reader who doesn't comment much, well, the count is reset for 2024, so feel free to pop in more this year. Let me know in the comments if you've got any thoughts/memories to share regarding Alannah Myles and/or Alanis Morissette. Thanks!
