Tina Turner has four consecutive MusiCards that we'll take a look at today. There's also a card of hers in the UK edition, as well as a "different font in logo" promo card (--notable for being the only one of those featuring a photo that didn't make it into the retail set). The picture on card #97 here looks like it could be a still from a music video, or maybe she was just putting on a little show for the photographer.
A deep dive into 1991 Pro Set SuperStars MusiCards and the music that shaped my life.
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
#97-100 Tina Turner
Tina Turner has four consecutive MusiCards that we'll take a look at today. There's also a card of hers in the UK edition, as well as a "different font in logo" promo card (--notable for being the only one of those featuring a photo that didn't make it into the retail set). The picture on card #97 here looks like it could be a still from a music video, or maybe she was just putting on a little show for the photographer.
Saturday, November 30, 2024
#96 Tiffany (+ Robin Sparkles bonus)
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.
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".
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".
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.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
#95 Sting
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.
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?
Saturday, September 28, 2024
#94 Simple Minds (+ Talking Heads bonus)
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.
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.
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 her least 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.
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. :)
Saturday, August 31, 2024
#93 Roxette (+ Rilo Kiley bonus)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
#91-92 Lionel Richie (+ a music card mailday)
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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
#89 Poco
Backtracking to card #89, here's Poco.
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, May 9, 2024
#87, 88, and 90 The Party (+ World Party bonus)
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:
84 Nelson
85 New Edition
86.1 Maxi Priest (Yes, this card should be #86.)
86.2 The 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?)
87 The Party (Their 1st card out of 3)
88 The Party (Their 2nd card out of 3)
89 Poco (Hey, why the heck did they pop Poco in the middle of The Party's run? Weird!)
90 The 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].)
91 Lionel 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.)
VARIATION ALERT
Here's the same front again, but it's the error card, numbered 86 on the back:
CUSTOM CORNER
This is already a longer post for the blog, but I wanted to squeeze in a custom, too.
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.
💔
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!
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
#86 Maxi Priest
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.
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
#85 New Edition (+ New Order bonus)
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.
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'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.
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
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!
Thursday, February 29, 2024
#82-84 Nelson
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)
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.