Now there was a band.
Born in Cleveland in the early eighties, Beaucoup's fate was a disappointingly familiar litany of label turmoil, management changes and ill judged decisions.
Essentially a retrospective, '
Then & Now' includes 5 tracks from the band's debut album
'Born And Raised On Rock'n'Roll'; the 5 tracks from their extremely rare first recordings, originally released as an EP, plus some previously unreleased material. All remastered and re-released by the remaining members of the band.
Afficionados will be familiar with that debut release with its phenomenal title track, a keyboard led song with a heartstopping hook, fuelled by all the drive and urgency of great
AOR.
That track, along with every other song on the album except one, was written by keyboardist, Dennis Lewin, now a broadcaster and piano teacher in the USA.
Lewin's songs captured the eighties' melodic rock zeitgeist in a way that few others did. It's amazing still that the single releases climbed no further than fiftieth place on the Billboard Hot 100.
'Sweet Rachel', '
Somewhere Out In The Night' and '
Jane' all boast Lewin's signature - always constructed around a towering keyboard riff - and are unequivocally of their
AOR, pomp-pop time.
Of the previously unreleased tracks, the sunny, sixtyish
'Someday We'll Be Together Again' and the throwaway pop confection of
'Don't You Believe It' clearly bear the Lewin stamp, lyrically undemanding perhaps, but laden with atmosphere, brimful of memorable melodies and powerfully evocative.
Elsewhere, in the '.Now' section, two of guitarist Bill March's songwriting contributions,
'Forever' and '
I Need A Night' give the material a marginally more contemporary feel. They deviate from the formula established by Lewin only marginally, but demonstrate another, albeit less prolific songwriting talent.
If nothing else, this is a valuable little piece of melodic rock history. But those first five tracks are
AOR heaven.
Written by
Brian Monday, January 5, 2009
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