 |
|
| SPOILER! |
Poor Billy Squier: After four brilliant records, two with Piper and his first two solos (he refers to Don't Say No in "Pursuit of Happiness."), Squier fell victim to record company pressure and, like many '80s rock stars, lacked the business savvy to survive in the big time (at least he never coughed up an awful factory ballad smash). Out from under the limelight, he hides behind nothing on this bare-bones effort: just stark Squier and his guitar up-close and live. But Happy Blue is anything but happy. He still suffers from outside interference, as VH1 forced him to rerecord "The Stroke" for an acoustic performance, inadvertently instigating this project. Actually, his songwriting skills were never questioned, but production set apart most of his hits. Thus, on "Stroke Me Blues" the words don't fit the music. Squier's now a tired victim of "The Stroke," and bitterness peppers the entire album: "I don't wanna be happy/if happy means I got to be like you/wake up in the morning/try to satisfy somebody new." He alters Joni Mitchell's "River": "I've made a ton of money but I can't buy out this scene." Give Squier credit for stripping down, but this release is only for the faithful, which doesn't seem to matter to the Bostonian. He annotates the lyric booklet with wildly pretentious explanatory capsules: "Inferno," of course, sprang from Dante; this cut cascades with Zeppelin flourishes and "Long Way to Fall" drops Buckingham bits. "More than Words Can Say" (not the standard Leo Sayer covered nor the Alias monster ballad), "Grasping for Oblivion," and "If You Would Hate Me Less, I'd Love You More" are stunning and fit the style. Squier is truly talented and this record creeps up on the listener. By the end of Happy Blue, one prays the artist finds the peace he seeks. ~ Doug Stone, All Music Guide |
2 Pursuit of Happiness (7:42)
3 She Will (5:03)
4 Grasping for Oblivion (4:57)
5 If You Would Hate Me Less, I'd Love You More (6:28)
6 Stroke Me Blues (4:42)
7 More Than Words Can Say (3:41)
8 Inferno (Everybody Cries Sometimes) (5:46)
9 Long Way to Fall (5:08)
10 River (5:14)
11 Two (2:48)
| SPOILER! |
Code Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 3 from 28. July 2007 EAC extraction logfile from 26. December 2007, 9:20 Billy Squier / Happy Blue Used drive : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7170A Adapter: 1 ID: 0 Read mode : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction : 48 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes Used interface : Installed external ASPI interface Used output format : Internal WAV Routines Sample format : 44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo TOC of the extracted CD Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector --------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 0:00.00 | 5:00.30 | 0 | 22529 2 | 5:00.30 | 7:42.40 | 22530 | 57219 3 | 12:42.70 | 5:03.30 | 57220 | 79974 4 | 17:46.25 | 4:57.47 | 79975 | 102296 5 | 22:43.72 | 6:28.68 | 102297 | 131464 6 | 29:12.65 | 4:42.27 | 131465 | 152641 7 | 33:55.17 | 3:41.68 | 152642 | 169284 8 | 37:37.10 | 5:46.47 | 169285 | 195281 9 | 43:23.57 | 5:08.03 | 195282 | 218384 10 | 48:31.60 | 5:14.35 | 218385 | 241969 11 | 53:46.20 | 2:48.67 | 241970 | 254636 Range status and errors Selected range Filename C:\Billy Squier - Happy Blue.by.rat.eac.ape.Hq.covers.Israel-club.my1.ru\Billy Squier - Happy Blue.by.rat.eac.ape.Hq.covers.Israel-club.my1.ru.wav Peak level 99.9 % Range quality 99.9 % Copy CRC CFDBA306 Copy OK No errors occurred End of status report |