Tag: aldo nova

After the success of Aldo’s first album and especially the single “Fantasy,” I was really looking forward to this follow up. It didn’t do quite as well as its predecessor, but still reached gold status and the single “Monkey On Your Back” managed a #12.

They are all self penned tunes, apart from a cover of “Hey Operator” by fellow Canadians, Coney Hatch. This album feels like a concept album, musically anyway. The intro to the record is basically two instrumental pieces together before you get to Monkey On Your Back, and the close out track is Prelude To Paradise followed by Paradise, sort of bookending the whole album. Also, the intro to Hold Back The Night has a killer funky instrumental groove piece before the main song kicks in, and it returns towards the end of the song. It’s a great track and my favourite on the album.

It’s a strange album but for that very thing, I love it and it’s Aldo’s best effort. Great songs and killer playing by Aldo, I still get a buzz when I play this today. You can pick this up very cheap and if you see it, buy it.

8.5/10 from The Grooveman.

To show you how good I am at predicting how good artists are going to be, I thought that good old Aldo here would be bigger than Bon Jovi – I thought at the time that this album was better than Bon Jovi’s first album. Yep, I know, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Aldo had an initial burst of three albums in the early eighties. They were great melodic rock albums with great catchy songs, but then he all but disappeared, then reappeared, sporadically releasing albums right up until last year. Of course he didn’t totally disappear. He was in demand as a songwriter, and he also was in demand as a producer – he received a Grammy for Celine Dion’s Falling Into You.

The opening track, Fantasy, was such a good song. He should have been guaranteed success and mega stardom, but the music business being the music business, he didn’t fit the profile at the time. Hot Love is next up and another great track with a catchy as hell chorus and melody. It’s Too Late has top forty written all over it if maybe Cindy Lauper had recorded it. Ball And Chain is the predictable ballad for Side 1 and gets the usual thumbs down from me. Heart To Heart closes out this Side, and is a up-tempo rocker. Listening to it now, it does sound very eighties.

Side 2 opens up with Foolin’ Yourself, and it’s a classic pop/rock ditty. The Top 40 would have been loaded with this type of song at the time. Under The Gun is next up and it’s the big production number of the album. It has the same chord progression as Fantasy – not a bad tune though. You’re My Love, to me, is the weakest song on the album. It just sounds rather weak, and the melody doesn’t seem to go anywhere. The solo is really well put together though. Ballad warning #2 as Can’t Stop Lovin’ You is one too many for me. The album closes out with See The Light, and again, if some pop bod of the time had sung it, it would have been huge.

Age has not been to kind to this album and it gets a 7/10 from The Grooveman.