Bram Tchaikovsky: Funland

Bram Tchaikovsky: Funland

1981

Arista Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Stand and Deliver  2.Shall We Dance?  3. Heart of Stone  4. Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache  5. Model Girl  6. Why Does Mother 'Phone Me?  7.   Used To Be My Used To Be  8. Soul Surrender  9. Together My Love  10. Miracle Cure  11. Egyptian Mummies


A sliiiight drop-off from the previous two albums, but still pretty damn stellar..I think the loss of Micky Broadbent and his ultra-slick harmonies might have impacted the band a little, but it's not a killer blow when you have Bram supplying his own back-up harmonies...

You can also hear a bit of softness slip in,with some blue eyed soul touches on "Together My Love" and "Soul Surrender" but mostly it's all hook-laden power-pop...Anyone who loved the first two albums would love this too..And a couple of my favorite Bram tracks appear here: Namely, "Stand and Deliver" which is just a perfectly crafted piece of understated pop...It escaped my attention the first time, but every subsequent play reveals a different facet of the hook catches my ear...

My other favorite is the completely bonkers "Why Does Mother 'Phone Me?" Built around a muted guitar riff and a pathetic-sounding Bram bemoaning the fact that his Mother calls just to remind him that she doesn't like him...He also wonders why he's the only happy person in the world and when it finally gets around to a triumphant mariachi trumpet solo you just can't help but marvel at what you're hearing...Do not miss this...

 There's plenty of other highlights too...Like the light and rootsy "Used To Be My Used To Be" which reminds me of "Cowboy Outfit"-era Nick Lowe (which is always a good thing)...When I initially heard the verses of  "Model Girl" I thought it was going to be a bum track. It kinda reminded me of a bizarre, stiff hybrid of "Baba O'Reilly" & "Addicted to Love" (although it predates the latter by many years) but suddenly the catchiest chorus ever starts pumping out of my speakers and I'm left with no choice but to declare it an album highlight...

Unfortunately, this was Bram's final album to date...He just stopped making records as far as I can tell (outside of Saxon's "Solid Ball of Rock" which I think I've covered in another post), which is the biggest damn shame I can possibly think of. How many more killer chorus could this guy have come up with?! I directly blame the record-buying audience of 1981 that decided to put Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" at the top of the charts instead of Bram Tchaikovsky who wrote some of the greatest, catchiest tracks ever committed to tape...And to add insult to injury, "Funland" was never even issued on Compact Disc...What?!?! Luckily, I don't think it's too difficult to find a copy on vinyl...I managed to find one, anyway...And I recommend you do too, although you might want to start with the first two albums, but if this is all you can find, this one's almost as good...

Here's "Stand and Deliver" by Bram Tchaikovsky...Happy Frizzledicks!