MOG

Next up on my trip down my musical memory lane, The Pretenders! Chrissie Hynde was who I aspired to be like in my early teens; smart, tough, tell-it-like-it-is woman on her own terms. Their first album was (and still is) an oft-played part of my collection. I won't post my first choice, Precious, due to possibly offensive language. The second, Mystery Achievement, was part of my personal soundtrack for most of the 80s.

(from Wikipedia) The album, Pretenders, was released in January 1980, and was a great success in both the United Kingdom and the U.S., both critically and with chart-topping sales. (Pretenders was subsequently named one of the best albums of all time by VH1 (#52) and Rolling Stone (#155).) The band played the entire album at the noted Heatwave festival in August 1980 near Toronto.

That the Pretenders were led by a hard-rocking woman was no small factor in their early breakthrough. With her trademark dark bangs, dark eyeliner, and dark jeans, Hynde appealed to both genders. And due to, as the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide would say, "her sheer authenticity as a three-dimensional woman whose sexuality is completely in sync with a superb rock sensibility," she was able to escape many of the clichéd roles of women in rock music.

Hynde's girl group-influenced vocals were also crucial to the band's success, although the early group was very much an ensemble, adept at playing interlocking musical parts, shifting mood and tempo on cue, and responding to subtle signals from one another. Their recordings were mostly performed live in the studio, with only lead guitar and vocal overdubs. Among the interesting features of the first two albums are casual shifts into odd time signatures, as in the alternating 7/8-4/4 time signature of "Tattooed Love Boys". Another major element of the band's early success was producer Chris Thomas (famed, with engineer Bill Price, for the sound achieved on the Sex Pistols' album, Never Mind the Bollocks). Fans familiar with the band's U.S. chart singles are often unaware of how loud and aggressive the early Pretenders could be, and how loose and experimental some of their early recordings were.