Heart had a good run in the late 1970s. They went from psychedlic blues rock to hard rock and dabbled with new wave before starting to unravel. An album released near the end of that run, 1982's "Private Audition," received little attention and at the time was dismissed as a weak successor to what had come before it. One more album was released for Epic Records before the band signed with Capitol and morphed into a horrific 1980s hairdo band, squawking Diane Warren tunes and contributing to the disintegration of the ozone layer by ODing on hairspray.I had been a huge Heart fan from the day in junior high school that I first heard "Magic Man," sometime in late 1976. The psychedelic tinge to their music carried me through everything they did through the end of the decade. When I brought home my vinyl copy of "Private Audition" in 1982, Heart had abandoned psychedlia altogether and, inconsequently, become passe. I didn't care so much about that but when I listened to the album back then, I didn't like it much. In fact, I didn't like it at all. My own musical tastes had changed considerably in the ensuing years and I was completely devoted to new wave music, having become a huge fan of groups like the B-52's, Devo, the Go-Go's, the Police, Pretenders, and that lot. I quickly sold my copy of "Private Audition" to a used record store and didn't think about it or Heart again for a very long time, save for the occasional spin of "Dreamboat Annie."For some reason I got the urge to go on a Heart binge recently. I had those early albums on cd and went through them all and enjoyed them immensely and decided to give "Private Audition" a new listen, 20 years later. I'm glad I did because I sure love this album now. The new wave influences, in retrospect, are quite pronounced, but so are all the early influences to Heart's music which had been present in prior albums, excepting psychedlia. Nowhere to be found are hints of what Heart would later become. There is a melancholy edge to the music that I didn't pick up on so much back then but that now draws me in. If I start the album's first track "City's Burning," I have to stay and listen to the whole thing. It's that kind of album, at least for me."Private Audition" is a somewhat bittersweet end to a terrific run. Just ignore the horrid follow-up "Passionworks" and anything they later recorded for Capitol Records.
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