Tag: Diving for Pearls

Diving For Pearls – ‘Diving For Pearls’ (1989) – Album Review

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Some bands make it, some fade in to oblivion. Diving for Pearls had all the talent and the songs to make it, but for some reason faded in to oblivion. For me, their journey began when I was working at Sam Goody while in college. The promo for their debut album came in, I dropped it in to the CD player and was hooked from the first note of “Gimme Your Good Lovin'”. I made sure when the store was done with that promo that it went home with me. And it did!

But let’s go back in time a little. The band was started by Danny Malone (on vocals) and Jack Moran (Keyboards) back in Boston. They were in a band before that called The Trademarks. But where did they get a name like ‘Diving for Pearls’? Strange name. They actually pulled it from a line in Elvis Costello’s song ‘Shipbuilding’…

With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls

The band played around Boston for years and decided to take the show to New York. While working at Hard Rock Cafe, I believe, they somehow met Yul Vasquez (Guitar) and Peter Clemente (Drums). Yul had been in the band Urgent prior while Peter had been working with Michael Monroe in the band Secret Chiefs. Now, all they needed was a bass player and they found that in the form of David Weeks. The band was complete.

They signed a development deal with Epic Records. Now, a development deal isn’t really a record deal so much as it is just here’s some money, go make an album, if it sells maybe we will do more, if it doesn’t, good riddance. Not the most enticing deal, but a deal nonetheless. So, the boys packed their bags and went to Nashville, Tennessee to record their first album with producer David Prater.

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You Pick It! – Which Album to Review for April?

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You, my reader, are going to pick an album for me to review each month.  It is really simple…first, I will give you 5 albums to choose from and second, you will tell me which one of those you would like to see reviewed on the site.  See…simple! Now, if you want to cast more than one vote, comment on the Twitter and Facebook post and you could get up to 3 votes on your favorite pick.

The choices are simple, I pick 5 albums and lately I’ve been going on a loose theme. This time the theme isn’t loose, it is pretty straight-forward. We are going with 5 albums I have in my collection that are Rock Candy Re-Issues. What are the 5 albums you ask?  I have them right here…

   Diving for Pearls – ‘Diving for Pearls’ (1989)

   Blue Murder – ‘Blue Murder’ (1989)

   Saigon Kick – ‘Saigon Kick’ (1991)

   RTZ – ‘Return to Zero’ (1991)

   The Scream – ‘Let It Scream’ (1991)

Let me know which one you would like to see and sometime in April, I will post a review of the album that gets the most votes. You have one week to decide and from there I will start listening to the album and do a review.

Thanks for participating!!

January 2023 Purchases – Vinyl & CDs

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Last year flew by and now here we are in 2023 and already at our first month purchases wrap-up. It was a good start to the year if I do say so myself. I started a new collection, found some stuff for other collections I have, treated myself to an album I’ve been wanting for years and even found a Jeff Scott Soto CD that I didn’t even know existed. I would say that all makes for a solid month.

The month kicked off in full glory when 2nd & Charles kicked off the year with a buy 5 get 5 free sale on their CDs and so I pounced on it. Sadly, my memory sucks and one is one I already had, see if you can guess which one because it was in my November purchases as well.

If that wasn’t enough, later in the month I went by Repo Records here in Charlotte and found a handful of picture sleeve 45’s. I love the picture sleeves and so I bought about 9 this time around. Some great stuff to add to the collection…

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Turntables & Vinyl #13 – The New York Adventure

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The family and I took a wonderful Spring Break vacation to the bustling city of New York.  What an amazing city.  There are so many things to see and so little time to see it all, but we crammed in as much as we could.  I was even able to take a few hours and visit some record stores while we were down in Greenwich Village. Lucky Me!!

Before we get to that, let’s talk a little about the trip.  We arrived on Sunday afternoon and had a little time to run down to Time Square to check things out.  The kids were stunned by the huge, bright, flashing billboards and all the people…all the interesting and very strange people.

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We saw where the film the Late Show with Steven Colbert, where the Broadway Show Rocktopia was playing which was starring Pat Monahan from Train while we were there (didn’t see it though), we of course saw Time Square and even went and snapped a picture at Radio City Music Hall.

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