Customer Reviews

Dare / Love & Dancing

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I was a wee lad, New Wave was still actually somewhat "new." I used to spend hours listening to KROQ and tape recording songs by holding up a hand held cassette recorder to one speaker of my sister's stereo. Mind you, we're talking about 1980-1983 or so. Devo, Oingo Boingo, Ultravox, Visage, Invisible Zoo, Kraftwerk, etc. were the bands of the day. I listened to those tapes until they wore out. Then suddenly Depeche Mode grew their hair out and started wearing wife beater t-shirts and growing facial hair and new wave went to hell, as far as I was concerned. There went the neighborhood.

Anyway, one of my favorite songs on my tapes was Seconds by the Human League. It was just such a great, anthemic, monolithic riff. Something made me want to hear it again recently, so I hunted it down and found it on this CD. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything else on the disk that I like even half as much, but being able to listen to Seconds again is all I wanted.

Dare - everyone who was anyone in the 80's has a copy of this on vinyl or cassette. But the League Unlimited Orchestra's Love and Dancing is a whole nother story. Club DJ's mixed the hell out of this with "Don't You Want Me", but the rest of the album is a must have as well. Human League fans will all agree; this one you just gotta have. Casual fans may want to just get Dare, or better yet, just get their Greatest Hits. I'm a huge Human League fan, so I'm biased and think everyone should love these dub versions, but not everyone loves every song by the League (hell, even I don't like every song - what WAS "Crash" all about?) so this may be more of one album then you'll want.

this is probably one of the best human league... no, just albums ever made. phil oakey for prime minister!

Caroline Records has released several classic Human League albums on one cd, completely remastered for improved sound quality. "Dare", in my opinion is the "classic" Human League album, full of excellent synthesized pop songs. The song "Don't You want Me" needs no introduction as this was the major hit off the album. MTV also played the video on regular rotation as well. While there were several other hits from the album, such as "Open Your Heart" and "The Sound Of The Crowd", nothing matched the melodic "Don't You Want Me" in terms of mass appeal. Combine Philip Oakey's deep male vocals with Joanne Catherall and Susanne Sulley's female vocals and you have one of the "new romantic era's" best bands. The album "Love And Dancing" are the full 12" instrumental or dub versions of the songs on "Dare". This album was a must for disc jockeys who wanted to be creative and mixed the vocal versions with the instrumentals. Caroline Records wisely has re-issued and remastered a good portion of the Human League catalog for those who enjoyed their unique sound. Highly recommended!

Caroline Records has released several classic Human League albums on one cd, completely remastered for improved sound quality. "Dare", in my opinion is the "classic" Human League album, full of excellent synthesized pop songs. The song "Don't You want Me" needs no introduction as this was the major hit off the album. MTV also played the video on regular rotation as well. While there were several other hits from the album, such as "Open Your Heart" and "The Sound Of The Crowd", nothing matched the melodic "Don't You Want Me" in terms of mass appeal. Combine Philip Oakey's deep male vocals with Joanne Catherall and Susanne Sulley's female vocals and you have one of the "new romantic era's" best bands. The album "Love And Dancing" are the full 12" instrumental or dub versions of the songs on "Dare". This album was a must for disc jockeys who wanted to be creative and mixed the vocal versions with the instrumentals. Caroline Records wisely has re-issued and remastered a good portion of the Human League catalog for those who enjoyed their unique sound. Highly recommended!

There's probably little point writing anything at all about Dare as I expect if you're reading this you are fully aware of what a joy it is, you probably bought it in the early 80's beguiled by the fab pop tracks and the vogue minimalist fashion cover. Heck, you might have even had a Phil Oakey hair-do! :)

Where I do want to spend some time though is on the fab bonus material on this disc. A large part of the Dare-era Human League credit must be given to the producer Martin Rushent who helped shape their sound into that unique, crisp electronica that was, and still is, unlike anything else. The remix album "Love & Dancing" seemingly gave Rushent carte blanche to take the tracks into dub and remix heaven, and it's a trip worth taking.

The 12" single boomed in the 80's and The Human League were one of the bands that actually made 12" records that were worth listening to. I love the weird things he does with the vocals in "The Sound of the Crowd", "Open Your Heart" travels in and out of echo and dub in unexpected ways, "Love Action" sounds like it's been put through a salad spinner and "Hard Times" is just plain awesome.

This is the perfect teaming of a hit album and the crazy reworking of it. The things that dreams are made of.

A previous reviewer mentioned that this was "the first album to contain carefully crafted, melodic pop songs with all synthesizers". Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell came out before this in 1981, and there were probably others before that (Human League's own Reproduction and Travelogue, although they weren't quite Pop).

That said, this was a pioneering album and anyone interested in electronic music MUST have Dare in their collection! It's clean, pure, synthesized pop, and at the time was very unique. Love & Dancing is basically the dub album, but probably would have been better as a remix rather than a dub - The songs are great of course, but without the vocals they miss something. In any event, still a great collection to have ...

If for some reason you have been putting off getting "Dare" then this is the reissue you should get. It contains the wonderful "dub" or instrumental remix EP "Love and Dancing." Together these two releases make up an essential starting point for the 80s Synthpop revolution.
Earlier albums, such as the League's own "Travelouge" and "Reproduction" (also remastered and reissued recently in the US with great lost singles and b sides), and albums by Kraftwerk, Caberat Voltiare and others explored what you could do with synths. But "Dare" was really the first album to the art/rock sensibility of the earlier work and marry it to disco/pop. The results are damn near perfect and certainly perfectly encapsulate what 1982 was all about. The sound is cold and sleek yet oddly human and accessible. Phil and the gals sing about love, and (ahem) dancing, plus friends, parties, etc. In fact the only odd step here, "Seconds," stray from that formula, with interesting sonic result but fairly unimaginative lyrics.
People familiar with "Don't You Want Me," (and who isn't, even today's tightly limited pop stations have it in recurrent on their play lists) might be put off that the rest of the album is not quiet as top 40. But give it a spin or two and open you mind.
Dare is the perfect marriage of Art and Pop.

I say this because this was the first album to contain carefully-crafted, melodic pop songs with all synthisizers and no guitar. The two Philips(lead singer Philip Oakey and keyboardist Philip Adrian Wright)were infact parallel to Jagger/Richards in terms of songwriting on this album.