It pains me to say it but I have personally misjudged the career of Living Colour. I derive no joy from this realisation, but looking at the small pile of CDs that comprises over two decades work brings the cold hard facts to the surface…
Living Colour are a little over-rated.
Milli Vanilli weren't always a duo...
Emerging from nowhere in the late 80s to become an instant success this quartet of ostentatiously dressed black guys (Corey Glover played many gigs in a lurid bright wetsuit) playing heavy rock music was immediately embraced by critics and musical bigwigs alike – Mick Jagger, Chuck D and Flava Flav all appear on the debut album, Queen Latifah and Little Richard on Time’s Up.
The ‘establishment’ wondered if this black rock group was a novelty or a sign of things to come, and over the next few albums Living Colour proved they were neither, but they also weren’t the saviours of rock music creating music that will last forever – aside from Love Rears up its Ugly Head that is…
On the strength of Time’s Up though they are, and will remain, All Time greats in my book, even though the merest personal scrutiny shows that this really shouldn’t be the case.
Vivid 1988
At the time I had no idea they existed, but Vivid broke Living Colour large in America on the strength of Cult of Personality, which forever remained their unofficial calling card. The album isn’t particularly heavy and has its share of filler, but the fact remains that it is a strong pop album with much promise and some notable high points.
Aside from Cult of Personality Middle Men, I want to know, Desperate People, Memories can’t wait and Broken Hearts are all very listenable, but the album is diluted by the lamentable ‘theme song’ What’s your favourite colour? and the two Mick Jagger produced efforts (which show why he was such a great front man) Glamour Boys and Which way to America?
Vivid remains an album of extremes, the better tracks stand proudly alongside the rest of their best of, while the stuff that was a little less effective at the time has aged far less gracefully and is now best ignored.
Time’s Up 1990
There’s a fair chance that my life would have ended up very different without this album. I was 15 when it was released and purchased it on the strength of Love Rears up its Ugly Head, perhaps expecting a far poppier effort – I can’t recall – but being blown away by the power of the entire album and listening to the album literally hundreds of times in the following months, and multiple times every year since and finding my enjoyment not diminishing.
As a track Time’s Up might be an odd intro, a slightly off kilter almost speed metal track with angry vocals by Corey Glover, but it served a purpose, and that purpose was to say the days of Living Colour as a pop band are over.
A short pro-black melange segues into the masterful Pride, with the chorus stating “History’s a lie that they teach you in school; a fraudulent view called the golden rule; a peaceful land that was born civilised; was robbed of its riches. Its freedom. Its pride.
Then Love… rears up to break the tension. A song that I won’t dwell on aside from pointing out that anyone over 30 would instantly recognise it within seconds, a fair effort for a song two decades old played by a heavy rock group.
The next half a dozen tracks are all uniformly excellent – though Elvis is Dead drew the attention and notoriety due to the title and lyrics – but Someone like you, New Jack theme and Information Overload were all as good.
But at this stage Living Colour introduced something new; Under Cover of Darkness was slower than any of their previous output and infinitely more accessible, with a head nodding bassline that just won’t quit and a brilliant verse by Queen Latifah, the bass continued with the creative all-bass instrumental Ology1, and then Fight the Fight, Solace of You and This is the Life close off the album in fine style.
Even the bonus tracks are superb, with the two live songs Final Solution and Middle Man deserving of inclusion on the album in their own right, and the unnecessary Love Rears remix bringing little new to a brilliant song but being no less awesome as a result.
Time’s Up is Living Colour’s undisputed high point, and even in the cold light of day you might rightly suggest that it didn’t beat out much, it deserves its position in the pantheon of albums in the era.
(The best part of writing this up is playing the album in the background.)
Stain 1993
Then came Stain with the cool red CD cover and cassette case – I had both – again it seemed Living Colour had decided to ignore the consensus and reinvent their style. This time it didn’t work quite as well.
The songs are all OK but lack that something, that spark that set most of Time’s Up and small sections of Vivid apart. My favourite tracks on the album are at odds with the rest of their best tracks. In fact for the most part it is the slower more poppy stuff that works best for me. Nothingness is a great slow track, Wall closes out the album in fine, albeit slightly preachy style, and the riff in Never Satisfied is delightfully crunchy, but the angrier sections in the album seem a little forced and opposed to the true nature of the band. Sort of like NBA star Chris Paul who seems to manufacture anger and aggression but just looks dumb when he does it.
The message there might be if you have a certain set of skills that work for you, don’t bother trying to be something you’re not.
The elements of a classic Living Colour album are all present, but at the same time the album doesn’t gell as it should and culminates as something less than the sum of its parts.
And with Stain came a tour in 1993 and the news almost made me fill my wetsuit (not really), until I learned that while it came to Australia in their infinite wisdom they decided to remain on the Eastern side of the Nullarbor and to end in Adelaide, some 2,000 kms away from Perth.
I was filthy, and being 18 I had no way of getting to Adelaide at short notice. I vowed to catch the next one, which never came…
Pride 1995
In fact for a decade they didn’t even release another album aside from Pride: the ‘Best of’ in 1995. Pride had four new songs, all decidedly more poppy and synth-heavy than anything from the group for many years – above all none were worthy of inclusion on a true Best of – and perhaps an indication that the dissolution of the group might have been for the best.
But out of the blue one day came some news. News that I wanted so desperately to see as a revival of sorts but in reality was exceedingly scared of.
Collideoscope 2003
Probably the less said about this one the better. Boring, all too serious lyrics with clumsy ham-fisted messages. Dull and uninspired riffs and a couple of covers that probably sounded like good ideas at the time.
Perhaps the boys were just happy to be reunited after a decade. Perhaps the jam sessions that preceded recording were more of a laugh than anything. Perhaps it was a cynical cash grab and Living Colour weren’t really committed to the project.
Perhaps rock music just passed them by…
Whatever the case Collideoscope is irreparably broken, and the one Lving Colour album that I purchased and can’t find a single song worthy of transferring to the ipod.
The Chair in the Doorway 2009
The statement above about music passing Living Colour by was deliberate, because in 2009 The Chair in the Doorway proved that there was definitely life in these old dreaded dogs yet.
‘Chair’ finds these 40-something rockers with a new dose of anger and at last some genuine edge, not a shiny manufactured commercial sound. The album has 11 tracks – 12 if you count the unnecessary hidden ‘Asshole’ – 9 of them worthwhile, and even though none jump out and grab you by the throat it is a pleasant improvement on Collideoscope.
Even when the best track is the most poppy ‘Behind the Sun’, The Chair in the Doorway has genuine menace at times, even when the lyrics occasionally veer into predictable and simplistic.
Less a return to glory than a return to relevance, if The Chair in the Doorway proves Living Colour’s swansong at least they can say they went out on their terms.
In Summary
Present(ish) day
Like Fishbone (who I might get at later) Living Colour were new, unpredictable and instantly vibrant, their highs visceral and their early albums contained moments of incendiary power.
Blessed with a solid rhythm section and guitar virtuoso Vernon Reid always nodding his long braids in the background as his whirling fingers bashed out yet another incredible solo. Living Colour always had the musical chops to find success. Their fatal flaw was their lack of consistency – not in the music so much – but the image they seemed to want to portray.
In Vivid they demanded attention with garish eyecatching outfits and similarly shiny loud hooky music, Time’s Up saw the group maturing and lead to slightly lower key outfits and a more accessible sound. Then came Stain, where it seemed they deliberately went full on alternative for some reason (to stay edgy and relevant is my guess), the image was dark but muddled, as was the album.
Then, lacking definition and focus, they were gone. Upon returning Collideoscope was a desperate grab at the spotlight by a group that really didn’t know if it wanted to be there, and didn’t it show. Finally The Chair in the Doorway is a mature work of a group with renewed energy and power, finally comfortable at where it fits in the musical universe.
Living Colour were momentarily incredible, and while they never again managed to attain the lofty heights of Time’s Up their work has managed to stay credible and worth listening to. They didn’t have the long career of Pearl Jam or Soundgarden, and they didn’t sell as many albums as hundreds of lesser artists, but for one and a bit albums they were as good as it got.
No shame there, and we’ll always have Time’s Up to go back to.
Album Ratings
- Vivid 7.5
- Time’s Up 9.5
- Stain 7.0
- Collideoscope 5.5
- The Chair in the Doorway 7.5
