Katrina and the Waves - Best Of, Volume 1 (1981-1984)

One thing I'd like to post more of at this blog is "best of" collections. That can get problematic in terms of copyright issues, since they usually contain all or mostly all released versions, so I don't want to post them willy nilly. But occasionally there are musical artists that have been poorly served by "best of" collections, and I think could use more attention. I posted a "best of" like that for Evie Sands in 2018, but I think that's the only one I've posted so far.

So here's another. Katrina and the Waves were a British New Wave band best known for their 1985 smash hit song "Walking on Sunshine." In terms of chart positions, it isn't that impressive, hitting number eight in the British chart and number nine in the US chart. But it's become one of those perennial classics that gets played frequently on the radio and appears in lots of movies. 

That song is so big that it overshadows everything else the band did. They had two more top forty hits in Britain, "Sun Street" and "Love Shine a Light," and two more top forty hits in the US, "Do You Want Crying" and "This Is It." So they're not a "one-hit wonder." In fact, "Love Shine a Light" was a much bigger hit in Britain, reaching number three there in 1997. But they could and should have had more hits than that. For instance, one of their best songs is "Going Down to Liverpool," which was done in an extremely similar version by the Bangles, who had a hit with it.

Speaking of the Bangles, they and the Go-Go's still get lots of attention as 1980s female bands. But in my opinion, Katrina and the Waves should be up there too. True, only the lead singer, Katrina Leskanich, was female. The band's secret weapon was Kimberley Rew. Formerly the lead guitarist in Robyn Hitchcock's band the Soft Boys, he was the ace songwriter behind "Walking on Sunshine," "Going Down to Liverpool," and most of the rest of this band's best songs.

I think the reason Katrina and the Waves doesn't get more love these days is because in addition to putting out some great songs, they put out many more bad ones. A Trouser Press review of one of their 1990s albums called it "bland, overprocessed, commercial slop." Admittedly, there's a lot of that. That's why a carefully selected "best of" is so important. All the official "best of" collections I've seen miss the mark by including some bad songs and neglecting some good ones. I've found so many good songs that I made two volumes.

The first volume deals with the years before the band hit the big time with "Walking on Sunshine" in 1985. Critics generally like this early material better, because it is less slick and overproduced. The first two songs come from a Kimberley Rew 1981 solo album. Rew sang most of the songs, including these two, but that album had a couple of songs sung by Katrina Leskanich on it. Next came a 1982 EP credited to "Katrina and the Waves" for the first time. Again, Rew sang most of the songs, but the best two, included here as tracks 3 and 4, were sung by Leskanich. Rew has a good voice. Note for instance that he sings the version of "Going Down to Liverpool" included here. But he wisely realized that Leskanich has a great voice, and after that EP nearly all the songs he wrote for the band were sung by her.

The band's record company must have really dropped the ball, because it amazes me that none of the catchy and commercial sounding songs here were hits. That includes this version of "Walking on Sunshine," which is the one first put on record in 1983. It was redone in 1985 with less guitar and more horns, and I've put that hit version of Volume 2. But even this early version should have been a no-brainer hit, in my opinion.

This album is 42 minutes long. I believe all the songs are originals, except for the cover of the soul classic "River Deep, Mountain High."

01 My Baby Does Her Hairdo Long (Kimberley Rew)
02 Give Me Some of That Love (Kimberley Rew)
03 Saturday Week (Katrina & the Waves)
04 Atomic Rock 'n' Roll (Katrina & the Waves)
05 Brown Eyed Son (Katrina & the Waves)
06 Going Down to Liverpool (Katrina & the Waves)
07 Spiderman (Katrina & the Waves)
08 Walking on Sunshine (Katrina & the Waves)
09 I Want a Man (Katrina & the Waves)
10 Do You Want Crying (Katrina & the Waves)
11 Mexico (Katrina & the Waves)
12 He's a Charmer (Katrina & the Waves)
13 That's Just the Woman in Me (Katrina & the Waves)
14 River Deep, Mountain High (Katrina & the Waves)

https://www.imagenetz.de/hKvb7

The cover photo is from 1985. I couldn't find any really good color ones from earlier.