Six Degrees of Foreigner’s 4

The cross-continental journeymen in Foreigner had been scoring ubiquitous radio hits and crafting solidly meticulous if critically unappreciated hard rock albums for four years by the time 4 came out in 1981. Though regularly and irrelevantly dismissed as "faceless" for their workmanlike lack of a visual image, they'd actually proven top-of-the-heap in any number of modes, ranging from spacey but unmeandering keyboard-zoomed pomp ("Starrider") to macho butt-rock ("Hot Blooded") to greaser near-punk... ("Headknocker," "Dirty White Boy") to Duane Eddy-twanged metalbilly ("Women"). Their fourth album stretched boundaries even more, unabashedly dabbling in new wave (hence Thomas Dolby's synthesizers), funk (hence Junior Walker's "Urgent" guest spot) and adult contemporary balladry. But they didn't lay off on the meat or potatoes, either. In fact, straightforward middle-class rock is what makes most of 4 tick: Opener "Night Life" kicks the record off with a guitar riff not too distantly related to Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever," and proceeds to stomp suggestively about how it's "time to separate the men from the boys" when things "get hard and rough" feel free to make of that what you will. Next comes the No. 26 pop hit "Juke Box Hero," a chunky reminiscence of one young axeman's conversion to rock 'n' roll (kissing cousin: Bryan Adams, "Summer Of 69"), inspirational enough that Soul Asylum used to cover it live in early days. The fairly ornate "Break It Up," which nobody remembers anymore, was, surprisingly, exactly as big a hit as "Juke Box Hero" at the time. But the album's secret bruisers are "Luanne" perfectly hand-clapped Huey Lewis-circa-Sports-style powerpop that could probably be a sizable pop-country smash if somebody in Nashville revived it nowadays and muscular closer "Don't Let Go," with Lou Gramm doing his most soulful Levi Stubbs about how he's happy it's the weekend but his woman's pushing him away. And though only "Girl On The Moon" opts fully for outer-space dream-weaving, even the album's beefiest cuts finesse plenty of open space: sproinging whirligig breaks, nimble mid-song keyboard sections, carnival organs, late-Beatles backup chorales, guitar lines repeated like mantras. The album's biggest hit, prototype power ballad "Waiting For A Girl Like You" (kissing cousin: Rolling Stones, "Waiting On A Friend"), goes so far as to employ AOR guitars as an aesthetic equivalent of MOR string sections, and profited mightily from it, just missing the top of the pop chart; three years later, Foreigner would court maturity even more, discovering gospel with the New Jersey Mass Choir's assistance and thereby going No. 1 with "I Want To Know What Love Is," the biggest hit of their career. But they almost certainly never made a greater single than 4's "Urgent," a top-five charter in its own right, and one of music history's most undeniable dance-rock tracks, thanks to Dolby's inexorable synth-funk backing, Gramm's increasingly urgent emergency of rhythmic emotion ("Your desire is insane! You can't stop until you do it again!"), and especially Junior Walker's indelible 48-second roadhouse sax solo three minutes in. Give or take J. Geils's "Flamethrower" from the same year, arena-rock funk never felt more fluid.

Foreigner basically had two songwriters Lou Gramm and Mick Jones. The Clash basically had two songwriters Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. The Mick Joneses were two different people, of course, but they both played guitar and sang. And though few people might have mentioned the two bands in the same breath while they were in their prime, they actually had a lot in common: Both debuted in 1977, and both made really... good albums through the early '80s by which time both were both dabbling in funk, rockabilly, electro-pop and soul. Not long after that, both start fizzling and spinning their wheels. In some ways, the Clash's most Foreigner 4-like collection might be Sandinista!, which also came out in 1981; "Magnificent Seven" could even be their "Urgent." But given that it's a coffee-table-ready triple-platter art statement steeped in avant-garde dub experiments, that comparison feels a bit absurd. So it makes more sense to opt for the Clash's most basic, straightforward hard rock record, which also happens to be their most underrated album: 1978's Give 'Em Enough Rope, produced by Blue Oyster Cult principal Sandy Pearlman and concluding with a title ("All The Young Punks") that updates the best-known song by '70s rockers Mott The Hoople. The record, rousing front to back with zero dead spots, includes songs about heroin addicts, narcs, crackdowns on purported terrorism, dangerous dreadlock holidays in Jamaica, rival youth subcultures with competing haircuts and lots of guns. "English Civil War," built on an interpolation of the Civil War standard "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," might be the Clash's most metal moment ever. Mick Jones sings the token ballad, "Stay Free" about dudes being best friends forever, and even more moving than "Waiting For A Girl Like You."

England's most nerd-eriffic mad '80s electro-pop scientist was hugely instrumental in the success of Foreigner's 4, given that he came up with the synthesizer hooks driving the album's two biggest hits, "Urgent" and "Waiting For A Girl Like You." Legend has it, in fact, that it was Thomas Dolby's income from those songs that funded later sessions for The Golden Age Of Wireless, the album featuring his own inescapable 1983 MTV hit... "She Blinded Me With Science." He continued to make albums through the '80s, scoring a smaller hit with 1984's funky "Hyperactive" and contributing to records by Def Leppard, Whodini, Lene Lovich and other cool people from across the musical map. But by the '90s, his projects were getting more esoteric Gate To The Mind's Eye, released in 1994, is ostensibly the soundtrack to a number of short, computer-animated art films. So, not surprisingly, the music is pretty trippy. Yet now, with a quarter-century of techno under our collective belts, it also comes off more grounded than you might expect: Gothic Enigma-like millenarian monk moans ("Armageddon"), electro-beat funk ("Big Bang Backwards"), post-Soul II Soul proto-trip-hop with My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts-type ethno-samples ("N.E.O."), Peter Gabriel-style art-rock balladeering about tyrants ruling New Jersey (well that's what the words to "Valley Of The Mind's Eye" sound like anyway), digital-skidding sax-and-piano lounge-jazz with film noir vocals ("Nuvogue"), dance-oriented robot-girl post-punk ("Quantum Mechanic"). Only the green-cheesy lunar ambience of "Moonbase" gets lost in any outerspace craters, and only the somewhat interminable "The Ascent Of Man Parts I-VI" pushes the pretension meter into the red. And with those two, you can pretty much tell what you're getting from their titles, right?

You can classify these Kansas City kids in your Mid-American prairie dogs progging out subdivision they've got a second keyboard player/harmony vocalizer whose real specialty is violin, and they frequently jam loudest when he bows hardest. They charted five albums (including a best-of) in the '80s, though their highest only reached No. 82 which suggests that Missouri rock stations were loyal to them, if nobody else was. After a cool fiddle-and-guitar jam... in its six-minute opening cut, their 1981 sophomore LP Hang On For Your Life downplays the violin more than their debut had, committing itself mainly to manly jock-rock on the Bad Company side of Foreigner, plus a couple stray midtempos that set the template for late '80s Def Leppard. "Teaser," for instance, swings hard and increasingly heavy and even a bit symphonic, as a bruised guy laments a lady who only pretends to be loose. And on Side Two, Shooting Star follow some funky 16th-note-drummed booger pop about a rich, limousine-riding New Orleans gal who weekends on French beaches ("She treats them all as cold as ice" how's that for blatant Foreigner influence?) with a faster, more oddly tilted metal-funker called "You've Got Love," mixing tribal oilcan drums, Ram Jam thank-you-ma'am glam chords, and twisted-and-turned chamber-string breaks for five awesome minutes. "Hollywood" was the LP's not-quite-hit a power ballad picking up then slowing down, about a girl coming out to California (from the "boring world she knew at home" Kansas?), hitting the strip and casting couch. Just a half-decade further on, hair-metal would thrive on such themes.

Foreigner's "Urgent" lasts four minutes and 31 seconds, but it's universally accepted that the song's most exciting music happens between 2:50 and 3:26, when Junior Walker takes his sax solo. He was so proud of it, in fact, that he wound up recording his own quite worthy cover version of the song, on his 1983 Motown comeback album Blow The House Down. But by the time Foreigner met up with him, of... course, he had already been a living legend for years. And even back in his hit days, he was total old-school, carrying the rib-joint grit of early '50s jump-blues honking into Motown's slick-suited late '60s; it's worth noting that, by the time he first charted in 1965, he was already 34 years old. Shake And Fingerpop collects 11 of his old hits, all of which charted on both the pop and R&B charts, though always higher on the latter; the two biggest and most unforgettable, 1965's "Shotgun" and 1969's "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)," both went No. 4 pop and No. 1 R&B even though they're probably respectively the fiercest and smoothest tracks on this set. Both "Shotgun" and the 1967 album closer "Shoot Your Shot" conflate doing specific dance steps (the jerk, the hully gully) with shooting guns; the title track recommends doing the barracuda. Walker also covers songs more famously done by the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and Barrett Strong. And he wails and gets moody, and makes clear that he appreciates women who wear wigs and red dresses and know how to cook.

Foreigner's "Urgent" lasts four minutes and 31 seconds, but it's universally accepted that the song's most exciting music happens between 2:50 and 3:26, when Junior Walker takes his sax solo. He was so proud of it, in fact, that he wound up recording his own quite worthy cover version of the song, on his 1983 Motown comeback album Blow The House Down. But by the time Foreigner met up with him, of... course, he had already been a living legend for years. And even back in his hit days, he was total old-school, carrying the rib-joint grit of early '50s jump-blues honking into Motown's slick-suited late '60s; it's worth noting that, by the time he first charted in 1965, he was already 34 years old. Shake And Fingerpop collects 11 of his old hits, all of which charted on both the pop and R&B charts, though always higher on the latter; the two biggest and most unforgettable, 1965's "Shotgun" and 1969's "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)," both went No. 4 pop and No. 1 R&B even though they're probably respectively the fiercest and smoothest tracks on this set. Both "Shotgun" and the 1967 album closer "Shoot Your Shot" conflate doing specific dance steps (the jerk, the hully gully) with shooting guns; the title track recommends doing the barracuda. Walker also covers songs more famously done by the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and Barrett Strong. And he wails and gets moody, and makes clear that he appreciates women who wear wigs and red dresses and know how to cook.