The Call’s lead singer and songwriter Michael Been considered 1987’s Into the Woods the band’s best album, but it was the follow-up, 1989’s Let the Day Begin, that became their biggest hit.
Both albums are available on streaming services and worth checking out.
The title track of Let the Day Begin made it all the way to #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #51 on the Hot 100.
The Call released a third album, Scene Beyond Dreams, in 1984 and then split from their label over a legal disagreement. They signed with Elektra Records and released 1986’s Reconciled, an album considered their best by many fans.
Both albums have themes consistent with lead singer Michael Been’s Christian faith, though The Call is not typically claimed as a Christian band. They fall more in the category of U2, a band that weaves explorations of faith into their secular music.
The Call’s second album, 1983’s Modern Romans, landed on Billboard’s albums chart and gave the band their first Hot 100 hit with ‘The Walls Came Down,’ which peaked at #74.
This was an urgent, angry and political album, and unfortunately another one not fully available on streaming services. I was able to listen to it by finding the individual songs on YouTube, where they have been uploaded in excellent quality.
Quarantine has given us the time for many a household project or pasttime. People are baking bread, assembling puzzles, tackling long postponed home improvements.
In my sister’s case, it gave her an excuse to create playlists from a bunch of old mix-tapes I made her. The cassettes themselves are long since discarded but she still has the tracklists and an Apple Music subscription, and that’s all you need in the age of streaming.
Happy Anniversary to my sister, Amy, and her husband of 28 years (and more important, frequent commenter on this blog), Dana.
Best wishes to both of you for making it through another year, even as the global pandemic has robbed you of your weekly dinner-and-a-movie date nights.
And now, to celebrate the occasion, the Random iTunes Fairy will serve up a song that I hope will be either sweetly appropriate or hilariously inappropriate.
Meet Me In Montauk 