Style: pop rock, soft rock, dance, blues-rock
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1980
Home: n/a
Members: Rod Stewart ~ vocals/harmonica
Jim Cregan, Gary Grainger, Billy Peek ~ guitars
Phil Chen, Tom Bogart, James Haslip – bass
Carmine Appice, Colin Allen, Roger Bethelmy ~ drums
Kevin Savigar, John Jarvis ~ keyboards
Additional: Paulinho Da Costa ~ percussion
Phil Kenzie, Earl Price, James Gordon ~ sax
Billy Lamb, Jim Price ~ trombone
Lee Thornburg ~ trumpet
Sid Page ~ violin
Susan Grindell, Valerie Carter, Tony Brock ~ b. vocals
Museums make a living sharing relics that in their day might not have been that important, just a book or a tool or a picture. Yet, today we gaze on them like these were once prized possessions. Some were, yet some were as disregarded as that broken picture frame kept in the box in our attic is. In more than a few cities one might find a museum dedicated to less than relics, but monuments & legacy making items of the past. Cleveland's Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame is one such place, preserving the heights that music has climbed & the changes that have been brought. But, is there a museum in the world that displays the lows music has reached, the albums forgotten, the music never listened to more than once, the moments in a musician's career best forgotten in hindsight? "Passion" might be the lead-off single, but that's what this album lacks - passion. It's name Foolish Behavior is a better fit, as its a weak foolish outing right up there with early 80's Rolling Stones ... everything but what we want from the Stones or RS. Touching on Blondie-esque ska (i.e. "So Soon We Change") to rockabilly blues (i.e. "Better Off Dead") to dance (i.e. "Passion", "Git Me Wings"), the later picking up from the previous outing Blondes Have More Fun but less in your face & without the disco ambiance that both was addicting & atrocious, welcome to RS's tour of musical styles & not really doing much for any of them. Welcome to RS being lost in which way he should go, lost in time, lost to what is popular on the charts. & lest we forget "My Girl" & "Somebody Special" that are big synthesizer, shimmering guitars, sax solo included, ballads that perfectly set up the sound RS would cleave to throughout the 1980's. On one hand it's good nobody at the time knew these two tracks were the future, on the other hand these two are some of the few good songs here. RS killed the blues belter RS years earlier replacing him, beginning here, with synthesizer soft rocker RS. Soft synth RS is better than what originally replaced bluesy RS, i.e. raunchy disco RS. Though, it's not really that great of a sound as his lack of success in the next decade would come to show, along with the poor showing of the immediately following albums. Thus, this is a relic of a low. Is there a museum where albums like this go to die at least with some honor? I hope so, just for the fun of it. At the time this was a successful album, but probably due to the punch created by the hit "Do You Think I'm Sexy?". It got on the coattails. Recorded in 1980 this was RS's hello to the new decade. It's not a good hello & it wouldn't be a good decade. Some musicians entered with an equally bad hello but found themselves able to get back on board ... but many went the way of RS & never really did. There is one standout track, outside of the obvious "Passion", in "Oh God I Wish I Was Home Tonight" with a classic RS sound of piano, slide guitar, violin & raunchy lyrics. It's a last hurrah for the bluesy street kid rocker who doesn't take himself too seriously ... time to grow up, boy. There is a historical note for the museum display in that "She Don't Dance With Me", that sounds like a reject from RS's old band the Faces, was the third video to be played on MTV. But, history & good music are not the same thing.
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