Naked In The Park (Y19)

Lusty, urbane, should’ve been-top 40 pop from NPR classical critic / secret genius Tom Manoff and master vocalist Jill Talvé. Thought to be lost in the wake of epic legal acrimony, this 1983 collection, rescued from safety copy cassettes, easily qualifies as one of the most incredible musical discoveries of the 21st century.

We’ll leave it to some intrepid music reporter 🙂 to uncover the whole sordid mess behind the making of this incredible album. We just want to share the music. It’s incredible and it’s a hit. Listen to ten seconds of “I’m A Nobody” and understand that it’s a mainstream pop music HIT almost too good to actually exist. It’s that good. Marvel at tossed off verses like “you just crossed the line / from being snake / to being slime” or the casual brilliance of the way the last chorus glitches in “Delayed Reaction”. In the overfished world of music reissues stuff like this does not come around every day. Like any great musical discovery, the record seems to point a way to an escape hatch to an alternate, better dimension where this got the release it deserved, and Manoff and/or Talvé made a dozen more records. NAKED IN THE PARK is THAT GOOD.

RIYL Pat Benatar, Madonna, Blondie, The Motels

Ecorational 130g virgin vinyl by Third Man Records
High quality tip-on sleeves by Stoughton Printing
Edition of 500