24. All Right All Night
Artist: Tom Robinson Band
Album: TRB Two (1979)
Todd's role(s): producer
Writer(s): Tom Robinson, Danny Kustow, Dolphin Taylor and Ian Parker
The song: A rollicking tune that lies somewhere in the intersection of pub rock and punk rock, "All Right All Night" kicks off the second and final Tom Robinson band album,
TRB Two. The song is deftly produced by Todd Rundgren with an ear toward both mainstream and alternative sounds, as he had done with New York Dolls' debut 6 years earlier. The organ is prominently featured, which means it could probably pass for a Stranglers song. The instrumental passage in the middle where the synth and the guitar trade brief solos is a thrill to hear, as is the memorable melody and chorus. On the coda, the synth goes off on a tanget reminiscent of those we hear on Utopia records from Roger Powell, but it is played by band member Ian Parker.
"All Right All Night" was the album's second single and did not chart.
The album: With their high-energy sound that appealed to punks and regular folks alike and a philosophy of wearing their politics (as leftist as they could be) on their sleeve, the Tom Robinson Band seized the spotlight in the U.K. in 1977 and 1978, with their debut single "2-4-6-8 Motorway" hitting #4 and their first album
Power in the Darkness hitting #5. They also achieved notoriety because singer/bassist Robinson was one of the few openly gay rock musicians at the time and wrote a song about it ("(Sing if You're) Glad to Be Gay".) But things got pretty dysfunctional when they began to plan their second album. They intended to record it with Chris Thomas, who produced their first record, but a falling out occurred and the band brought in Rundgren at the suggestion of drummer Dolphin Taylor. Rundgren walked into a scenario where the band couldn't agree on which songs to record, so they let Rundgren pick them. When Taylor disagreed with some of the selections, finding them to be inferior to the band's previous material, he quit the band, then reconsidered, but Robinson refused to take him back and replaced him with Preston Heyman. The best tracks maintain the energy of the first album but feature more sophisticated playing.
TRB Two was much more sonically diverse than the debut album, but also more inconsistent, and received mixed reviews and not much promotion from label EMI, and the band's continuing dysfunction did not help. The members' increasing animosity toward each other derailed their tour to support the album, and the band broke up a few months after the album's release after guitarist Danny Kustow quit. Robinson began a solo career, taking his music in a more pop direction.
You Might Also Like: The album's first single "Bully for You" is very British-sounding but has a chorus and chord changes that wouldn't sound out of place on a Rundgren or Utopia album (and another Powell-like synth solo). Tom Robinson believes it inspired "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" by Pink Floyd, with whom the band shared a manager. "There's no question [the song's repeated] 'We don't need no aggravation' was in the air around Roger Waters", he told
Classic Rock. "The truth of it is that I had a really good idea for a chorus and we didn't make the most of it. If 'Bully for You' had started with, 'We don't need no aggravation,' how much better would it have been? Roger's skills as a writer were far more developed than my own. He put a great idea to better use, so fair play to him."
https://open.spotify.com/track/3kPx8FZ4O3XGYHTTT7Huyz?si=d21a0daa89d8469d
At #23, a song from some Canadian power poppers that is better than their one U.S. hit.
). I also badgered him with questions and guesses of what his playlist was. Not going to post anything that might come in the future, but I thought the comparison of the first 7 would be interesting to some others in here as well. I don't think he minds commenting on bands that won't come up because of the alphabetical flow of the playlist. 
Morphine
