Label: Gem
Year of Release: 1980
Kenny Young is no stranger at all to this blog. As a songwriter, he'll also be familiar to the public as the pensmith of some timeless classics like "Under The Boardwalk" and "The Captain Of Your Ship". As a singer-songwriter, he might jangle some memory bells as the frontman of one-hit wonders Yellow Dog.
Like most of his kind, though, his huge hits fell between hectares of flops, and hence Young has also fallen on to psychedelic obscurity compilations where his non-sellers have picked up underground appreciation. His late period flops are rather less well recorded, though, and "The Shining" is one particular peculiarity - a piece of psuedo-Japanese futuristic pop with tinges of Jeff Lynne about it. Kicking off with backwards vocals which sound like "I've been to a shit party", the track continues with squeaking synths, pie-eyed innocent girlish vocals and a very "Time"-era ELO vocoder (though for the sake of fairness, I should point out that "Time" had yet to be released at this point, so Young was pre-empting their direction rather than copying it).
It could have been a hit, but it wasn't. Instead, it fell between the cracks and was largely utterly ignored, even until now. It's very much a period piece, but none the worse for it. Of equal interest is the B-side "Daze of Pleazure" which sounds more like Bis than Bis.
Apologies for the sound quality of the vinyl - I did the best I could to clean this up.
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