In the most recent discussions about the merits/lack thereof of Dog Eat Dog, Colin (I *think* it was you, love) said:
<<A lot of people have expressed their dislike of this album in terms of it's synth music and 80's sound and Dolby's production.>> I'm sure this is extremely old news, but here goes: I *loved* Dolby's albums of the early and mid '80's particularly The Flat Earth, which came out in '84, a year before DED came out: So my question: why did his treatment of her stuff come out so badly (a matter of opinion, of course)? Was her writing really kind of in a slump, or was his synth style just not the way to go for her, or is it just one of those "sum is not equal to smooshing together of parts" or some such? Is there some gossip that the often dissed (although the j-ster herself seemd to like --and still seems to like -- him well enough) Larry Klein talked her *into* collaborating with Dolby -- hard for me to believe -- I've always thought she made her own decisions (albeit conceivabley influenced by whomever she was seeing at the time), and cannot help but believe she liked what he was doing with his own stuff before and during that period of time. I also thought the collaboration *did* work well on some of the songs, e.g., Lucky Girl and maybe Ethiopia and Beautiful Dreamer -- although I've never heard any live or "acoustic" versions of any of these songs, so maybe it's hard for me to judge. Long enough. warmly, walt
