John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt's sales have never quite matched his reputation. Hiatt's songs were covered successfully by everyone from Bonnie Raitt, Ronnie Milsap, and Dr. Feelgood to Iggy Pop, Three Dog Night, and the Neville Brothers, yet it took him 13 years to reach the charts himself. Of course, it took him nearly that long to find his own style. Hiatt began his solo career in 1974, and over the next decade he ran through a number of different styles, from rock & roll to new wave pop, before he finally settled on a rootsy fusion of rock & roll, country, blues, and folk with his 1987 album Bring the Family. Though the album didn't set the charts on fire, it became his first album to reach the charts, and several of the songs on the record became hits for other artists, including Raitt and Milsap. Following its success, Hiatt became a reliable hit songwriter for other artists, and he developed a strong cult following that continued to gain strength into the mid-'90s.

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While he was growing up in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, Hiatt played in a number of garage bands. Initially, he was inspired by the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and the music of those two artists would echo strongly throughout his work. Out of all the bar bands he played with in the late '60s, a group called the White Ducks was the one that received the most attention. Following his high school graduation, he moved to Nashville at the age of 18, where he landed a job as a songwriter for Tree Publishing. For the next several years, he wrote and performed at local clubs and hotels. Within a few years, his songs were being recorded by several different artists, including Conway Twitty, Tracy Nelson, and Three Dog Night, who took Hiatt's "Sure as I'm Sittin' Here" to number 16 in the summer of 1974. Eventually, his manager secured him an audition at Epic Records, and the label signed him in 1974, releasing his debut album, Hangin' Around the Observatory, later that year. Despite their critical acclaim, neither Hangin' Around the Observatory nor its 1975 follow-up, Overcoats, sold many copies, and he was dropped by the label. By the end of the year, Tree Publishing had let him go as well.

Following his failure in Nashville, Hiatt moved out to California. By the summer of 1978 he had settled in Los Angeles, where began playing in clubs, opening for folk musicians including Leo Kottke. With Kottke's assistance, Hiatt hired a new manager, Denny Bruce, who helped him secure a record contract with MCA Records. Slug Line, his first record for MCA, was released in the summer of 1979. Where his first two records were straight-ahead rock & roll and folk-rock, Slug Line was in the new wave vein of angry English singer/songwriters like Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson, as if Hiatt was vying for the role of the American angry young man. The new approach earned some strong reviews, yet it failed to generate any sales. Two Bit Monsters, his second MCA album, faced the same situation. Although it was well received critically upon its 1980 release, it made no impression on the charts, and the label dropped him.

Apart from working on Two Bit Monsters, Hiatt spent most of 1980 as a member of Ry Cooder's backing band, playing rhythm guitar on the Borderline album and touring with the guitarist. Hiatt stayed with Cooder throughout 1981, signing a new contract with Geffen Records by the end of the year. Produced by Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex), his Geffen debut All of A Sudden was released in 1982, followed by the Nick Lowe/Scott Matthews and Ron Nagel-produced Riding With the King in 1983. As with his previous records for Epic and MCA, neither of his first two Geffen releases sold well. By this time, Hiatt's personal life was beginning to spin out of control as he was sinking deep into alcoholism. Around the time he completed 1985's Warming Up to the Ice Age, his second wife committed suicide. Following the release of Warming Up to the Ice Age, Hiatt was dropped by Geffen. By the end of 1985, he had entered a rehabilitation program. During 1986, he remarried and signed a new deal with A&M Records.

For his A&M debut, Hiatt assembled a small band comprised of his former associates Ry Cooder (guitar), Nick Lowe (bass), and Jim Keltner (drums). Recorded over the course of a handful of days, the resulting album, Bring the Family, had a direct, stripped-down rootsy sound that differed greatly from his earlier albums. Upon its summer 1987 release, Bring the Family received the best reviews of his career and, for once, the reviews began to pay off, as the album turned into a cult hit, peaking at 107 on the U.S. charts; it was his first charting album. Hiatt attempted to record a follow-up with Cooder, Lowe, and Keltner, but the musicians failed to agree on the financial terms for the sessions. Undaunted, he recorded an album with John Doe, David Lindley, and Dave Mattacks, but he scrapped the completed project, deciding that the result was too forced. Hiatt's final attempt at recording the follow-up to Bring the Family was orchestrated by veteran producer Glyn Johns, who had him record with his touring band the Goners. Despite all of the behind-the-scenes troubles behind its recording, the follow-up album, Slow Turning, actually appeared rather quickly, arriving in the summer of 1988.

Slow Turning, like Bring the Family before it, received nearly unanimous positive reviews and it was fairly well received commercially, spending 31 weeks on the U.S. charts and peaking at 98. Within the next year, Hiatt successfully toured throughout America and Europe, strengthening his fan base along the way. Inspired by the success of Hiatt's two A&M albums, Geffen released the compilation Y' All Caught? The Ones That Got Away 1979-85 in 1989. That same year, other artists began digging through Hiatt's catalog of songs, most notably Bonnie Raitt, who covered "Thing Called Love" for her multi-platinum comeback album, Nick of Time.

In 1990, Hiatt returned with Stolen Moments, which was nearly as successful as Slow Turning, both critically and commercially. "Bring Back Your Love to Me," an album track from Stolen Moments that was also recorded by Earl Thomas Conley, won BMI's 1991 Country Music Award. By the time "Bring Back Your Love to Me" won that award, it had become a standard practice for artists to cover Hiatt's songs, as artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Ronnie Milsap, Suzy Bogguss, and Iggy Pop all covered his songs in the early '90s. In 1993, Rhino Records released Love Gets Strange: The Songs of John Hiatt, which collected many of the cover versions that were recorded during the '80s and '90s.

During 1991, the group that recorded Bring the Family – Hiatt, Cooder, Lowe, and Keltner – re-formed as a band called Little Village, releasing their eponymous debut in early 1992. Based on the success of Bring the Family and Hiatt's A&M albums, expectations for Little Village were quite high, yet the record and its supporting tour were considered a major disappointment. Later, the individual members would agree that the band was a failure, mainly due to conflicting egos.

Hiatt decided to back away from the superstar nature of Little Village for his next album, 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar. Recorded in just two weeks with a backing band comprised of members of alternative rock bands School of Fish and Wire Train, the album was looser than any record since Bring the Family, but it didn't quite have the staying power of its two predecessors, spending only 11 weeks on the charts and peaking at number 47. The following year, he released his first live album, Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan? Hiatt left A&M Records after the release of the record, signing with Capitol Records the following year……

_____________ John Hiatt's Japanese Mini-LP Collection 2013 contains: _____________

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Slug Line (1979/2013) [UICY-75574]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 240 MB | 39:01 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 88 MB

allmusic.com says: Conventional wisdom at the time was that MCA Records had signed John Hiatt (who had languished without a record contract for four years) with the idea that he would be their Elvis Costello – a singer/songwriter in the fashionable punk/new wave style. Certainly, Hiatt has stripped down and roughed up from his Epic records here, fronting a straight-ahead guitar rock band (that was capable, of course, of playing the obligatory reggae number), eschewing the stylistic diversity he reveled in before, and throwing out snappy, aphoristic lyrics in a highly processed voice. None of this quite turns him into Elvis Costello, although the mean streak he reveals would serve him well later.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Two Bit Monsters (1980/2013) [UICY-75575]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 235 MB | 35:44 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 80 MB

allmusic.com says: At the time of its release, Two Bit Monsters was perceived by critics who had caught up with John Hiatt on Slug Line as a less impressive follow-up to that record. In retrospect, it may be the better of the two albums, boasting an even more simplified musical approach and such notable songs (and future Rosanne Cash covers) as "Pink Bedroom" and "It Hasn't Happened Yet." Hiatt here was starting to emerge from the "new Elvis Costello" tag that had been affixed to him with Slug Line, but his reviewers, however well-meaning, seemed determined to keep him in that category.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - All Of A Sudden (1982/2013) [UICY-75576]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 270 MB | 41:55 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 97 MB

allmusic.com says: Hiatt's fifth album and his first for Geffen, his third record label, was given a somewhat inappropriate big-gloss production (all shimmering keyboards and filtered vocals) by Tony Visconti, known for his work with David Bowie. What counts with Hiatt, though, is the songs, and this album contains "I Look for Love," as knowing a dissection of the dating scene as anyone has yet attempted.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Riding With The King (1983/2013) [UICY-75577]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 264 MB | 42:40 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 99 MB

allmusic.com says: John Hiatt's talents as a singer and songwriter have never been a matter of question, but for the longest time neither Hiatt nor his various record labels seemed to know what to do with him. Epic Records thought he was some sort of a folky, while MCA figured, since his songs were often cranky and angular, he could be sold as a skinny-tie new wave guy. Neither idea made much of a dent in the marketplace, and by the time Hiatt cut his second album for Geffen, Riding with the King, someone had come to the reasonable conclusion that Hiatt was a roots-rocker at heart – but what kind of roots-rocker? Side one of Riding with the King was produced by Ron Nagel and Scott Mathews of the Durocs, with Hiatt singing and playing guitar and Mathews handling everything else; the results have a thick, glossy retro-pop sound with a vague '50s undercurrent, complete with twinkly keyboards and honking saxophones. Side two was cut with Nick Lowe at the controls, featuring a band assembled from Lowe's touring unit (which at one time included Hiatt); these tunes are leaner and blusier, but also a bit more laid-back. While the two halves of the album have decidedly different sonic personalities, the consistent strength of Hiatt's witty, sweet-and-sour songwriting holds the album together, balancing punchy rockers like "Say It with Flowers" and "Falling Up" against soulful contemplations of the ups and downs of love, such as "She Loves the Jerk" and "You May Already Be a Winner." And while Hiatt's voice doesn't boast much range, he knows how to make the most of what he's got, and his vocals here sound a lot more subtle and incisive than the albums that preceded it. Riding with the King may be a bit mixed-up, but it was certainly a step in the right direction for Hiatt.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Warming Up To The Ice Age (1985/2013) [UICY-75578]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 255 MB | 38:52 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 89 MB

allmusic.com says: Hiatt turned to veteran country producer Norbert Putnam here, but the result still rocked hard, with the occasional soul touch notably those obnoxious thumbstruck basslines that are so prevalent in '80s music. Highlights here are "The Usual," later covered by Bob Dylan, and "She Said The Same Things To Me." There is also an odd duet with Elvis Costello on the old Spinners bit "Living A Little, Laughing A Little"–try and tell them apart. Critics' darling or no, when this album went into the tank, Geffen became the third label to drop Hiatt.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Bring The Family (1987/2013) [UICY-75579]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 277 MB | 45:38 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 104 MB

allmusic.com says: In 1987, John Hiatt, clean and sober and looking for an American record deal, was asked by an A&R man at a British label to name his dream band. After a little thought, Hiatt replied that if he had his druthers, he'd cut a record with Ry Cooder on guitar, Nick Lowe on bass, and Jim Keltner on drums. To Hiatt's surprise, he discovered all three were willing to work on his next album; Hiatt and his dream band went into an L.A. studio and knocked off Bring the Family in a mere four days, and the result was the best album of Hiatt's career. The musicians certainly make a difference here, generating a lean, smoky groove that's soulful and satisfying (Ry Cooder's guitar work is especially impressive, leaving no doubt of his singular gifts without ever overstepping its boundaries), but the real triumph here is Hiatt's songwriting. Bring the Family was recorded after a period of great personal turmoil for him, and for the most part the archly witty phrasemaker of his earlier albums was replaced by an wiser and more cautious writer who had a great deal to say about where life and love can take you. Hiatt had never written anything as nakedly confessional as "Tip of My Tongue" or "Learning How to Love You" before, and even straight-ahead R&B-style rockers like "Memphis in the Meantime" and "Thing Called Love" possessed a weight and resonance he never managed before. But Bring the Family isn't an album about tragedy, it's about responsibility and belatedly growing up, and it's appropriate that it was a band of seasoned veterans with their own stories to tell about life who helped Hiatt bring it across; it's a rich and satisfying slice of grown-up rock & roll.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Slow Turning (1988/2013) [UICY-75580]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 310 MB | 48:57 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 109 MB

allmusic.com says: After the success of Bring the Family, John Hiatt originally intended to reunite that album's all-star backing band (Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, and Jim Keltner) for a follow-up. Hiatt's "dream band" proved to be unavailable, and he ended up cutting Slow Turning with his road band, the Goners, but the finished product proves he remembered well the lessons learned from Bring the Family. Slow Turning is a lighter and wittier affair than Bring the Family; the outlaw rocker "Tennessee Plates" and its more subdued companion piece, "Trudy and Dave," are more rambunctious than anything on the previous album, and the tempos are sharper this time out, with a bit less blues and a touch more twang in the melodies. But Slow Turning is also an album of hard-won lessons about life and love, placing a subtle but pronounced emphasis on the nuts and bolts of family life with the mingled joys and annoyances of parenthood dominating both "Georgia Rae" and the title cut, and the newfound maturity that made Bring the Family so special is still very much in evidence. And while the Goners aren't quite up to the standards of the quartet that recorded Bring the Family (and who, pray tell, is?), they're still a stronger and more empathetic band than Hiatt usually had in the studio, with Sonny Landreth's guitar work a standout. Following the best album of your career is no easy task for most performers, but with Slow Turning John Hiatt made it clear that the excellence of Bring the Family was no fluke.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Stolen Moments (1990/2013) [UICY-75581]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 349 MB | 52:58 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 120 MB

allmusic.com says: John Hiatt's highest-charting album yet is a step down from the dizzy heights of Bring the Family and Slow Turning, as he abandons his more acid commentaries and turns in a self-deprecating set full of promises of reformation and celebrations of marriage and family life. But the observations remain acute, and Hiatt's singing (so much camouflaged in his early days) is becoming his secret weapon.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Perfectly Good Guitar (1993/2013) [UICY-75582]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 404 MB | 57:26 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 129 MB

allmusic.com says: For all of his ability to rock out, John Hiatt's records usually have more of a soul and/or country feel to them, which makes 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar something of an anomaly: This is the most consistently rock & roll-oriented album of Hiatt's career. Produced by Matt Wallace (Replacements, Faith No More), who gives a Neil Young-style guitar crunch to most of the songs, Perfectly Good Guitar was a record almost tailor-made for the then-nascent AAA (adult album alternative) demographic. Unfortunately, Hiatt seems to borrow not only Young's guitar sound, but also his sloppy, inconsistent songwriting for this album. The title track is one of Hiatt's all-time best, using smashed guitars as a perfectly realized metaphor for abusive relationships and setting the impressive lyrics to the catchiest chorus of his entire career. But while the tender "Buffalo River Home" and "Blue Telescope" are equally fine, much of the rest of the record sounds hurried and unfocused. "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari" sadly fails to live up to its title, and the closing "Loving a Hurricane" takes the Neil Young comparisons right to the edge of outright plagiarism. John Hiatt has released far worse albums than Perfectly Good Guitar, but given how terrific about a third of the songs are, this album's one of his more frustrating efforts.

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John Hiatt - Japanese Mini-LP Collection (10 Albums 1979-1994) [10x SHM-CD '2013]

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John Hiatt - Hiatt Comes Alive At Budokan (1994/2013) [UICY-75583]
FLAC with CUE & LOG - 490 MB | 76:17 mins | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 172 MB

allmusic.com says: John Hiatt's first live album was recorded during a 1994 winter-spring tour of the U.S. (the title is a joke) and finds the singer/songwriter backed by the Guilty Dogs, a guitar-bass-drums trio. He doesn't need any more ammunition than that, not when he's got a set of 15 songs drawn from his last four critically acclaimed albums, including "Thing Called Love" and "Tennessee Plates." Hiatt gives his songs a rougher treatment than some of those who have covered them, his throaty voice giving even love songs like "Angel Eyes" an unsentimental force. In the absence of an A&M best-of, Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan? makes a good sampler of his work, 1987-1993.