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Ah, Taco. How you came and went with such a fey flourish! You dominated the singles charts briefly with your synthed-up remake of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and dared to go the full LP route by also issuing After eight. Seriously, dude. WTF?! Not that I have any room to make too much fun. You see, I bought this album in a record shop at the time it was big (I had already bought the single). Got it and the Atari 2600 cartridge “E.T.” at the same store. Yeah. So maybe you could say I struck out twice that day, but I enjoyed both at the time. But this album now? It’s just too corny for words. While Taco offers up other cover versions of classics like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Cheek to Cheek,” the real stomach churners are the tracks he penned himself. “Livin’ in My Dream World,” the original b-side to “Ritz” is bad enough. Taco reminisces about doing the Charleston, enjoying sing-along songs, and dancing on the Milky Way. Yech. If that weren’t enough, then perhaps “Tribute to Tino” in which Taco throws up appallingly bad synths in the faces of his listeners to tell them a tale of silent movie star Rudolph Valentino is. “Fairbanks, Chapman, Barrymore had leading ladies by the score like Tino” croons Taco. “Marie Provost” this is not. The title track is also pretty abysmal. “After eight, a rendezvous with Kate! / She works late / I’ve had a hard day watching color TV” sings the Tac, trying to inflect as much of a ’30s style mannerism into his voice as he can. Then he tops it even more terribly with “Kate works each day 9 to 5, serving with true dedication / She serves you sodas, and ice creams, and pizzas, and chilis / And burgers, all kinds…and tacos, too…dig it!” So yeah, basically there was “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and that was pretty much it. After Eight remains one of those distinctly ’80s novelty curios, and prices for CD copies of it are ridiculously overpriced. Still, you can nab the album off of iTunes these days. Taco did continue his career after this, but no one cared by the time his second album came out. It seems like the public didn’t need new versions of “Winchester Cathedral” or other pap such as “Opera Rap.” Yeah…”Opera Rap.” And just to remind you how deeply serious Taco was when it came to puttin’ on his ritz, I’ll leave you with with this image from the back cover of this album:
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