For all intent purposes, The Outfield was your basic three chord band that sang about love, failed love and missing love and winning it all love. From their Say It Isn't So, which reminded me of good Utopia to the Yes 90125 inspired Voices Of Babylon The Outfield was one of the brighter spots of the MTV led 80's generation but of course best known for Your Love which was a top 5 single in 1985. In some ways they were the UK counterpart to The Hooters, to which both bands made three albums and then moved over to MCA for a couple more.
For those who want one album, I suggest Big Innings which combines most of their Columbia singles with some choice MCA tracks from Diamond Days and the less satisfying Rockeye although Closer To Me did scrape the top 40 in 1992. Play Deep tends to sound too samey even with the hits and Bangin does rock a bit harder but their best studio album was the David Kahne produced Voices Of Babylon, a surprise failure of a album saleswise but overall, they did manage to alter the sound a bit more. They lost drummer Alan Jackman soon after and Simon Dawson came on board for the pretty good Diamond Days.
After Rockeye, MCA dropped The Outfield but they have continued to record, releasing Extra Innings, a batch of recordings for a sixth album but never happened for the defunct Platinum label and a very good Any Time Now in 2007 for Sidewinder Music. Extra Innings contains They Can't Knock You Down Again, which is the most heavy metal they ever sounded.
In 2009, Alan Jackman rejoined the band as drummer once again and The Outfield are working on a new album which has yet to be released.
The albums
Play Deep Columbia 1985 B
Bangin Columbia 1987 B-
Voices Of Babylon Columbia 1989 A-
Diamond Days MCA 1990 B+
Rockeye MCA 1992 B-
Big Innings Legacy 1996 B+
Extra Innings (unreleased) Platinum 1999 B
Any Time Now Sidewinder Music 2007 B+
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
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