THE NITECAPS - Go to the line

THE NITECAPS Go to te line lp 1982 Sire records 320 kbps

Same situation / Go to the line / Hot Pavement / Can't let one more day go by / Somebody cares / Give me one more chance / Little too long / Black tears / The new me / Is this the dream ?/ Good times (medley).

Produced by C. Langer & A. Winstanley.

The Nitecaps : J. Xavier : lead vocals, guitar / A. Maddy : vocals, guitar / P. Jordan : bass, vocals / S. Brown : drums, vocals.

The Nitecaps were a new wave group from the 1980s that had one album on the Sire label but they had more in common with some UK bands like ABC than they did with the skinny-tie sound going on when this came out in 1982. Because of that, "Go To The Line" has a more lasting, classic sound in 2008 than most releases of its ilk.

"Sire spent the money where it mattered: top-notch production from C. Langer and A. Winstanley and the full-time assistance of the Uptown Horns. (Langer and Winstanley never met a horn they didn`t like.) The Nitecaps had some small claim to fame when they entered the studio; guitarist/vocalist J. Xavier had played in The Voidoids, bassist P. Jordan had been subbing in The New York Dolls. "Go To The Line" went in a different direction: horn-flavored new wave/pop similar to English Beat . Xavier, however, is an R&B growler, which would seem to be the natural enemy of new wave. So even with the horns and a boatload of tuneful tracks from Xavier, The Nitecaps suffer by straddling the line between new wave pop band and R&B bar band. The energy in the songs lies in their melody; "The New Me," "Go To The Line" and "Can`t Let One More Day Go By" don`t need to be overplayed like sweaty R&B numbers to succeed. But then there`s that bar band mentality that says you`ve got to play your hearts out to win over listeners. What they should have focused on, instead, was a marketable gimmick. I know that sounds awfully shallow, but pop music is an overcrowded field, and you weren`t going to champion The Nitecaps just because they wrote some catchy songs. Think of the bands with less talent who got more out of the same kind of music: Skafish, Romeo Void. Those bands were quirky, and you can market quirky. You can`t market a posse of pastel-colored Easter eggs as a borderline new wave pop band when they probably didn`t have a whole lot of interest in being a new wave band in the first place. And so "Go To The Line" proved to be the end of the line for The Nitecaps, which is a shame. It`s not hard to imagine Xavier and the band maturing to the point where they could have released a very good album. As it is, they left behind a pretty good album, worth picking up in a used record store if you felt the `80s new wave/pop party ended too early."-ConnollyCo.

You want more Nitecaps ? Here's a live concert HERE !