Search - Tommy Tutone :: Nervous Love

Really A Tommy Heath Solo Album, But Pretty Good Anyway

Eric R. Last | San Bruno, CA United States | 04/25/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Tommy Tutone was a power-pop band that made 3 albums in the early 80s before disbanding. Lead guitarist Jim Keller and lead vocalist Tommy Heath were the two principal songwriters and co-leaders. They had one huge hit single, "867-5309/Jenny". In 1994, a new "Tommy Tutone" album, "Nervous Love" appeared, 11 years after their last album. The only member of the original band that appears here is vocalist Heath. Furthermore, he makes little effort to even sound like his old band. So realistically, this is Tommy Heath's first solo album. The first two tracks ("A Long Time Ago" and "Once You Start Walking") are the most similar to the old TT sound, and are my favorites on the album. After this things start to stray far from the TT template. We get three country songs, two acoustic folk songs, and three rockers in a rockabilly/honkytonk vein. Some of this is quite good, especially the tender acoustic ballad "Marincy Arizona" and the country-ish "Another Slow Dance". One knock on the album: the production sounds pretty low budget. Heath followed this up in 1998 with another "Tommy Tutone" album, "Tutone.rtf", with another new line up of supporting players. Unlike "Nervous Love", "Tutone.rtf" really does sound like the old TT albums. Two of the songs from "Nervous Love" are repeated in newly-recorded versions on "Tutone.rtf", and you can really hear how much cleaner and punchier the recording is on the later album. In fact, I'd rate "tutone.rtf" as the second-best album from the Heath/TT history, behind only "Tommy Tutone 2" (which was the one with "867-5309/Jenny"). "Nervous Love" I'd rate as forth-best out of the 5 albums, ahead of only the third album, "National Emotion". But still, I like it."