Put The Needle On The Record - Week #28

Put The Needle On The Record Week #28 Howard Jones - Dream Into Action

For this weeks feature we go back to March 1985 and the Howard Jones album "Dream Into Action".

"Dream Into Action" was the second album released by Howard Jones, the follow up to "Human's Lib" and whilst the former had 3 outstanding singles on it ("New Song", "What Is Love?" and "Hide And Seek"), "Dream Into Action" has a much better overall collection of songs, superbly produced by Rupert Hine. It is also an album that did well in the states, along with the singles released from it.

I saw Howard Jones in 1985 at The Manchester Apollo on the tour to support the album and he was amazing, analog synths surrounded him and boy can he play them, he is outstanding live. For me this was the peak of his career and his popularity.

The acid test that show an album is of the highest quality, is the tracks that could have been singles but were n't, in the case of this album, "Specialty" and "Elegy" were worthy candidates to be released as singles.

In the end 4 singles were released off the album "Things Can Only Get Better" (which reached number 6 in the UK Singles chart and number 5 in America), "Look Mama" (which reached number 10 in the UK Singles chart), "Life In One Day" (which reached number 14 in the UK Singles chart and number 19 in America) and "No One Is To Blame" (which reached number 16 in the UK Singles chart and number 4 in America), which was re-recorded with Phil Collins on drums for its release as a single.

The album peaked at number 2 in the UK Album Chart and number 10 in the Billboard album chart in the states.

Track Listing

Things Can Only Get Better
Life In One Day
Dream Into Action
No One Is To Blame
Look Mama
Assault And Battery
Automation
Is There A Difference?
Elegy
Specialty
Why Look For The Key
Hunger For The Flesh

So if you have the album in your collection and have n't played it in a while, dig it out and give it a spin!