Have You Heard? A Double-Triple Play: 3 songs each from Tony Carey and his Planet P Project [1982-1984]

Tony Carey is an extremely gifted musician, studio wizard and undoubtedly prolific in his recorded output. Leaving Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow after a two year hitch, Carey has released several dozen studio and live albums under his own name and an additional six albums under the Planet P Project banner.  He continues to tour and record and will be celebrating his 60th birthday in October 2013.  Carey is the victim of some bad Spotify databasing, though.  The melody from the song at the top of this post, a plea for remembrance from an imprisoned man, will stick in your head for days yet if you go to Tony Carey's Artist page on Spotify, it is nowhere to be found.  HERC withdraws that last statement - if you look in the Popular area, it is #9 but the album is not listed among the three albums in the Albums section nor is it listed in the Appears On section.  Type "Tony Carey" in Spotify's Search box and "Carry My Love" is the fifteenth result and the second one from that specific album which was originally self-titled when released in 1982.

HERC opted to include "I Won't Be Home Tonight" from A Lonely Life - The Anthology, yet another album hidden in the Spotify database. Look at the results from the "Tony Carey" search - at the top of the page there is an Albums section with a See All button, press that to view all of the Tony Carey solo albums currently available on Spotify - HERC counted nine of them yet Tony's Artist page lists just three of those. What gives?

That album was re-released the following year as I Won't Be Home Tonight (with new cover art, above) after the first single from the album, which made it to #79 on the Hot 100 and #8 on the Mainstream Rock chart.  The second single from the album did even better on the Hot 100 but missed the Rock charts; "West Coast Summer Nights" peaked at #64 about four months later.  

Also in 1983, Tony, with producer Peter Hauke and engineer Nigel Jopson from his solo album, released the first eponymously titled Planet P album (below, left) though future albums would be released under the name Planet P Project.  When the album was re-issued with bonus tracks in 2008, "Project" was added to the title.  Most of the Project's music was lyrically sci-fi and musically prog rock with slight new wave sounds and textures as opposed to Carey's own melodic rock. The album's first single "Why Me?" thematically recalls David Bowie's classic "Major Tom" and Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)", which was also released in 1983.  HERC's favorite lyric from "Why Me?" is "Now I'm riding on a fountain of fire/With my back to the Earth, I go higher and higher"

There was even a sweet little extended dance remix from Francois Kevorkian and his often unheralded partner in crime John "Tokes" Potoker issued (above, right) which was included on the 2008 reissue.  For HERC, the song fit in with Billy Thorpe's cosmic rockers "Children Of The Sun" (1979) and "East Of Eden's Gate" (1982) and to a lesser extent, the previously mentioned "Major Tom (Coming Home)" although that song sounds more mechanized and geared towards the dancefloor.  And although it wasn't released until 1986, Tom Scholz brought his Boston mothership into orbit around this same "rock in space" genre with Third Stage; knowing Scholz, he had the idea before anyone else but his notoriously slow perfectionism in the studio coupled with his protracted legal battles with his label, kept it on the shelf for years.

Carey and Hauke released Some Tough City nearly a year to the day after the re-issue of I Won't Be Home Tonight.  The album's first single (above) preceded it by a few weeks and soon found itself atop the Mainstream Rock charts.  "A Fine, Fine Day" continues Carey's lyrical interest with imprisonment and shadowy figures who may not follow the letter of the law.  (Go back and listen to "Carry My Love" again to hear where it all began.)  The album didn't go as high as Planet P (#42) but it made to #60.  For many fans, this is the definitive Tony Carey song.

In December 1984, Planet P Project unleashed the double disc concept album Pink World on an unsuspecting public, with initial copies being pressed on pink vinyl.  The album's first single "What I See" was released simultaneously with the album and initial copies of the 45, both stock and promo, were also available on pink vinyl.  The single managed to go Top 25 on the Mainstream Rock charts in a two month run but failed to crossover to the Hot 100.  HERC owns the gold-stamped Promo Only album on that marbled pink vinyl and recently got the single disc CD reissue on Renaissance so he could listen to the album more frequently.  In the liner notes for the reissue, Carey pulls back the curtain to reveal some thoughts about Hauke (he calls him the "producer" but never mentions him by name) and the record industry (he says John Kalodner was "almost singularly responsible for the dumbing-down of 80's music") as well as saying that both 1984 albums were delayed when his label Geffen didn't know how to promote them so Carey and his albums were traded to MCA.   

HERC's second favorite track on Planet P's debut album after "Why Me?" is "Power Tools" which, like a lot of tracks on that album, sounds like a lost track from The Cars in their Eighties prime - a good thing in HERC's book.  Whether you like melodic hard rock, AOR ballads or synth-heavy prog rock, Tony Carey and Planet P Project have got you covered.  It just takes a little extra effort to find them on Spotify.