Writing On The Wall

You know, Zoo Freaks, when the Zoo Crew spins "Writing On The Wall" off Taxxi's Traxx album, it feels like cracking open a time capsule from those late eighties sessions that never quite saw the light back then. Those tracks sat locked away in the archives from around 1987 and 1988, stuff that was meant to be part of a fifth album the boys were cooking up with Kevin Russell from 707, but the whole thing got shelved and faded into the dust. Then along comes MelodicRock Records, with Andrew McNeice from the site asking the band to dig through the vaults, and out come these eleven songs remastered by the legendary JK Northrup, who has worked with folks like Billy Thorpe and Paul Shortino. "Writing On The Wall" kicks off the whole set, and man, it sets the tone with that strong guitar work right from the jump, blending into those heavy keyboards that scream classic AOR. The vocals come in with a real conviction, kind of like catching a Richard Marx vibe in the delivery, but with the Taxxi edge, and that chorus hooks you clean. Reviews back in the day called it one of the highlights, a sensible opener because of the catchy pull and solid playing, representing what the lost album was all about. Co-written by David Cumming, Jeffrey Nead, and Jesse Harms, it carries that weight of facing something inevitable, with lines about spending a lifetime running but feeling something that makes you want to stay, a storm coming, and risking it all because the writing is on the wall. There are those shards of glass from the past haunting the singer, stars gathering, and the sense of no more running, just facing it head on. One French review even singled it out as très efficace, effective and strong amid the rest of the material that some found more classic than groundbreaking. It is pure late eighties melodic rock with that keyboard-heavy pop orientation, the kind of deep cut that fits right into the freeform album rock we keep spinning here on THE ZOO, where the Zoo Freaks get the stories behind the vinyl without any commercial interruptions.

The story of how Taxxi got rolling starts way back in the late seventies London scene, with Scottish-born singer and guitarist David Cumming making the move from Perth. He had picked up piano and guitar young, even did some repertory theater work back home before heading south to the city. There he crossed paths with drummer Jeffrey Nead, and the two of them bounced through a succession of bands, including outfits like the Cleaners and the Soho Jets. They eventually linked up with keyboardist Colin Payne, who had been playing in a popular funk and reggae group called Trax, and that combination locked in the trio. An association with Kit Lambert, the manager known for his work with The Who, helped them cut some demos that caught the right ears, leading to a signing with Fantasy Records out of Berkeley. An American music business type convinced them they would smash it in the States, so they relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, which became their base. Hooking up with manager David Leiken got them into the Fantasy fold, and they issued Day for Night in 1980, then States of Emergency in 1982 that edged onto the charts thanks to airplay for "I'm Leaving." They kept the momentum with rock radio attention on tracks from Foreign Tongue and then Expose on MCA, produced with Tom Dowd. Session players filled out the sound, including bassist Randy Jackson who had worked with Billy Cobham and Herbie Hancock, keyboardist Tim Gorman who joined The Who on tour, guitarists like Danny Chauncey and Marlon McClain, and even Journey's Steve Smith adding tambourine. They opened for big names like the Police, Foreigner, Night Ranger, Blue Öyster Cult, and Joan Jett, and got some MTV play on their videos. After the band wound down following Expose, those later sessions with Russell stayed unreleased until the Traxx dig, giving fans like us a last look at what those boys were laying down when the decade was turning. Collectors still trade the vinyl and share notes over at places like Discogs, where the Traxx listing and the rest of the catalog keep the stories circulating among the dedicated followers.

What makes "Writing On The Wall" stick with the Zoo Freaks is how it captures that moment of no more dodging, the kind of lyric Jeffrey Nead once described as vignettes with strong images, mostly romantic fantasies but grounded in real feeling. In the hardrockhaven review of Traxx, they noted it as a pretty good representation of the album, starting with the guitar and keys, vocals that paint the picture of someone wrestling with staying or running, and a chorus that seals it. The production by Arthur Barrow and the band themselves keeps that eighties AOR polish, with guests like Earl Slick on other tracks showing the caliber of players around them. For a band that started with Cumming and Nead cycling through London groups before Payne joined from the funk side, it is a long way from those early demos with Lambert's connection to this vaulted closer on their story. They had soundtrack placements too, like "Forever" in Weird Science and "Heaven and the Heartaches" in The Secret of My Success, showing how the songs traveled even when the albums did not always break big. States of Emergency peaked around 161 on the Billboard 200, with "I'm Leaving" and others getting the rock radio spins, but the devoted following stayed with them through the compilations like Chequered Past in 2001 that gathered the early Fantasy cuts. Traxx fills in the gap from those 1987-1988 recordings that Payne had left by then, just Cumming and Nead pushing forward with the unreleased material. It is the kind of deep cut that rewards the listeners who dig past the obvious hits, the ones who know the writing was on the wall for the band too as the decade closed, yet the music still rings true when we drop the needle here. The Zoo Crew keeps spinning these because the stories and the grooves hold up, from the Scottish roots of Cumming meeting Nead in London to the Bay Area sessions with top session cats, all leading to tracks like this one that feel fresh out of the archives even years later. If you are hunting more on the catalog or trading stories with other fans, that Discogs page has the releases laid out, including Traxx with its track listing starting right there with "Writing On The Wall." It is all part of the freeform ride on the station, where hippie and rock and roll biker energy meets the classic album cuts that the Zoo Freaks live for.