Genya Ravan - ...and I Mean It! (1979)

Most rock history writers have their blind spots here and there, conferring fame and prestige on certain artists and consigning others to comparative obscurity. Sometimes, critical faves aren’t embraced as warmly by the public as they are by the writers. Sometimes, artists are just a couple of degrees ahead of the curve of public taste, and they never quite get their careers in sync the way that, by all rights they should, were this a just world. Genya Ravan hasn’t gotten her due in the great book that is the History of Rock, and it’s past time that this particular wrong was righted. And I Mean It came out in 1979, just as the punk/new wave thing was taking hold of the public’s imagination in America, and while the album looked kinda new wave, it was a little too eclectic to pigeonhole her in that genre. In some ways, that was a good thing, but in others, it left her standing at the corner of Punk Avenue and Hard Rock Boulevard, and the great Bus of Commercial Success didn’t stop there. But this record is sexy, it has a brilliant duet with Mott The Hoople’s Ian Hunter (“Junkman”) and it kicks you-know-what.