Charlie Sexton “Pictures for Pleasure” 1985. I had the biggest crush on Charlie Sexton in the mid-80’s and it had little to do with his music (though I still really like “Beat’s So Lonely”) and everything to do with his smoldering good looks, pillow lips, spiky black pompadour, skinny black leather pants and how he stuck his smoke in his guitar: see the 3:01 mark in the video. HOT. (Sexton also bore a resemblance to a guy I knew in “real life,” who I also crushed on. I’m not sure which crush came first, but obviously I had a type back then.)

The album is very 80’s: shiny high production, vaguely echoey vocals, probably too much keyboard and the feeling that I’m watching St. Elmo’s Fire for the eighteenth time. Today as I put the album on the turntable, the other thing that leapt out at me was a kinda Stevie Ray Vaughn vibe, and until I started digging around the internet for more info on Sexton (I crushed hard back in the 80’s but not hard enough to do research on the guy) I didn’t know Sexton collaborated with members of Vaughn’s band. But it was the 80’s and being a guitar virtuoso from Texas I suppose these things are inevitable.