Customer Rating:  
Summary: LISTEN FOR YOURSELVES for your best review.
Comment: When people say an album (or movie or tv show, etc...) is bad and they do NOT explain why they think it is, then you know that they either don't know what they're talking about, they just like to talk bad about good things, or they just don't get it. When everyone else and myself all agree that this is a solid pop/rock album, then you know the people described above have their comments deflated. Is the album good? Yes. Very good. Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread, maybe not.
Here's the greatest advice to everyone looking to find out if an album is great or not. CLICK ON THE SONG SAMPLES and listen for yourself! Don't let anyone tell you it's great or it stinks. If you like what you hear, then it is good. It's as simple as that. Enjoy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great!
Comment: Material Issue was a Chicago band who wrote some of the most killer 3 minute power pop songs! themes of love and girls are dominant (at least 6 different girl's names are sung about in the lyrics). the music is strong and full of hooks and hummable choruses that pack their weight in radio gold. this album spawned a few college hits if i remember correctly. this comes highly recommended for fans of Cheap Trick, Big Star, or Field Trip.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Chicago classic
Comment: Material Issue may have been the best pure band out of the Chicago scene that spawned Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, and Urge Overkill, among many others. It's great three minute, three chord rock and roll, wearing Jim Ellison's heart and influences on its sleeve. Contrary to one of the other reviews, MI did not disband. Ellison killed himself, a tragic loss for pop music. But that is not why to buy this album: buy it for the life that courses through Ellison's songs and his band's performances, not for the sad way his life ended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is one for the time capsule folks, a must have.
Comment: Influences (Cheap Trick, etc) aside, this album is filler free, which makes it better than anything previously put out by a power pop act. Thus this is the definitive power pop album of all time. It's a shame MI never got their just due. A power pop act in the midst of the over indulged 'grunge' movement sealed their fate. I saw them in Atlanta in '94 or '95 and remember I was 1 of maybe 50 people. That's the stupid ugly side of the music biz folks, be part of the new craze or be pushed aside. Nearly every song on this disc is memorable, with Very First Lie, Valerie..., and Crazy among the many gems on this album. Sadly, Material Issue's frontman and soul left us. I thank him for leaving us a part of him and hopefully many others will find their way to this much unheralded music.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mercury, Don't Overthrow Material Issue
Comment: I bought this CD in 1991 and still play many tracks from it, especially "Valerie Loves Me", "Diane" and "Very First Lie." Of all the songs I used to listen to in the early 90s, "Valerie" still holds as one of my all time favorites as I used to know someone by that name many, many, many years ago.
It is too bad that the rest of Material Issue's Mercury catalog has gone out of print because Jim Ellison and his band had the ability to write and record in a fairly wide variety of musical styles.
If you ever find a copy of "Destination Universe" buy it because it has some of the best power pop ballads that I ever heard in the 1990s. Mercury should reissue this as well as "Freak City Soundtrack" and put out a greatest hits compilation that feature the cover tracks "Bus Stop", "Bad Time," "Cowboy Song" and "Blockbuster" that have long been out of print.
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