Blue Magic s/t
This could be the posterchild for almost everything that went wrong with pop/funk in the mid 70s. Start with Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, mix them up into one very treacly mess and then add a generous dollop of early 70s style symphonic strings, so sweet the sugar is crystallizing on the side of the bowl. Yank the falsetto croon more in the direction of Gaye than Mayfield and proceed to whip out one saccharine ballad after another. In fact the only thing they’re missing, probably because this album was a year or two early, is a disco thump. Truly this is an offense to anyone who thinks art oughta earn an emotional response rather than beg for one.
The Cars s/t (deluxe edition)
It’s true, the debut Cars album is one of those late 70s records that would dominate rock radio for many years, as it’s virtually almost entirely singles you’d recognize and of course some of these are probably not worth writing home about while on the other hand there’s quite a few that stand up as well. The ones I like tend to have slight dark bents such as “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight,” the chorus of “Good Times Roll” and the (even now) commercial friendly “Moving in Stereo.” All of these wrap up almost classic hooks with a sense of the impending new decade that is almost definitively post-70s AOR. There’s the other side of the equation, of course, which will likely vary depending on one’s personal connection to this music (believe me you’ve been hiding in a hole the last 30 years if you don’t recognize most of these), but I can do without “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Just What I Needed,” but like I may have mentioned or implied with earlier posts on the Eagles, sometimes it’s easy to phase out the tracks you’re tired of to notice how strong the rest of the album is. The deluxe edition adds to the second disc a demo of the first album that varies quite a bit in material, although the singles you’d recognize aren’t quite as good the first time around and you can see they significantly improved just about everything for the actual debut. I probably don’t need to hear it again, however I’m surprisingly happy with the album per se. In terms of songwriting craft it’s nearly a how-to guide.
Amon Duul II - Blow Up Club, Munich 1969
I actually didn’t think I’d listen to this again given the poor quality document, but then got to hear one that was cleaned up a bit, improving the sound quality by a plus mark. At least now you can tell how great the show actually was instead of guessing, with the band mostly jamming on themes from Phallus Dei and sounding actually pretty good given the fact ADII could be abysmal on stage at times. The problem is that the quality is still poor enough that one has to strain to hear what was going on rather than letting it come naturally, meaning the listen tends to dissolve into fuzz when one isn’t totally paying attention. Shame this doesn’t exist in better quality.