The Record Blog

Foreigner is a group that started good, and stayed good. Their first six albums were all certified multi-platinum and charted in the top 10. Oftentimes with groups that eventually make it huge (I'm thinking Queen, ELO, Pink Floyd) it usually takes a few albums to really hit their stride. With groups like Foreigner, though, it seems like they just figured it out early and kept it rolling. Good on them!

The name comes from the fact that three of the members were American, and three of the members were British. The joke is that no matter what country they go to, at least half the band will be foreigners.

To me, this is like, peak classic rock sound. Sure, a bit generic, but to me Foreigner always was a little more high brow. What I mean by that is - yes, while it's got guitars, drums, and keyboard, and it's very firmly mainstream rock, there are chord and song structure choices and that make it sophisticated to a musician's ear. You can tell Mick Jones knows his stuff! He's the lead guitarist for the group, and he has at least partial writing credit for every song on this album.

The late 70's was such a good time for music. I'm blown away at the quality of albums that were coming out at the time, one after the other. I know a lot of that is the fact that the good stuff has risen to the top over the decades while the mountains of chaff have been forgotten, but I'm of the opinion that the 70's were the best decade for popular music. I think the bar for quality was much higher on average.

Case in point! Three songs from this album became chart-toppers, and ones you're probably familiar with if you're into the music I'm into. "Feels Like the First Time", "Cold as Ice", and "Long, Long Way From Home" are all time-honored classics. But the other entries are by no means lacking! Lou Gramm's vocals knock it out of the park, and bring a ton of energy and flair. I also like the use of synthesizers (fork found in kitchen), and I really like the use of horns in "Long, Long Way From Home".

Truth be told, my favorite song on the album has to be "Cold as Ice". Such a good song. The vocal breakdown is awesome, the arpeggiated guitar solo is iconic, and that solo piano at the start is instantly recognizable. Also these guys are so dorky in this video, I love it.

But! I'm in the business of expanding horizons on this blog, so I'd also like to highlight my favorite less popular tune: "Starrider".

It's like, weirdly proggy? A very cool sound. It was co-written by King Crimson co-founder Ian McDonald, and that explains that!

I have a lot of fun with this album, it's just about the best example I can think of for showcasing the classic rock genre. Good stuff!

This is KKB's third full album, and a pretty big departure from their previous sound. In earlier entries, you get a saccharine, whimsical collection of songs about lighthearted subject matter like walking in the park or wanting to sleep in. The energy is peppy and cutesy, with lead vocalist Sarah Midori Perry freely mixing English and Japanese lyrics.

Time 'n' Place has a lot of the same songwriting bones, but it's like someone took the music and ruffled it around, is my best way of describing it. Songs like "Only Acting" and "Rest Stop" are chock full of static and distortion near the ends, making for a... challenging casual listen. The whole album has a gritty, raw feel, one we hadn't heard from KKB up until this point. A lot of the songs feel more rock than pop, like "Outside", one of my favorites on the album. Even the songs with a more characteristic sound, like "Make Believe" or "If I'd Known", hint at a deeper melancholy with the lyrics. This is definitely the sound of a band that has matured in their songwriting style and experiences.

It's uncited on Wikipedia but someone claims that this was due to radical changes in the band members' personal and professional lives following their first US tour in 2015. I get how that goes, and you see it a lot listening to many musicians across all genres. The fame catches up to you, or it doesn't pan out the way you expect, or people's preconceived notions of who or what you are don't line up with the person off the stage. Definitely a problem that has plagued many creative types across history.

My favorite song on the album has to be "Dear Future Self".

Those lyrics get me, man.

"But I heard all the years'll leave you hurt Everyone you love disappears and nothing works Please don't say you hate the world I hope that I won't"

And that final chorus with the strings... gah! I'm not an overly teary person, but on the listen for this review I felt myself tearing up a little bit. Just, something about hoping for a better future but not being sure, trying to be kind to yourself despite it all. It's good.

You may have heard this band before. Their most famous song, "Hocus Pocus", makes the rounds on the internet every so often, and it was featured in the soundtrack of the 2017 movie Baby Driver. Take a listen here:

Frontman Thijs van Leer is an absolute maniac! He is joined by guitarist Jan Akkerman, bassist Bert Ruiter, and drummer Pierre van der Linden.

It's really a shame this group isn't more well known, they are all insanely gifted musicians. I think the weirdness didn't help with the popular charts. Rock yodeling is a fairly unexplored avenue. But once you get past the weirdness, these guys have some serious chops. I would put Jan Akkerman right up there with the great guitarists like Clapton and Beck. And van Leer is a true renaissance man, exceptionally talented on keys, as well as flute, voice, and songwriting. His vocal range is absurd: easily over four octaves and he sounds great at every register.

The back of the jacket has producer Mike Vernon's tale of his exploits with Focus, talking about how each track on the album came along. It an eclectic mix for sure. All instrumentals, but the vibe of each song is very different. It makes sense, as these were all basically demo tracks taken from across the band's entire career (up to that point).

I have to say my favorite is "Red Sky at Night". It's a slower ballad, a little less upbeat than the rest of the tunes. Something about that main melody in the guitar is just so emotional, though... There's a melancholy there, something difficult to put into words. As I said before, Akkerman is a beast. You also get to hear Thijs van Leer's flute playing in this, which is always a treat. I actually have his solo flute album too, he's like a professional level orchestral flute player!

It feels wrong to just pick this one song though. The entire album is great. Other favorites include "Can't Believe My Eyes", "Glider", and "Crackers". I would listen to the whole album if I were you. If you like instrumental jazzy, funky, rocky stuff put the whole thing on!

Carlos Santana and his band released this album in September of 1970, and it immediately was a hit among critics and the public. Well, mostly. One contemporary critic gave it a C+, calling it "a not disreputable performance, most likely a failed experiment or a pleasant piece of hackwork".

I'm happy to report that he has been proven wrong. This album has some of the most staying power of any album released in the last 60 years.

The name "Abraxas" has a mysterious origin. Santana got the name from the book Demian by Herman Hesse, which is quoted on the back cover:

"We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it; We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas..."

The name itself has mystical connotations in Gnostic Christianity, referring to the name of the Great Archon, a creator spirit. Skimming the Wikipedia page was getting me scratching my head, that's a rabbit hole I don't have the mental bandwidth for tonight.

Now, that quote from the book isn't related to the painting used in the album art, but I feel like it could be. There's just so much going on with the art. So many little details, so intimate, so mystical, so overwhelming. That's something I enjoy about having the physical album right in front of me, I get a nice big 12"x12" piece of art. Even in the picture I took for this review, you barely get any of the details.

It was painted by Mati Klarwein, who went on to paint album covers for many big musicians, like Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Earth, Wind & Fire.

On to the music. Santana's specific blend of Latin rhythms and blues is truly timeless. And that man knows his way around a guitar! I really do hope that songs like "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va" are beloved favorites of yours, and if not, go listen to them right now!! Don't keep reading until you're done listening!

So, now that you've got that sound fresh in your mind, I've got good news for you: the whole rest of the album sounds just like that. And a lot of these I had never heard before! They just hadn't gotten quite the exposure of the big singles, but they're by no means bad songs. I'd say there's not a bad one in the bunch.

One I want to highlight is "Samba Pa Ti".

One of the more laid-back, instrumental tracks on the album. But that guitar! That guitar!! So soulful! And that nice, beefy Hammond organ sound! Excellent! I could listen to this all day. I also really liked "Incident at Neshabur" from side A. Really nice jazzy chord changes, seamlessly flowing into romping blues accentuated by a zesty conga rhythm.

All in all, just a phenomenal album. 10/10, no complaints. A real winner!

This album is one of many I have in my collection that has an ominous-looking stamp in the upper left corner on the back of the outer jacket: "FOR PROMOTION ONLY Ownership Reserved By CBS Sale Is Unlawful" When I first started collecting records, I thought I had stumbled upon something I shouldn't have - something rare and forbidden! How did it wind up in my hands, at a record store in some small town of all places? While some promo stamped records are quite sought after, that's mostly reserved for pressings of super popular collector albums. I'm sure if you had a promo stamped, mint copy of Abbey Road, for example, you could ask pretty much any price you wanted. But, the fact of the matter is that virtually any album back in the day had a huge number of these stamped records produced. You see, back when radio station DJs had to use, you know, actual discs, the record labels gave upcoming albums to radio stations worldwide for free. That way people could hear the hottest singles from an upcoming release, which would increase publicity, and hopefully, sales. When radio stations shifted away from vinyl to the more reliable CD (and later, digital music libraries) they suddenly had a bunch of old records collecting dust. These eventually made their way into the secondhand vinyl ecosystem, where you can occasionally find them in record shops. So, if you encounter one of these in the wild, it's very likely that it doesn't increase the value of the record by any real amount. Kind of like a holo foil Pokemon card that increases the value from 25¢ to 35¢. Ooh! Aah! It can be kind of fun to find one, though.

On to the album! Gentle Giant unfortunately suffered the fate of many of the great progressive rock bands of the 70s. As tastes and attitudes changed, people started to tire of the lengthy, noodly, synth-laden epics of the mid-70s. What was once seen as innovative and virtuosic was now seen as bloated and decadent. Singles were increasingly becoming a product to make your record label (and you) money, and a 20-minute opus that took up half the real estate on your album didn't sell. Bands were faced with a choice: adapt or die. Some bands, like Genesis or Yes, went through a rapid, extreme sonic metamorphosis. Compare Yes's 1980 Drama to 1983's 90125. Night and day. If I didn't know any better, I would say those were different bands.

Other bands, like Gentle Giant, called it quits. Rather than string out a foregone conclusion until tensions tore the band apart, they decided that after Civilian, the Giant would be no more. Maybe they didn't get the renown they were chasing, maybe the creative juices dried up, but listening to this album I'm glad they called it when they did.

Gentle Giant is definitely one of my pet bands, and a group that I often recommend to people who are looking for more proggy goodness a little more off the beaten path. But listening to their earlier entries like Octopus or The Power and the Glory, there's just no comparison. This album doesn't have the trademark Giant sound to me. It just sounds like... any other early 80s rock. Closer to Journey than Genesis, you know?

Which isn't to say it's bad! It's just... not as good as I know they were.

My favorite of the bunch is probably "Underground" because it's got little bits and pieces of why I fell in love with Gentle Giant. Creative chord choices, unexpected syncopations, a little synth solo, things like that. But it's pretty tame compared to their earlier work. Really, this to me just sounds like generic "rock", not progressive rock. Literally any track on Octopus clears this, easily.

So, to sum it up, by 1980 the golden era of prog was officially dead. At the time, people celebrated. But looking back, I wish it could have lasted a little longer.

Art Garfunkel, one half of the folk rock superstar duo Simon and Garfunkel, had seen some success leading up to this album as a solo artist. In 1970, the duo officially broke up after the release of Bridge Over Troubled Water and went their separate ways, due to growing creative and personal tensions.

Leading up to this album, Garfunkel was devastated by his girlfriend, actress Laurie Bird's suicide in 1978 while he was in Europe filming a movie. He dedicated the album to her, and her photo appears on the back cover. He became fairly reclusive throughout much of the 80s after the release of this album, not releasing another solo album until 1986.

Commercially, this album didn't do spectacularly. It feels unfair to compare Art Garfunkel's solo career with Paul Simon's, but that's the easiest direct comparison to make. I feel like Simon's solo work is stronger than Garfunkel's, but I greatly prefer their earlier work as a duo. Such is the way of things. Actually, one month after the release of this album, the duo finally reunited for their phenomenal Central Park concert.

The songs on this album are all fairly standard soft rock fare. If you're a fan of animated film, there are two tracks you may be familiar with on this album. The first is "Bright Eyes", which was featured in the film Watership Down, and second is "That's All I've Got to Say", from The Last Unicorn.

I've never seen Watership Down, I've heard that for an animated movie ostensibly for children it touches on some very dark and disturbing themes. Anyway, this song is probably my favorite of the bunch. Art Garfunkel really does have an incredible voice. I feel like he was the one most responsible for the harmonies for Simon and Garfunkel, the way the voicing is laid out sounds very close to the duo's style, which makes sense.

Apparently, the author of the original Watership Down book hated the song, but he appears to be in the minority, because it was the biggest selling single in Britain in 1979.

All in all, I give this album a fair rating. Nothing that totally changed my life, but nevertheless one that helps me be a more well-rounded music appreciator.