Kiss You All Over The Climax Blues Band's "Couldn't Get It Right" on quaaludes. I can picture the ferns in the singles bar as Disco Danny makes his move on his Farrah-haired conquest. Doesn't mean it's a bad song, though. (song titles copy pasted from Grant ... thanks Grant) AN EVERLASTING LOVE –•– Andy Gibb Barry still crankin' them out. I like this better than Shadow Dancing. GOT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE –•– Earth, Wind and Fire OH! DARLING –•– Robin Gibb The Earth Wind and Fire cover is the winner here. The Robin Gibb cover doesn't suck. But, who needs it? FOOL (If You Think It’s Over) –•– Chris Rea Great song. I'm going on memory here, but isn't this one of the first Top 40 songs with a drum machine? Maybe I'm imagining it has a drum machine? The Top 10 song "Why Can't We Stay Together" from 1972 had a drum machine. Prehistoric drum machine. WHENEVER I CALL YOU “FRIEND” –•– Kenny Loggins The only thing I ever really liked from Kenny Loggins is "Danny's Song". Why wasn't that a big hit? I can swear I heard it all over Top 40, but it never even made the Top 40. I check these things. Stevie Nicks is the best thing about this snoozer. MAGNET AND STEEL –•– Walter Egan Great pop song. Thanks again, Stevie. This guy went nowhere fast. RIGHT DOWN THE LINE –•– Gerry Rafferty A little dull, and certainly no Baker Street, but Gerry Rafferty has a very comfortable sound, for lack of a better word. SHE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN –•– Billy Joel That's nice, Billy, did you have to write such an incredibly boring song about it? JOSIE –•– Steely Dan Chews up all these other songs and spits them out. Steely Dan was one of the best things going in 70s Top 40. LOVE WILL FIND A WAY –•– Pablo Cruise How many times can you sing "Love Will Find A Way" before someone sinks your yacht? Then again it has a nice summer feel, so I'm torn here HOW MUCH I FEEL –•– Ambrosia I love this. This guy has a better voice than a lot of soul singers. And when he sings "Sometimes when we make love, I still see your face" you know he's really feeling it and the song is kicked up a level. Easily the best yacht rock singer. SWEET LIFE –•– Paul Davis I Go Crazy was better. The lyrics are feel good and heartfelt, though. So that's worth something. I LOVE THE NIGHTLIFE (Disco ‘Round) –•– Alicia Bridges "Act-shawn" I'm too busy laughing when she sings that to judge the song. Seriously overplayed on the radio at the time. Disco was getting too in your face on Top 40, which is why there was a backlash. DANCE (Disco Heat) –•– Sylvester What the hell is this? Don't care. TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE –•– Eddie Money Excellent. The guitar player is underrated. DOUBLE VISION –•– Foreigner Foreigner is also underrated. And the singer is one of the best in rock. This was the sound of late 70s rock, for better or worse. STRAIGHT ON –•– Heart Heart gets a little funky. I like it. Back when Ann was the hotter sister. Prisoner (Love Theme From The Eyes Of Laura Mars) - Barbra Streisand I can't stand Striesand. The grandmother of all those technically perfect but overly mannered soul-less diva singers like Celine Dion and Whitney Houston that will clog up the Top 40 in the late 80s and 9os.
I think you had to be there to understand how big of a bomb this turkey was. Coming off the huge film/record success of “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease;” it was a forgone conclusion that Sgt. Pepper was going to be big. The record stores had huge displays set up for the LP - larger than anything I had ever seen before. The radio DJs promoted it to death - I distinctly remember one popular DJ confidently predicting that would be the biggest selling LP of all time. A few months later, you could fine those same albums in the discount bins.
Didn’t know he passed, but read his bio. I thought he was a very good singer and had good stage presence; I wish he would have experienced more success. They were more or less a one hit wonder band, though experienced more stable success for a pretty short time in country music after he left. It sounds like a band that was in frequent turmoil. Sorry he’s gone.
Disco Clowns? Another mis informed forum member, just like most of the public. How many times do we need to repeat that the Bee Gees was never a disco band, and that they were around from the 60’s to the early 2000’s? Their catalogue contains very few “disco” songs, and I wouldn’t even characterize a couple of those as such. Am glad to see how much you like Fool. It’s one of my favorite all time songs, and I have been a lifelong Chris Rea fan because of it. What I don’t get is Chris HATES it, and he’s all but erased it from his catalogue. He rerecorded it and though it’s fine, it has lost that “gorgeous” vibe you and I clearly enjoy from the original. Gus Dudgeon produced it; it sure sounds like they had a major falling out while recording the album! If you are a fan, they have a two album set of his greatest hits on vinyl that was just released, and his Road To Hell album (especially the title track) are outstanding. My first real girlfriend broke up with me when Fool was out, and that is the song that I identify with this real life tragedy...lol. And the irony is Boogie Oogie Oogie was her favorite song. Many memories attached to songs from that summer!
Oh man, is this another song that I never listened to close enough to “get”? I never heard either of those things...guess I’m playing the album today...which I don’t mind doing! I can’t believe how many songs from that era I loved, but had no idea what it was about at the time (Afternoon Delight, etc). I must have been one of the most ignorant 16 year old’s around back then! MIKE CURB: okay guys, I saw his name a lot on songs I liked. Yes, they are pretty much all “cheesy” songs but hey, I liked some of them. A lot of you hate this guy and I can’t imagine it’s because of music he was associated with. I went to his wiki page to find out why and didn’t really see anything “off” considering the industry. Why do so many people despise him....I really don’t know and am curious.
Regarding the drum machine comment from the Chris Rea song: Elton John’s producer Gus produced the album. I really doubt he would have used a drum machine, and it doesn’t sound like one to me. The whole album sounds very much like a live band, but I will check the liner notes as I’m curious myself. And, Chris is a very accomplished musician and can play multiple instruments. I can’t imagine he would have gone for that, but again, he hates the hit version and maybe that’s why, if that’s a fact. Interesting. Agree on the Robin Gibb comment. It’s one of the better tracks (geez, that isn’t exactly a compliment is it?). But it wasn’t needed. I think Danny’s Song was not a hit because Anne Murray covered it and it was a huge hit for her. I agree, it is one of his better songs and I didn’t like too much of his solo material, but some of it including this track was nice. How Much I Feel....it’s such a good song it’s hard to listen to! Pretty heart wrenching and you’re right....that guy could sing with feeling! I love the track, and some of their others as well. I Go Crazy was better, but I love all his hits! A special artist to me and as I think I’ve said before, I really can’t pinpoint why. What is Dance? A smokin’ hot single! But if you don’t like disco, I bet one would absolutely despise it! Not one of those Grant songs where you could question whether or not it’s disco! It has disco written all over it. I didn’t used to really like it, but I appreciate it now and it’s a pretty hot track with a ton of energy. Agree on Streisand...and she isn’t getting any better for me as I age! The opposite...I kinda liked her a few years back but her material is not aging well for me at all! Love the Guilty album but it doesn’t have all that much to do with her....Bee Gees could have used any good female vocalist and mined gold with those songs. Still, she did a great job and I don’t want to take that away from her. But I don’t need any other albums by her.
I paid my $14.99 for that album based on all the hype, and the gorgeous cover, the awesome display you mentioned, and the RSO label...and I was not a happy camper! That was a lot of money for me to spend, and what a turkey it was. Terrible! Yes, a massive bomb it was. And that almost by itself took down an entire record company! So, I guess we got ours in the end. Seriously, it was a sad day for me to see my favorite label disappear. I listened to it again a few years ago and it’s worse now, which you wouldn’t think would be possible.
Let's just say that he delved into a little politics in California, and didn't enamor himself to a few million people here.
Among record impresarii, who would you associate more with this: US Mike Curb, or UK Mickie Most (whose RAK label issued it "across the pond")? Most's reputation was a bit, ahem, different from Curb's. If you've seen the history of Most's RAK label, and the acts who recorded for it, and what they recorded . . .
Its sister label, Casablanca, didn't do all that better with the four solo albums put out by the members of KISS - which was a sign of what (bad) karma was to come for both labels' parent, PolyGram . . . the joke with all of the above was that they shipped platinum and returned double platinum. It was a miracle Robin Gibb's cover of "Oh! Darling" squeaked by the Top 20, but to me Aerosmith's "Come Together" carbon copy deserved to miss it. EWF's "Got To Get You Into My Life," as @Grant will tell you, was the soundtrack's only saving grace - and the only one to make Top 10 on both the R&B and pop charts. But I do have some memory of the hype regarding the soundtrack. It was why, as I noted several posts back, WYNY 97.1 was "all Beatles, all the time" for a few months.
As you're a frequenteer of UK Singles Chart #1 threads, which of the two labels (US Warner/Curb or UK RAK) was more appropriate for "Kiss You All Over" based on your observations or impressions?
Wasn't Kiss You All Over more of a Mike Chapman / Nicky Chinn sort of thing? Not sure how it ended up on Curb in the US but they were already on RAK in the UK for a few years before the Curb releases in the US. I don't think Curb had any issues with sexual content (plus he probably knew a hit when he heard one), he was more of an anti-hippie/drugs kinda guy.
Chapman and Chinn for years were connected with Most and RAK, so in that sense it figured Exile would be on that label in the UK.
I'll admit I like the EWF Got To Get You... quite a bit. Probably the only thing that was spurted from Sgt. Pepper that deserves to survive (although I always got a kick out of Alice Cooper doing Because).
You quoted me but I was quoting the person who actually made that comment. Remember, I was around in the 60s and remember their first hits. I have been reminding people for decades that the Bee Gees were never a disco band. He hates it??? Why?
Mike Curb's bent for cheesy music is about his being very socially conservative, somewhat of an anomaly in the record business in the late 60s and 70s. He was responsible for that awful "Burning Bridges" song by The Mike Curb Congregation. he was also responsible for "The Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr. You might say he was the Mitch Miller of the 70s. before his label was distributed by Warner Brothers, he ran MGM Records. But, since Curb did have that Exile song, and a whole lot of Bellamy Brothers risque hits, I guess at some point he realized that he had to make some money.
I've always had a soft spot for this song as well. Definitely the musical "bright spot" out of this album/project for me.
He was also a pretty heavy hitter in automobile racing, particularly NASCAR. He was Richard Petty's car owner for a while and I think he was a sponsor for Dale Earnhardt when he won one of his (then) Winston Cup Championships.
I well remember the noise made about Kiss each releasing a solo album. Even then, the kids in my class laughed about who would even bother to buy the Peter Criss one. Anyways, surprises of surprises, the only one who managed to score a hit from his album was Ace Frehley. Back in the New York Groove is a nifty little cover of a glam song by a British band called Hello. Since Ace is actually from New York City, I think he was right to claim it for himself and America! The song was released in September of 1978 and reached 13, while the album got to 26 and eventually went platinum by October. (I always thought his cool cover of ELO's Do Ya was also on this album, but apparently he had more than one solo album, and that one came out in 1989)
As a naive 17 year old I had absolutely no idea at all that that was what this song was about. Absolutely no idea. Wow.
You're right! Perfect! Maybe Climax Blues Band should have covered the song! No, thank sunspot52! I used to cringe whenever it came on the radio. I hadn't heard The Beatles version of it at that point, but I somehow knew it was a Beatles song. The other guys in the school band used to mock it by sloppily playing and singing it. It starts out with a Linn drum and switches over to real drums at the beginning of the first chorus. You heard it on the radio alright, but the hit single was by Canadian Anne Murray in late 1972 or early 1973. Agree. He had a minor followup single that wasn't bad. I just wish I could remember it. Again, I totally agree. I like another single where I think he got it right... Why are people associating that California rock sound with wealthy people and yachts? Just wait a few more weeks. But, I guess your perspective comes from if you liked disco or not. I liked it. I used to look at Sylvester and wonder what the hell it was. Me neither! I prefer the song before it "Hot Blooded", but I think it was a stroke of genius for Mick Jones to add saxophones to Foreigner songs. It's something that the Rolling Stones also did, and something Aerosmith would also do. To each their own, but you have to admit that this song is a little brasher than her previous singles. But, it is pretty much forgotten today.
In September of 1978, one of my all time favorite TV shows premiered, and since it was about top 40 radio and the hits of the time, I definitely think it's appropriate to mention it here. I'm talking about WKRP in Cincinnati. Apparently the creator of the show did his time at a small radio station, and many of the early stories and characters were based on people he actually knew and events that actually happened, more or less. The conceit is this: WKRP is a bottom of the barrel radio station playing music that was out of date thirty years previous. The general manager, Mr. Carlson, only has the job because his mother owns the station. Anyway, they hire a new program director named Andy Travis, who decides to change the format to rock and roll top forty. Craziness ensues! I think this show is brilliant, and I still find myself quoting it decades later (and not just the turkey line!). If you still find yourself suspicious about the Phone Cops, perhaps there's a little WKRP in you, too? One of my favorite early episodes featured the radio station sponsoring a concert by a new 'Hoodlum Rock' band called Scum of the Earth. Y'see, punks dress deplorably, unlike Hoodlum Rockers, who wear nice suits while they physically attack their audiences. Below: meet Scum! I think this episode is the origin of the oft repeated phrase 'that's our story and we're sticking to it'. Later, while Venus interviews them on the radio, one of Scum says he'd like to say hello to his mother. Venus asks, 'Oh? Your mother lives in Cincinnati?', to which he replies, 'Well, there's always a chance, isn't there?'
