Record basics

Album name: Of Love and War
Artist name: Randy Burns
Year: 1966
Number of discs: one
Label: ESP-Disk
Collection: Brenner / Gessner
Who owned it: my father
Buy it on Amazon: $45.95

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t think that I’ve ever listened to this Randy Burns record, but I have previously reviewed two of his:

Song For An Uncertain Lady (1970): 3/5
Randy Burns and the Sky Dog Band (1971): 3/5

What I expected

Folk.

What it was actually like

This was folk music at its very mid 1960s essence, not unlike Dylan’s music of a couple of years earlier, but Burns was certainly a better singer than Dylan.

There was not a lot of complexity or originality to his songs, though: when one line ended with the word “sorrow,” for example, it was not exactly a challenge to predict that the next line would end with “tomorrow.”

Parts of this record definitely reminded me of this classic scene from Animal House (and I also reviewed the Animal House soundtrack).

The songs were all extremely consistent in style, and very minimal, with guitars and vocals, but for some reason the producers put all the vocal track into one channel and split the guitar track between both channels, so it kind of sounded like Burns was singing directly into my right ear, and I had to move all the way to the left side of my living room to listen without going insane.

If I had to pick a favorite, I would go with Sour Grapes, while Thoughts of Spring was slower than most of the other songs, and Coming of the Roads and Mr. War were the most boring.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Of Love and War by Randy Burns (Vinyl record album review)