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Entrance by Edgar Winter (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Entrance
  • Artist name: Edgar Winter
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Epic Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $25.39

Entrance by Edgar Winter

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never heard of Edgar Winter or this record.

What I expected

Rock.

What it was actually like

This was pretty bad, and after listening to the first side, I almost did not flip it over to listen to the reverse. I was glad that I did, though, because the best song on the record by far was an excellent cover of the blues standard Tobacco Road (here’s another by The Animals).

A bunch of these songs had the tendency to run together, and it was seldom clear when one ended and another began. The title track Entrance, for example, was not easily distinguishable from Where Have You Gone, and I hated both of them. I would call the musical style progressive rock, but the sound was really weird and disjointed, and kept changing every 15 seconds or so, as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to make a rock song or a show tune. Actually I would have a hard time calling it a “song” at all.

Rise to Fall, which was more jazz fusion and ran into Fire and Ice, was a bit better, sounding all right for most of it, but I strongly disliked the first saxophone part, which was totally out of place. When the saxophone came back later, it was good, and had more of a jazz sound.

Hung Up, Back in the Blues and Re-Entrance all also ran together, though the first was more of a progressive rock and jazz fusion sound, while the second was more of a blues sound with harmonica, and the third was elevator music.

Back on the second side, Jimmy’s Gospel had a saxophone part that sounded like it belonged on a Barry Manilow record.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through

Stephen Stills (1970) (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Stephen Stills
  • Artist name: Stephen Stills
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Atlantic Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: My parents each had a copy of this record. My father’s copy had a “G” written on the upper left corner of the album, and my mother’s copy had “Brenner” written on the back of the album and on the LP.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $12.00

Stephen Stills (1970)

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t have any particular memory of listening to this record, though I might have heard it at some point. I do recognize one song by name, Love the One You’re With, and I’ve reviewed a wide variety of Stephen Stills’ work:

What I expected

This is Stephen Stills’ first solo record. I’ve already listened to his second, and thought that it was not good.

What it was actually like

This was nowhere near as bad as Stills’ second solo record, so that was a relief.

Love the One You’re With is a truly great pop song – fun and catchy, rich and complex, memorable, rhythmic and melodic, and I even didn’t mind the soul style backing vocals. The steel drums were maybe the only part of it that I would have cut.

For whatever reason that I was unable to determine, he then took those soul style backing vocals and made an entire song around them, Church (Part of Someone), which was terrible (and also too slow). Sit Yourself Down was similar, but not as bad.

To a Flame was easy listening, and also quite bad. I had a difficult time picking the worst song between that one and Cherokee, which was a weird grab bag of lots of different sounds, with an atrocious horns part, but decided that the latter was the worst because of its abysmal and nauseating saxophone solo.

The most pleasant surprise on the record was two songs at the end of the first side, Old Times Good Times, a great rock song with pretty strong wailing guitar, and Go Back Home, an excellent blues rock song. I was really impressed with Stills when I heard how great those two songs were, and then I checked the back of the album to read the credits… and who was it that played the guitar on those songs? Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. So, yeah.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Leftover Wine by Melanie (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Leftover Wine
  • Artist name: Melanie
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Buddah Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: RMP / ΤΕΦ is written on the album sleeve[1]
  • Buy it on Amazon: $39.97

Leftover Wine by Melanie

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but I’ve previously reviewed two others by Melanie:

What I expected

The album cover says, “Recorded live at Margie’s birthday party.” I don’t know who Margie was (or is), but I guess that means it will be Melanie doing folk rock in concert.

What it was actually like

Based on the song Happy Birthday, it seems that Margie’s name is pronounced with a hard G, which is clearly psychopathic. Also, I hope Margie was not upset with this performance, since most of the songs seemed pretty serious for a birthday party: the style was quite spare, with just guitar and voice.

Anyway, Melanie’s voice still reminded me of Joanna Newsom’s, but at other times it really soared, like in The Saddest Thing and the title track Leftover Wine. I also did not know until listening to Leftover Wine that Melanie’s speaking voice had a rather strong Queens accent!

When reviewing Affectionately Melanie I wrote:

Beautiful People is the song that Melanie got famous for performing at Woodstock, and I thought it was fine, but I’m not such a fan of it.

It was still fine, as was Uptown Down, also from that record.

Her line in Animal Crackers about eating the animal crackers so that children would not starve in Europe was so fascinating to me because, when I was growing up, it was the children in Africa who could be protected from starvation only if I finished my meal, and I knew it had been the children in either China or India, or both, at other times (Melanie was born in 1947, so when she was growing up, starvation in Europe was still a very real threat).

Animal Crackers also had a cute Alice’s Restaurant shoutout, and I took note because I had already noted that she and Arlo Guthrie had both performed at Woodstock.

I Don’t Eat Animals was the most obnoxious song. Even 50 years ago (and even 100 years ago), those people had that reputation.

The song Psychotherapy was definitely the weirdest song on the record by far, and one of the weirder songs out of the 306 records that I’ve reviewed to date. It was an ode to Freud, but sung to the melody of Battle Hymn of the Republic (which itself is sung to the melody of John Brown’s Body), some of the creepiest and most disturbing music ever to become popular, and it immediately brought me back to that morning in March 2019 when I visited the largest electronics store in the world, Yodobashi in Akihabara, Tokyo, and realized that
its theme song was sung to the very same melody (in that context, I described it as “both disorienting and highly charming”).

The final song Peace Will Come (According to Plan) was a studio recording with vocal effects, percussion and a bit of organ, and was the most out of place with the whole rest of the record.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 ΤΕΦ was my father’s college fraternity (his copy of Beggars Banquet is also marked with the ΤΕΦ symbol) and “RMP” means that the album belonged to Richard Pearlstein.

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Ladies of the Canyon
  • Artist name: Joni Mitchell
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Reprise Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: probably my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $60.00

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never listened to this Joni Mitchell record, but I do recognize some of the songs on it. It will be the fourth by Mitchell that I have reviewed, and the other three were:

What I expected

Folk.

What it was actually like

Joni Mitchell still has a very nice voice, and I still find her music mostly ok, but not great.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the two songs on this record that I enjoyed the most were her two most famous songs, that were also relatively different from most of the others, and which were also the two most radio-friendly. Big Yellow Taxi was the best, and The Circle Game was the only song with another vocalist, and therefore the only one with any vocal harmony, which I thought elevated it substantially.

Another of her famous songs is Woodstock, which I thought was pretty boring. When I reviewed Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, I wrote:

I’ve never really gotten the success of Woodstock. I’d characterize it as an ok-to-good-enough song, but for whatever reason it’s become one of the anthems of its era.

Blue Boy was also boring in that way.

Willy, on the other hand, reminded me a lot of Songs to Aging Children Come, which I mentioned when reviewing Clouds.

Several of the songs on this record had a really excessive use of piano, which I felt detracted from them a lot, perhaps because I’ve always thought of Mitchell as a folk singer and because I would have expected a folk singer to use an acoustic guitar and not much else. Examples included The Arrangement, Rainy Night House and For Free, which also might have featured an oboe, but I could not be sure.

The Priest had no piano, but did not have much of a melody, either. I thought it was maybe a little better than those few.

The two songs that I disliked the most were Morning Morgantown, which had some weirdly atonal parts, and Conversation, which was more folk rock than the other songs and turned into more of a rock song as its tempo increased, but which had both flute and saxophone that ruined it.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Second Thoughts by McKendree Spring (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Second Thoughts
  • Group name: McKendree Spring
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Decca Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written inside album cover, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $2.16

Second Thoughts by McKendree Spring

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I do not think that I’ve ever heard of McKendree Spring or this record.

What I expected

Folk rock?

What it was actually like

This record had such a fascinating and unusual sound – folk rock, but also country, and a totally cool use of synthesizers, especially for its era.

McKendree Spring’s cover of Fire and Rain was at least as good as James Taylor’s original and I knew right away that this would sound different when I heard it seamlessly blending a country fiddle with rock style guitar, and some kind of synthesizer, without sounding “techno” at all.

Several of the songs sounded less like 1970 and more like ~2010, such as Friends Die Easy, a country rock song that started off with the synthesizer and had a sort of menacing sound with strong guitar, and Because It’s Time, a rock song that was quite lively, with great rhythm guitar.

Another modern sounding song was For What Was Gained, which started weak and had a folk rock sound, but quickly gained steam, and had some pretty good harmonica, before getting slow again at the end with the fiddle.

‘Lani also changed its sound, starting as a kind of Oompa Loompa country song, which is not something that I hear very often, with multiple fiddles, and then turned into a folk song with synthesizer backing. It definitely sounded weird, but was not bad at all[1].

Got No Place To Fall was a country rock song with a pretty strong country sound, that also had a shift in the fiddle and vocal styles, with a great guitar solo that led to a great fiddle solo.

Oh Now My Friend was folk rock, but with a whining electric guitar, and Susie, Susie was folk style, with country fiddle.

Cairo Hotel sounded most unlike the other songs and was the only one that I did not really like. The percussion was doing a lot, but the vocal style was very simple and boring.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

References

References
↑1 Also, “Lani” is not pronounced like “rainy.” It is supposed to rhyme with “Bonnie.”