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The Gambler by Kenny Rogers (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Gambler
  • Artist name: Kenny Rogers
  • Year: 1978
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: United Artists
  • Collection: Essex
  • Buy it on Amazon: $19.99

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve always considered The Gambler to be a very silly song, and have long appreciated the send-up it got in The Americans[1], but don’t know much else of Kenny Rogers’ ouvre. His atrocious song on the Urban Cowboy soundtrack is not on this record.

What I expected

Country and country rock.

What it was actually like

This was pretty bad.

A bunch of the songs were just forgettable easy listening garbage: I Wish That I Could Hurt That Way Again, The King of Oak Street, She Believes in Me and Sleep Tight, Goodnight Man.

A Little More Like Me (The Crucifixion) and San Francisco Mabel Joy were more soft rock, and relatively ok.

One thing I was not expecting on this record was two disco songs, The Hoodooin’ of Miss Fannie Deberry and Morgana Jones. And I get that it was 1978, so everyone had to be experimenting with disco, but if you make one disco song and it’s hopelessly cringe, why would you then proceed to make another one?

Tennessee Bottle was the record’s most interesting and unusual song, strongly rock and country while also incorporating a noticeable funk sound. Making Music for Money was also more of a rock song, slightly Oompa Loompa, but much more upbeat and fun.

The title track The Gambler was also Oompa Loompa (far more than I remembered), but actually was a good song – just totally different from all the others. I know that Rogers wasn’t technically a one hit wonder, but that is how I’ll always think of him!

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

References

References
↑1 The Deal (season two, episode five), when Philip and Elizabeth had a hostage Mossad guy and Philip teased him for being into country music.

Do I Move You by Merl Saunders (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Do I Move You
  • Artist name: Merl Saunders
  • Year: 1979
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Crystal Clear Records
  • Collection: Friedman
  • Distinguishing characteristics: clipped top right corner
  • Buy it on Amazon: $20.00

Do I Move You by Merl Saunders

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I am not familiar with Merl Saunders, who is almost certainly not the same person as Merle Haggard or Merle Travis, and he probably is not even the woman on the album cover, either.

What I expected

From reading the back of the album, I learned two important things. The first was that Merl Saunders enjoyed a long and extensive collaboration and association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. The second was, “The music on this first direct-to-disc album […] combines jazz and R&B elements with a fiery touch of today’s disco-rock sound.” Yikes.

What it was actually like

This record was a disco abomination.

The worst part was the sound of someone blowing a whistle on Melons In Season, and the second worst part was the saxophone solo on that same song.

Do I Move You was a Nina Simone cover and had much more of a blues sound than any of the other songs. It was the best on the record by far, but still nowhere near as good as the original.

Grade

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

Barry Manilow II (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Barry Manilow II
  • Artist name: Barry Manilow
  • Year: 1974
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Bell Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: Neither of my parents will ever admit to having owned this record, but one of them did own it.
  • Buy it on Amazon: $7.89

Barry Manilow II

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve definitely heard of Barry Manilow before, but I mainly know him as the punchline to a joke, rather than as an actual musician. The joke is that he mostly made horrible elevator music.

What I expected

Based on Barry Manilow’s reputation, I guess I expect something like the worst parts of Elton John and Billy Joel.

What it was actually like

Was this the worst record I’ve heard in the entire ten months that I’ve spent working on this project so far? No, probably not, but that does not mean that it wasn’t terrible – it was – or that it didn’t have some of the worst songs – it did.

One of the very worst songs was The Two of Us, and I was prepared to write the same thing about Home Again, though it did liven up a little bit towards the end. What was so bad about them? Just their extreme blandness and boringness. It was easy listening taken to such an extreme degree that one actually needed to expend effort to listen to it, totally defeating the purpose.

Most of the rest of the record was in that same style, though perhaps not quite as awful. Early Morning Strangers was a good example of elevator music with some pretty bad saxophone, that I was sure I must have heard on the radio in the lobby of a dentist’s office in 1992.

I actually recognized Mandy (because I used to know a Mandy[1]).

Something’s Comin’ Up was still elevator music, but also had a bit of funk, and was probably the most lively song on the record, which admittedly was not a great distinction. Another lively song was Avenue C, a jazzy show tune that sounded really out of place.

And then there were two disco songs, I Want To Be Somebody’s Baby and It’s a Miracle, but I have no idea what they were doing on Barry Manilow II. I guess around that time, disco was just a thing that a lot of musicians felt they had to explore.

Grade

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

References

References
↑1 Mandy, if you’re reading this – hi!

Whistling Down the Wire by Crosby & Nash (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Whistling Down the Wire
  • Group name: Crosby & Nash
  • Year: 1976
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: ABC Records
  • Collection: Selman
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • Scratched into side one of LP: ABCD-956-A 1
    • Scratched into side two of LP: ABCD-956-B 6
  • Buy it on Amazon: $49.99

Whistling Down the Wire by Crosby & Nash

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, but it will be my second Crosby & Nash record, and my eleventh from the Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young music collective. The previous ten were:

What I expected

I did not like Wind on the Water very much, and Whistling Down the Wire is from just a year later, so I’m not entirely optimistic, but Nash looks far healthier on this album cover than the other one, so maybe that had an effect on his music.

What it was actually like

I guess I should have expected two things from a 1976 record: disco and reggae. Unfortunately, I got both[1].

The disco song was Spotlight, which was really not the worst of its genre – it was more rock than many disco songs – but was still bad, with a bizarrely misplaced harmonica. The reggae song was J.B.’s Blues, one of the worst reggae songs ever.

The two songs with the most “CSN” style folk rock sound were Taken at All and Out of the Darkness.

Foolish Man was a blues song, but extremely slow, and another extremely slow song was Mutiny, which was rock and had multiple electric guitar solos.

Broken Bird, Time After Time and Marguerita were pretty boring soft rock.

Dancer was a rock instrumental, except for some moaning sounds that were pretty jarring, and it mostly sounded as if they were just messing around on their guitars and practicing how to harmonize their voices.

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

References

References
↑1 I love reggae, but I don’t love how all these rock bands in the mid to late 1970s suddenly had to include exactly one reggae song on a record. So weird!

Hits! by Boz Scaggs (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Hits!
  • Artist name: Boz Scaggs
  • Year: 1980
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Selman
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • Scratched into side one of LP: (H-TR) PAL-36841 G2B G1
    • Scratched into side two of LP: G1 PBL-36841 G2A
  • Buy it on Amazon: $5.00

Hits! by Boz Scaggs

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no idea who Boz Scaggs is, but I’m at least 70% certain that he’s not Ricky Skaggs.

What I expected

I don’t know! His outfit looks a bit new wave, but 1980 would be quite early for that.

What it was actually like

So it turns out that I actually had heard of Boz Scaggs before today, when I reviewed the Urban Cowboy soundtrack a couple of months ago. Here’s part of what I wrote then:

I thought that Love the World Away by Kenny Rogers, an easy listening song, would certainly be the worst on the record, but that was until I heard Look What You’ve Done to Me by Boz Scaggs. That was in fact easily the record’s worst song and one of the worst I’ve ever heard. “Easy listening” would not even begin to describe it, but “soporific” does, and if I had been listening on a digital format, there’s a 100% chance that I would have skipped this song after 30 seconds or so.

Sure enough, Look What You’ve Done to Me was also included on Hits!, and it was every bit as terrible today as it was then (and I find it perplexing that this song could ever have been considered good enough to go on a movie soundtrack, let alone a “hits” record; maybe they meant hits on the back of the head). It was not, however, the worst song on this record. That was You Can Have Me Anytime, which was in a similar style and even more awful. And We’re All Alone was also similarly bad.

Miss Sun and Lowdown were both disco, though the latter was more jazzy than the former.

Dinah Flo and You Make It So Hard (to Say No) were both soul, and the latter was ok, except for the horns.

Jojo was easy listening with an offensively bad saxophone solo.

Breakdown Dead Ahead was rock, with a guitar solo.

Lido Shuffle was blues rock, with some kind of synthesizer making techno at the end.

I strongly disliked this record and Boz Scaggs, but here’s some good news: he’s no Ricky Skaggs!

Grade

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