Record basics

• Album name: Fumble
• Group name: Fumble
• Year: 1972
• Number of discs: one
• Label: Capitol Records
• Collection: Selman
• Distinguishing characteristics:
  • Hole punched through top right of album
  • Scratched into side one of LP: ST – 1 – 11125 – F2
  • Scratched into side tow of LP: ST – 2 – 11125 – F2
• Buy it on Ebay: $9.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard of “Fumble” and, like Full Moon yesterday, it’s not entirely clear who or what Fumble is, or whether Fumble is the name of the record.

What I expected

Judging by the names of the songs and the album art, this appears to be covers of oldies. I’m particularly drawn to Hello Mary Lou, which has come up twice before in my reviews: on New Riders of the Purple Sage’s Powerglide and Home, Home on the Road.

What it was actually like

In general, these songs were all extremely faithful to the original versions (or popular versions), basically reproducing those sounds but updating them to be richer, though also more produced and sometimes flatter.

Their Hello Mary Lou was great, but undeniably the NRPS version is still the best.

The two Elvis Presley songs, One Night and (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear, stood out because it’s not easy to do an impression of Elvis’s very distinct vocal style, and it’s not something that I hear very often, and I also don’t think it came out particularly well. The latter was also a bit slow for my taste.

Nut Rocker was one that I definitely had never heard before, basically a rock version of the theme to the Nutcracker ballet, which was pretty weird, but not bad at all.

Let It Rock was a Chuck Berry song, sometimes called Rockin’ on the Railroad, that a lot of groups have covered. This version was solid and I liked the guitar solo, but why would anyone want to try it when it’s already this good?

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, the Neil Sedaka song, was satisfactory, but the original was fantastic, and I was so relieved that this was not a cover of his vomit-inducing 1970s version. The other Sedaka song, Oh Carol, was good, but didn’t stand out.

I thought that The Girl Can’t Help It was quite good, sounding at times like an early Beatles song, and reminding me again how great rock was as dance music.

Rave On, the Buddy Holly song, did not have anything like his energy, but it was a totally fine and serviceable cover.

The one that I did not much enjoy was Ebony Eyes. I was not familiar with the original and the cover was prety slow.

Grade

4/5: would listen again