A&M Acts Worst Songs/Singles/Albums

[Mr Bill]

Sort of the opposite of "One Hit Wonder" here... Instead of one act with one hit to their name, here we can explore big-name chart topping (to some degree) acts that had a song that someone in A&R thought would be 'da bomb' that actually turned out to be... "a BOMB."

To make it more palatable we should open this one to LPs as well as singles or specific songs.

--Mr Bill

 

[Steven J. Gross]

"Muskrat Love" from the Captain and Tennille. Even better, the much anticipated solo album from Roger Hodgeson of Supertramp.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Yeah but "Muskrat Love" was a hit. I think he's looking for songs that, if they were singles, were bombs.

My pick is:

The long version of "Do You Feel Like We Do" by Peter Frampton.

Might add more later when I think of them.

 

[Murray]

"Goofus" by the Carpenters. It's a fun album cut, but single material? Proof positive that Richard Carpenter had lost his ability to pick hits, or his mind, or both!

One of A&M's suckiest albums is Supertramp's "FAMOUS LAST WORDS", an incredibly disappointing follow-up to "Breakfast In America". Side two is totally unlistenable.

Murray

 

[Rudy]

Worst Carpenters song ever, for me, is "Man Smart, Woman Smarter." Richard should have found a way to use Belafonte's arrangement, not Robert Palmer's. The song as performed this way has NONE of the original meanings and double-entendres in it; Palmer's version is just bland, watered down and chaotic.

 

[W.B.]

Though this was on the Ode subsidiary, I'd have to rate Carole King's original "You've Got A Friend" on the "sucky" list. This is one case where, in the words of one humorist, something gets lost in the original (James Taylor's recording is the most definitive, I.M.H.O., thus it was just as well Ms. King's take wasn't issued on 45).

 

[Dave]

Eh, this is pretty much like the "Jumped The Shark" thread, but A&M Exec's were surely hopeful they had a "Barbra Streisand" when Robin Wilson made her 2nd LP, Ain't That Somethin'. Instead they were stuck with a 2nd Rate "Petula Clark".

Somethin' turned out to be "Nothin'", as it sounded rather hollow and unfinished and it was "left-over" from a Fifth Dimension-session, Bones Howe & Co. presided over, besides!

Dave

 

[Mr Bill]

A&M Exec's were surely hopeful they had a "Barbra Streisand" when Robin Wilson made her 2nd LP, Ain't That Somethin'. Instead they were stuck with a 2nd Rate "Petula Clark".

If A&M thought that of Ms Wilson, they surely didn't promote it as such. I don't think they promoted her second album at all, landing it in cut-out bins less than a couple years after its release (same fate befell Ochs' Rehearsals LP -- now the hardest to find in it's original vinyl form). I would strongly suspect her 2nd LP was likely released due to a contractual obligation on A&M's part...

One of A&M's suckiest albums is Supertramp's "FAMOUS LAST WORDS", an incredibly disappointing follow-up to "Breakfast In America". Side two is totally unlistenable.

I'll agree it isn't as strong as Breakfast and that side two is definitely the "underdog side," but it really wasn't that bad an album. "It's Raining Again" is still my favorite 'Tramp tune. (Was it wise to admit that? Oh well.)

--Mr Bill

 

[Rudy]

Actually, if you want bad Supertramp, check out the live "Paris" album. That thing was so overblown and rushed (listen to "Bloody Well Right", how it starts off fast then drags, d-r-a-g-s, d--r--a--g--s as the intro goes on. I only played it twice--that's all the torture I could take.

 

[jfiedler17]

I gotta agree with Mr. Bill - I don't think FAMOUS LAST WORDS is THAT bad an album. Even though there ARE some real clunkers on there ("Waiting So Long" and "Don't Leave Me Now" really test my patience), I don't think the problem is so much the material - even if only four of the songs are decent - as the production. I agree with Mr. Bill that "It's Raining Again" is actually a really good song (the follow-up single, "My Kind of Lady," isn't quite as good but I still like it), but it's hard to notice that through the horrendous engineering and production that plagues the whole album. That album just does not "breathe" at all. It sounds like it was recorded in a closet. And they went just a tad TOO production-crazy on "It's Raining Again" - there's so many different instrumental tracks going on in there, it all kinda gels into one blob and it's hard to pick each element of the track apart. It's still a dynamite SONG in my book, though, and it never fails to put me in a good mood. Just wish there were a cleaner-sounding and more "airy" mix out there!

 

[jfiedler17]

Actually, if you want bad Supertramp, check out the live "Paris" album. That thing was so overblown and rushed ...

I agree! I actually like the live version of "Dreamer" on there a little better than the studio version on CRIME OF THE CENTURY, but, aside from that, I think the album's a real mess ... you're right, "Bloody Well Right" is pretty awkward on that album ... I think the sequencing and track selection of the album/concert is pretty weird ... the thing I find the weirdest about the album is the extremely brief, awkwardly-ending version of "Two of Us" that sounds to me less like a rehearsed performance than Hodgson being asked to kill time during technical difficulties ... really kills any momentum that that side might of had going up to that point.

 

[PJ]

Supertramp's PARIS album is poor for a live release coming after their mega seller Breakfast .....Famous Last Words is fine ....just disappointing after the highlights of previous 3 albums

Peter

 

[Steven J. Gross]

Supertramp's PARIS album is poor for a live release coming after their mega seller Breakfast .....Famous Last Words is fine ....just disappointing after the highlights of previous 3 albums

Peter

It (Paris) virtually ended their career! Terrible, sloppy album, surprising coming from A&M.

 

[Dave]

I thought those Alessi Brothers albums were sheer disappointments! The first LP sported some liner notes about Billy & Bobby, formerly of the Long Island, New York group, Barnaby Bye.

The debut, Alessi, produced and engineered by Bones Howe, had very ironically THIN production. Some songs like the Disco-ey "Joanna" and breezy, strummed acoustic guitar-led "Oh, Lori" are OK, but rest of the proceedings like the limp rock of "You Can't Hold Back" and the synthesizer drenched "Seabird" just sound too damp & turgid to really fly. :|

All For A Reason, the follow-up, sounds too bloated and turgid. It stretched out to something ALMOST worthwhile, on Side 1--which seems easy to get through. (Though, I gotta wonder about some of their ideas: "London" & "Air Cushion") But Side 2 is another snoozy affair.

Driftin', their third, sports appearances from Jim Seals & Dash Crofts of Seals & Crofts and Paul Stanley of KISS, but I found it totally unlistenable, except for an appearance by Richie Havens on one track. Just something else with little to show for its "overblown, 'all over the place' production"! Just found it to be real agony to listen to!

Their last LP on A&M, Words & Music also seems very overproduced. The output finds the two reduced to doing so-so covers of "Gimme Some Lovin'" (which NEEDS that SOULFUL quality of the original--not really meant to be a "rock song" some have made it) and "Hot Fun In The Summertime" (which at least has a more cheerful, jaunty quality than the original), when they interpret their own stuff better. A con-currently released, non-LP single, "Go All Night" was better than ANYTHING they did that ever appeared on 12" of vinyl!

No wonder The Alessi's escaped to Warner Brothers under Quincy Jones' W.B. Label-based Qwest Records and his more friendly and amiable production and guidance! The result, Long Time Friends was an improvement, but slight.

A&M Records Just Didn't Seem To Know What To Do With Them!

Dave

 

[Dave]

Hoyt Axton's "Pet Parade", on his Life Machine album, I thought was one of his worst songs.

Yeah, I didn't even COUNT that one when I mentioned that Flo & Eddie sang back-up on his much better "Telephone Booth", also on that album and THAT made it to his Road Songs compilation.

But Flo & Eddie do sing on the rather flesh-eatingly creepy "Pet Parade", which fits in fairly well with the rest of the LP, but it's just one of the "clinkers" the late-Hoyt Axton was noted for in his otherwise good works.

Dave

 

[Mr Bill]

I disagree about Alessi. The first album was, IMHO, very good. It was the follow-ups that to me went nowhere.

I bought their first one after I confused them with the Addrissi Brothers. I'm sure I'm not the only one who confused these two similar sounding and similar-named A-brother bands -- a fact that surely contributed to both acts never achieving the hit status they both (at one time anyway) deserved. They diluted each other's sales potential in other words.

--Mr B

 

[Rudy]

Supertramp's PARIS album is poor for a live release coming after their mega seller Breakfast .....

That is a lot of the problem with Paris: it was an attempt to cash in on Breakfast. "Ain't Nobody But Me" is another bad example of how bad a train wreck this 2-LP set was--rushed and nearly incoherent. I think I read their personal differences came to a head somewhere around this time also.

This was a typical thing for a record company to do though--if a band had a mega-successful album, they'd rush out a live album the following year, featuring rushed versions of all of their current hits along with the old ones. In fact, it was albums like these that have essentially turned me off to ALL live albums. There are very few live recordings I even like anymore.

Surprisingly, Joe Jackson's live dates are always good ones, as he isn't interested in recreating the album. Instead, he'll add a new twist to his older songs, or sometimes reinvent them.

 

[jfiedler17]

Surprisingly, Joe Jackson's live dates are always good ones, as he isn't interested in recreating the album. Instead, he'll add a new twist to his older songs, or sometimes reinvent them.

Funny you mention Joe Jackson, 'cause I think his BIG WORLD is probably the most brilliant idea anybody's ever come up with for a live album - all entirely new material, and you ask the audience to remain silent until the tape recorder's turned off so you get that pure "live" sound without audience applause muddying up the sound. Maybe not the most CONSISTENT of his albums material-wise, but what a brilliant concept!

(Paris) virtually ended [Supertramp's] career! Terrible, sloppy album, surprising coming from A&M.

As poorly put together as PARIS was, I can think of an even SLOPPIER album to come out of A&M: The Human League's HYSTERIA. Good gosh, is that album a train wreck! A couple of the songs, if not fantastically EXECUTED, are still pretty good - if nothing else, "Louise" and "Life on Your Own" have been reason enough for me to hold on to the album - but this has seriously got to be one of the all-time worst-produced albums I've ever heard. The guitar parts on there (especially on "The Sign") are enough to make me cringe. And the whole album is like one long game of "spot the flubbed notes." "The Sign" (which, as promising as it starts, morphs into one of the most off-key records I've ever heard) and "Don't You Know I Want You" have so many flubbed notes in them, they're literally painful to listen to. How quality control could have let this one slip through without making the band clean it up is beyond me.

 

[Dave]

I thought one of Rita Coolidge's last albums, Love me Again was a bore! Satisfied, which came before it and Heartbreak Radio, which came after it, weren't much better. :|

And Natural Act by Rita Coolidge with Kris Kristofferson, before their divorce, was REALLY execrable! That's one album I couldn't get through more than one or two songs on.

Get their earlier, Full Moon, instead!!

Dave

 

[Mike]

Dave, reading these posts has been a real vocaulary builder for me. I had to grab the dictionary for "Execrable". If anyone else is as limited in the word department as I am, it means "Inferior, bad".

 

[Mike]

After re-reading my last post, I see that not only am I weak in the word deparment, my spelling stinks too. I meant "Vocabulary" not "Vocaulary". There, I've turned myself in before the grammar police got me. Close call!

 

[Mr Bill]

I had to grab the dictionary for "Execrable". If anyone else is as limited in the word department as I am, it means "Inferior, bad".

And it's easy, then, to see how the word "excrement" is so similar...

--Mr Bill
trying like hell to recall the word for "the study of words"... Entomology? No, that's an animal thing... Etymology! Yeah! That's it!