I'm spinning Daryl Hall, Soul Alone. A great but overlooked album.
Is that his second solo album?
It's actually his third. Sacred Songs was recorded in 1977 but RCA fumbled on it and didn't feel it was commercially viable. It sat until 1980 and didn't do much. It was a collaboration with Robert Fripp (of King Crimson) who produced and played guitar.
3 Hearts in The Happy Ending Machine was the second, and Soul Alone the third. "Borderline" from Soul Alone actually got airplay on some local contemporary jazz stations (before they really got ram-rodded into $mooth Jazz). Reminiscent of Hall & Oates but having a more funky vibe to it.
I'm up to Presence on Led Zep right now.![]()
I've sort of rediscovered a few recent albums the same way. I only just found out about Purple Rain a few weeks ago, when it was announced that three of Prince's earlier albums were getting the 180g treatment.
One of my other rediscovered finds as of late (which I have to thank our pal Tony Currie for): the John Gregory Orchestra, doing cop show themes. I had a cassette in the late 70s on Mercury. Naturally it never sounded all that hot, especially after it got near a magnet and faded in and out as it played. We'd talked about it here and Tony hooked me up with a needle drop. The album was slightly different--it omitted one track (the Theme From S.W.A.T.), but added three more that I believe were British detective shows. The British album was called The Detectives.
Out of curiosity one day, I hit Amazon and found that 13 of the 14 songs from the needle drop were on a CD called Six Million Dollar TV Themes, which contains a total of 28 tracks. All of the tracks from my original cassette are on the CD, two of the three extras from the British album are on there (it omits "Special Branch"), and it collects tracks from another album or two Gregory recorded o'er there 'cross the pond. It came in my order with the two LPs above.
I found out via the booklet that Gregory released singles under the name Chaquito, as some of the earlier tracks had a Latin theme to them and was catering to that market. It's neat to here them again, finally in a clean version. The recording quality on the tracks I remember isn't the greatest (it's compressed, has a lot of reverb...but it works in its own cheesy 70s way), but some of the earlier tracks like "Mission: Impossible" have some serious clout to them--plenty of percussion, bass that could launch woofers, you name it!
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Robert Plant, Pictures At Eleven