The Great Relisteninging 6: Altered Images to so much America
Ha! I bet you thought I’d dropped this project, that it’s too ambitious or something. But no, still listening. It’s just summer, and I had people to see, family to visit. In the meantime, I listened to a record or several.
First up: Altered Images, Happy Birthday. This album, their debut, is just as chirpy ‘80s synth-pop as I remembered. It was fun. Oddly enough, my husband and I disagreed about who actually brought this album to the relationship, since I would have sworn it was me and he thinks it was him. Either way, we win now.
Amazulu, Montego Bay. I know I said I could skip 12” singles or dance mixes—which is all I have of this band—if I wanted to, but in this case, I didn’t want to. I flat-out love the song Montego Bay and will always want to hear it. Amazulu’s version is fun and danceable and didn’t disappoint, but when I first put it on I forgot to switch to 45 RPM and, playing for a minute at 33 1/3 I have to say, it sounded pretty cool as a spiritual, too.
Ambrosia, self-titled. OK, look. I didn’t love this, their debut album. This was their debut album and it had a charting single that caught some airplay and a song inspired by Kurt Vonnegut but it didn’t have anything that came close to “Biggest Part of Me” or “How Much I Feel”. They had a kind of soft-edged, highly skilled bombast, a mellowed out and toned down Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, without the ego. This album was mixed by Alan Parsons, and it feels and sounds a lot like it was Alan Parson’s beta project, before he moved on to the final one.
And finally, America. I have never listened to so much America, back to back to back, in my life.
This album cover kills me.
I’m not going to delve into the singularities of each album—there are 6 in my collection—but I will say it’s interesting listening to them in chronological order. They go from “clearly influenced by CSNY” to “clearly wanting to be The Beatles”, with a bit of confusion in between. Each of the albums (but for one, we will get to that) had songs I knew and appreciated and had heard a million times on the radio, so they were fun to revisit. When we get to Holiday (1974), George Martin stepped in to produce and that’s when they had their massive Beatles shift. He stayed with them through the next few albums, including Hideaway (1976), which is easily one of the worst—WORST—albums I’ve listened to in a long time. It was scattered, confused, unsure of itself or its genre, searching for depth and coming up short on every track. Nothing stood out as good.
The last album I have is View From The Ground (1982), which was self-produced. It’s got You Can Do Magic, which is slick as hell and a lot of fun, but overall the album is kind of meh. But they’re still touring so I wish them well.
Albums covered:
Altered Images, Happy Birthday
Amazulu, Montego Bay 12” single
Ambrosia, Ambrosia
America, America
America, Homecoming
America, Holiday
America, Hearts
America, Hideaway
America, View From The Ground