Helpful votes received on reviews:
67% (4 of 6)
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
In My Own Words:
I'm a music fanatic from New Zealand, with an MA in Drama. Oddly, despite music and theatre being my two loves I absolutely loathe musicals! Slowly carving out a niche for myself as a playwright, with a bit of acting and directing thrown in the mix to keep things interesting. My music collection comprises about 500 albums, most of my favourite artists had albums released into the world long befor… Read moreI'm a music fanatic from New Zealand, with an MA in Drama. Oddly, despite music and theatre being my two loves I absolutely loathe musicals! Slowly carving out a niche for myself as a playwright, with a bit of acting and directing thrown in the mix to keep things interesting.
My music collection comprises about 500 albums, most of my favourite artists had albums released into the world long before I was. Favourite styles are AOR (TOTO, Chicago, Billy Joel, Survivor, Journey, etc) and singer/songwriter (Harry Chapin, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Gordon Lightfoot, etc). Poco and Seals & Crofts are artists who don't quite fit into either style, but are just as good (NOTE: I demand more Seals & Crofts albums on CD NOW!!!!!)
A NOTE ON MY REVIEWS: If an album has one truly disastrous song it can still qualify for 5 stars - you wouldn't dock a star from Sgt. Pepper just because of 'When I'm 64' now, would you? The star allocation is based on the overall impression of quality left immediately after a thorough listen. I don't review any album if I don't know it back to front first.
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Reviews
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Anybody who feels the need for some Harry Chapin in their collection beyond a compilation or "Greatest Stories Live" should look to this CD - quite possibly THE Chapin masterpiece. Like most of his albums, this was largely ignored on its initial release (although it did make #58 - quite a high chart placing for a Chapin album), which isn't really a surprise. There is not a song on it that would have been a hit single even at the heights of the singer/songwriter period of the early 70s, let alone in 1977 during 'disco fever'. But Chapin fans don't want hit singles anyway. What they DO want is here in abundance - heartfelt and insightful lyrics, with just the right amount of wit, lovingly… Read more
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Many people would be surprised to know that Survivor charted as many as 18 singles in the US, 7 of which went top 20. The simple reason for this is their career-defining hit "Eye Of The Tiger", which came to overshadow the rest of their extremely strong catalogue. This CD goes some way in redressing this situation, featuring all the big hits, and a few lesser ones as well. There are really only two things wrong with this disc: of the two new songs one is good, but nothing spectacular, and the other ("You Know Who You Are") is simply awful. The other is it indicates that, while most of their hits were perfectly good songs, they generally were far from their best - take "American… Read more
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There aren't that many bands in rock history to have released one essential live CD, and of those who have, most have diminished it's power by releasing a whole bunch more that should have stayed locked away. Finding an exception to any such rule usually involves looking to TOTO, whose previous live effort "Livefields" was a killer album, designed especially for the hard core fans. This one is a more commercial release - all their US top 10 hits (okay, yes, there were only 4) are here - but it's just as good, and, at last there's a great live version of "Rosanna" out there (Check out the keyboard solo from...Steve Lukather!). Of course, this is merely a cutdown release of the tracks… Read more
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