Shooting Star (Bad Company) (LP 4782 - 4784)

Bad Company  Straight Shooter (Vinyl, Swan Song Records, 1975) *****  

New Riders of the Purple Sage  Oh, What a Mighty Time (Vinyl, CBS Records, 1975) ***  

Gil Scott-Heron, Brian Jackson and the Midnight Band  The First Minute of a New Day (Vinyl, Arista Records, 1975) **** 

Genre: Rock, country rock, soul jazz.

Places I remember: Little Red Bookshop, Family Store (Hastings)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Good Lovin' Gone Bad (Bad Company)

Gear costume: Shooting Star (Bad Company) 

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8

Active compensatory factors: A recent trip to the Little Red Bookshop and a second hand shop in Hastings resulted in these three purchases - all released in 1975 but in three very distinct genres.

I have long searched for a good copy of Bad Company's second album on Swan Song (in the UK it was released on Island Records). Usually the ones I come across are party records and therefore pretty banged up. This time the planets aligned.

It's a superb hard rock album, of course, with all the members at the peak of their powers. That means Paul Rodgers on vocals is peerless, Simon Kirke kicks ass on drums, Boz Burrell is holding down the bottom end with aplomb and Mick Ralphs' guitars are tastefully superb.

Oh, What a Mighty Time cost me $15 from a charity shop in Hastings and that seems a fair price. Their sixth album is not the greatest album by this country rock outfit, but it's also not the worst (some may disagree, I hasten to add). 

I bought it because of the musicians onboard for the album like Jerry Garcia. He plays on three songs, and Sly Stone is on the title track (which is a mess, it must be said). The band includes Skip Battin (former Byrds member) and Spencer Dryden (former Jefferson Airplane drummer).

After the first two songs on side 1, that side is quite a lot of fun. Really! Side two is also inconsistent. Highlights on the album are a sensitive take on Dylan's Farewell Angelina, Take a Letter Maria, and Going Round the Horn. The pedal steel by Buddy Cage is also very tasty.

Gil Scott-Heron's collaboration with Brian Jackson on his fourth album, The First Minute of a New Day, continued to display his talents in an appropriate cool soul jazz way. Unfortunately, Scott-Heron's messages are still very relevant to 21st century America under Trump. Take Winter in America for instance - Ain't nobody fighting because nobody knows what to save.

Where do they all belong? These three show the depth of music in the mid-seventies.