On 20 May, one day before my fourteenth birthday, Genesis gave me the nicest gift a prog fan could possibly get. Since there had been two new Genesis albums last year, there was no way a new album would be coming out this year but what did come out was a three track EP called Spot the Pigeon, containing outtakes from the Wind & Wuthering sessions. Two of them were only so-so, but the third one was absolutely brilliant. Inside and Out showcases Steve Hackett's talent with the twelve string guitar in much the same way as Anthony Phillips's solo album The Geese & the Ghost did his talent earlier this same year.
Next, let's discuss a couple of noteworthy prog albums whose exact release dates are unknown to me, but which came out during 1977: one in the US and the other in the UK. The Virginian group Happy the Man had already been active since 1973, but it wasn't until four years later that they were able to release a debut album for Arista. Overall, it was a very successful effort. Happy the Man embodied the symphonic prog of the time, yet also gave a very sentimental feel both in their music and lyrics. You cannot really imagine another group recording an instrumental track called Stumpy Meets the Firecracker in Stencil Forest - one of the weakest tracks on the album.
But the group had obvious talent both as songwriters and masters of their instruments, and there are several very good tracks on their debut. In addition to the song embedded below, be sure to check out at least Starborne, Upon the Rainbow (Befrost), Carousel and New York Dream's Suite. The track below perhaps best examplifies Happy the Man's sound. The vocals at the beginning are a perfect example of the type of overdone sentiment - the singer's voice even seems to break at one point - that I meant above. And yet On Time as a Helix of Precious Laughs has a brilliant, strong ending that you wouldn't be able to imagine after hearing the first minute.
The UK release I was referring to above is of course the one and only album by the unexpected symphonic prog masters England. I already briefly discussed their album Garden Shed last year back when that album's closing track Poisoned Youth reached fourth place in the Top 20 Long Prog Masterpieces list. You can read that blog entry over here. Like I wrote already then, England was the ultimate fairy tale in the progressive rock genre. They came from nowhere! They made one single great album! They disappeared!
And yet, to be perfectly honest, all of Garden Shed is not really great. The group is competent all the time, very good most of the time, but truly great only when it comes to Poisoned Youth. That the song is over 16 minutes long and comprises about 40 per cent of the album's entire running time does help to up the average and makes the album a recommendable acquisition. Note that the year is wrong in the link below. This is a 1977 release, not 1976.
And then it is 22 July, 1977, and a masterpiece to end all masterpieces is released. It turned out that Rick Wakeman, who left Yes some three years earlier for his solo career, was willing to rejoin the group. When this happened, the prog giants headed to Montreux, Switzerland, to record their new album with the keyboard wizard back on board. The end result was and still is baffling. Going for the One is not only the best album of 1977 but also the best album of the seventies. In my mind, even the best album of all time.
For that reason, we will skip it for now and dedicate our next blog entry entirely to it, like we already did with the best album of the sixties: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd, that came out in 1967. What is it about the years ending in number seven? The same thing will continue in the eighties, when the best album of that decade will be released in 1987. Let's discuss it then.
In the early eighties, there was a comedy show in the Finnish television by the British disc jockey and comedian Kenny Everett. I watched it often. Everett had chosen the title track of the third album by French electronic music composer Cerrone as the theme song for his show. For this reason, Supernature was probably quite well known over here as well as wherever the show was aired. It had a disco beat and also some lyrics sung by a couple of women who sounded like soul singers.
If it were for Supernature only, we wouldn't even be discussing the album that came out some time in 1977, no exact date known. But there is another track on that album that is simply brilliant and has been embedded above. In the Smoke wasn't really anything but a significantly slowed down version of the title track without the disco beat and vocals. But oh boy, how well it worked! As is fitting for the year when the disco craze really hit the music scene, the instrumental has obviously been designed for use as a slow and mellow last dance of the evening. I didn't and still don't dance, but found the music immensely beautiful and was a huge fan already at the time.
September brings us a new release by John Cale, but it is not a full album. A short, three track EP called Animal Justice is very significant because of its closing track Hedda Gabler, embedded above. It is an exceptionally strong piece of music that I immediately felt was the best thing that Cale had achieved since Paris 1919 in 1973. Named after the character from Henrik Ibsen's play, the song runs over eight minutes but doesn't feel overlong at any point. One of the unmissable tracks of the year, obviously.
The time has come to say goodbye to Gentle Giant. Although they would go on to record two more studio albums after 1977, I'm not planning to discuss them due to their rapid drop in songwriting quality. The Missing Piece, out on 16 September, is a transitional recording. It follows the excellent Interview (1976) but precedes the mostly embarrassing Giant for a Day! (1978) that only has a couple of listenable tracks and no great ones.
A large part of The Missing Piece is also weak. It sees the group abandoning prog and playing more straight rock and roll which they are not very good at and which was never a part of their appeal anyway. However, there are three very good tracks even here, one of them an unmissable track of the year.
The first two tracks on the B side, As Old as You're Young and Memories of Old Days would have fit perfectly even their older albums. Paradoxically, the unmissable track is however one of the "new style" rock / pop songs where Gentle Giant succeeds admirably in their songwriting, creating an instant classic in I'm Turning Around which has been embedded above.
And then for something completely different! One week after The Missing Piece, on 23 September, the American group Steely Dan released their best album Aja. It was the antithesis of everything that I felt was important about music.
Normally, my favorite music required concentration and worked best with headphones and zero external distraction. Steely Dan worked perfectly fine in the background and could be used to set a certain mood to a situation. My normal favorites were not necessarily polished in execution, because interiors were more important than exteriors. Steely Dan's production values were possibly highest in the entire music industry, and in many cases it felt like there was no interior, so to speak. My favorites were shabby hippies, Steely Dan was an impeccably dressed businessman.
For these reasons, it is all the more inexplicable that I had already liked several songs on their earlier releases - I already mentioned Rikki Don't Lose That Number when discussing 1974 - and Aja was the pinnacle. An album where virtually every song was good. Not particularly soulful maybe, but great in other ways. My absolute favorites are the first two songs: Black Cow and the title track Aja. But there is nothing weak on the album. If you like, please check out the one hour documentary above that discusses the making of the album.
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