On that date, Kate Bush released her first album The Kick Inside. It marked the beginning of an extraordinary recording career. Once again, the Finnish radio was well up to speed with this. I heard Wuthering Heights over and over again and I admit that it is a great song. But, as is so often the case, my number one favorite turned out to be another song.
Released as the second single from the album, the immensely beautiful The Man With the Child in His Eyes didn't really catch my attention until said single release, which took place as late as in May. Above, I am proud to have embedded the official video that was presumably completed at the same time with the single release. The age of the music video is getting closer and closer. Soon virtually everything I embed will be official music videos.
This may be some kind of a record. I just wrote about Brian Eno's fifth album Before and After Science that was released in December 1977. And now here is the sixth one already, out only three months later, in March 1978. The end result was however considerably different. Music for Airports was Eno's first proper ambient recording, containing only four tracks that were more like soundscapes than musical compositions in the traditional sense.
I really enjoyed only one of the four tracks: the second one that had a simple title 2/1. You can listen to it above. This one I enjoyed a great deal. It is a rare thing to hear a song - or is this a song? - that sounds like it is defining a new genre in music. Apart from this track, Eno's turn towards ambient music didn't please me too much. While ambient can sometimes work, it is in most cases too slow, uneventful and, dare I say it, too simple for my taste. The fact that it took Eno two years to complete Before and After Science, and then only three months to continue to Music for Airports, is all too telling.
Another March release came from the U.K. It was the debut album of a prog supergroup called U.K. The album was called U.K. Its opening track In the Dead of Night, embedded above, immediately became a big favorite of mine: it was truly exciting to hear a band open their first album with a song that had an immediate symphonic prog classic feel to it.
Of course, none of the group members were really debuting, except when it came to playing together. Bassist and singer John Wetton, as well as drummer Bill Bruford were simply missing a prog rock band to call their own following the disbanding of King Crimson. Guitarist Allan Holdsworth has already been mentioned when discussing Gong. Keyboardist and violinist Eddie Jobson had played with Roxy Music previously. The first album by these veterans has become a cult classic, but personally, I preferred their second, due out in 1979...
And then it was 7 April and there were only three... The new Genesis album was released without guitarist Steve Hackett who had left the group in order to concentrate on his solo career. At the time, I thought that And Then There Were Three was the best album ever made. Who could blame me when it contained songs like Down and Out, embedded above? Or the stunning Snowbound, the high point of Mike Rutherford's entire songwriting career? So many great songs, as if born out of desperation that was fuelled by the apparent disintegration of the group.
Normally, And Then There Were Three would require a blog entry of its own, just like Going for the One by Yes. But since I have already written about the album at length, over here, there is no need to do it again. Let's just conclude that while a major part of the album represents musical perfection, there are a couple of slightly weaker tracks - and one that is truly horrendous, Genesis trying to be humorous once again - and these allow Yes to overtake it to reach number one spot on the list of best albums ever made.
Only two days later, on 9 April it was time for another unexpected favorite to be released. When discussing 1976, I already confessed to my liking of Stargazer by Rainbow. On their new album Long Live Rock 'n' Roll there was a track called Gates of Babylon which I liked even better. It is an exceptionally complicated heavy metal tune that is courting with progressive rock influences. Please check it out above.
Only one day after Rainbow, it was time for Jethro Tull to close their golden era with one last good album. On that date, Heavy Horses was released in the US. UK release followed on 21 April. Like its predecessor Songs from the Wood, the album leaned heavily towards British folk music, even offering a nostalgic view to (presumably relatively wealthy) farm life in its sleeve imagery. Songwriting quality was again on a high level: there are virtually no weak tracks. I chose to embed Acres Wild but believe me, there was no shortage of alternatives.
In May, I turned 15 years old, when a new and particularly interesting electronic music album was released. I had been following the eccentric German band Kraftwerk since Autobahn began playing on the Finnish radio in 1974. Their latest album The Man Machine was their most accomplished effort yet. The group's seventh studio album contained classic tracks like The Robots, The Model and in particular Spacelab, which I guess was my favorite.
Near the end of the month, on the 25th, Pink Floyd's guitarist David Gilmour released his first, self titled solo album in the UK. The US release followed on 17 June. Gilmour's effort was a really pleasant one: there weren't really any earth shattering standouts but there were no weak tracks either. A mellow and pleasant album, released in early summer in spite of a particularly wintry cover art. There is once again a multitude of excellent songs to choose from; let's go with the brilliant So Far Away.
On 3 June, it was time for another solo album from a (former, in this case) member of an essential seventies prog band. The second self titled album by Peter Gabriel turned out to be a noticeably weaker effort than its predecessor. Whereas the first album had been full of brilliant songs and free flowing invention, the second one contained only three relatively short songs that I liked - and even among those three, the opening track On the Air wasn't all that great, just enjoyable in its simplicity.
The other two were great. Track number three, Mother of Violence is a memorable, acoustic song about the nature of violence. There, Mr. Gabriel sings accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, piano and some sound effects. Great songwriting. My number one favorite song on the album is even better: track number five is called White Shadow and has been embedded below.
Then it was July. The height of summer. The British singer-songwriter John Miles released already his third album, following Rebel (1976) and Stranger in the City (1977). The new one was called Zaragon and while it was mostly just a pretty good album, it had a killer opening track called Overture; every bit as good or maybe even better than his hit single Music from a couple of years back.
I can't help but embed this brilliant song as well, although there are already so many above. These were the days when a song could open with a piano sequence, run for over eight minutes without being repetitive at any point, and would still be called classic. The song has similar pathos to Music and works equally well.
Finally, there is only one more album release worth discussing. I mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry that there would be nothing coming out in August, but to be more precise, I don't really know that. The American prog group Happy the Man had completed the recording of their second album Crafty Hands already in the spring so the actual release must have taken place some time in the summer. Perhaps as late as August?
I already discussed that album's standout instrumental track last year, so there is not much else to tell. Overall, Crafty Hands is a weaker effort than the band's debut. But please do check out Service With a Smile, Morning Sun, Wind Up Doll Day Wind - and the classic, absolutely stunning Ibby it is.
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