Wednesday, June 27, 2007

302. Bad Company - Bad Company (1974)


















Track Listing


1. Can't Get Enough
2. Rock Steady
3. Ready For Love
4. Don't Let Me Down
5. Bad Company
6. Way I Choose
7. Movin' On
8. Seagull


Review

Well this album didn't fascinate me. It's a bit run of the mill rock, clearly influenced by the stuff coming out of California with the Eagles and such. And that is a style of music that I've never warmed up to. It seems to try to join rock, country and folk but only ends up diminishing all those musical styles.

There is not much to praise in the album, and the criticism aren't really that strong, in fact the main problem of the album is the fact that it is not very exciting. It comes off as country-blues-rock, but nothing in it is new, nothing that hasn't been tried before and sounds like middle of the road AOR. To make adult oriented rock, whatever that means, you are either very good or you come off sounding incredibly tacky. Fortunately Bad Company don't fall in the second category, it never sounds particularly tacky, it just sounds boring.

When you have them following the Dolls and Eno you really feel a slight disappointment with this album. It is perfectly listenable, just not very good. Still, if you are into this style of music it is definitely something to check out. Historically many musical movements that have started in the US were refined by the UK, this is true of pop-rock, of Punk and so on. But here it is clearly untrue, this UK participation doesn't bring anything new to the field. Still, you can get it from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Don't Let Me Down
2. Bad Company
3. Seagull
4. Can't Get Enough

Final Grade

6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The 1974 début album Bad Company was an international hit, with the group considered one of the 1970s' first supergroups. Bad Company consisted of four seasoned musicians: two former members of Free, singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke; former Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs; and King Crimson's bassist Boz Burrell. The group was managed by Peter Grant who also managed Led Zeppelin at the time and would manage Bad Company until 1982. The album peaked at #1 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart (North America) and included two singles that reached the top 20 charts, "Can't Get Enough" at #9 in 1974 and "Movin' On" at #14 in early 1975.

Some guy Kayaking to the sound of Seagull:

No comments: