Steven Smith & Father & Sixteen Great Songs

 

There is something so completely not right about this one that some form of elite task force should be formed immediately to ensure something so mind-shatteringly dull, can never again be attempted. But hey – who am I to comment on what is good for the masses – and there was a time in England where (apparently in the dark ages of 1972) Steven Smith (and Dad) were exactly what was wanted. After a little research – it would appear that these 2 head-down-take-no-prisoners-funk-machines were some sort of contestants if not winners on nothing other than Opportunity Knocks – if you are English and of a certain age then this will already have you running for the reset button – everyone else – think yourselves lucky for not knowing !!

Anyhows – how does this dross sound – well limp[ would be a compliment – sounding like a muffled recording of a lame Bontempi preset demo flexi-disc – with drums so low in the mix – that when Steven does his little pat-ata-bpht-bpht-duh-duh-duhsolo type thang – it has the punch of someone dropping a few clothes pegs on the floor.   The selection of songs are simply dross – the dynamics of the mix seem somehow to have fallen into a negative dimension – look – this is 72 – they had compressors and all that stuff – this is released on Decca for goodness sake – what was the engineer./label/A-and-R deptartment etc etc thinking ?

More to the point – who bought this thing ? Yikes – I did !! – Not only that but this one cost me 1 bleedin quid !!

But – lets face it you don’t get to own many LPs with Stevens’ Dad on it – just very very not correct – or what !!

The back of the sleeve looks like this (think yourselves lucky this is not an MP3 blog – otherwise I would have also uploaded an MP3 – and trust me – you would not want to get that!! ):