Alan Parson & Eric Wolfson have produced some of the greatest music ever recorded, both together and separately.
However, I do have 2 bones to pick.
This may be nit-picking, but...
1) On Poe 2, which I think is a very good album, one of my
favorites is 'The Bells.' But I'm disapointed that EA Poe
is not credited on that song. The words are word-for-word
from his beautiful poem. I think Eric did a masterful
job scoring it, but I think Poe should have been credited as
the author of the lyrics.
2) On Turn of a Friendly Card, I have a problem with the title track. I don't know who actually wrote the music for it, but I
suspect it was Alan. This is because the main theme of that
song is almost exactly like parts of 'Midas Shadow' by Al Stewart
from his album 'The Year of the Cat' which Alan had worked on just a few years before. It's so close it borders on plagerism.
I don't know if anyone else has ever picked up on, or if there's already been discussion of these, but I would love to here some
others thoughts, comments, and additional info.
All compositions of The Turn Of A Friendly Card are by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons, but I suspect that Eric Woolfson was the main writer of the tracks. The title song is in my opinion the best song ever, and also brilliantly sung by Chris Rainbow. The album is also the best album ever, I think. Because of Bob's message with regard to 'Midas Shadow', I have listened to it again but could not hear any resemblance with The Turn Of A Friendly Card. As I have said The Turn ... is my all-time number one. Midas Shadow, however, would not even be in my list of best 2000 songs.
The brilliance of the Bells is the fact it IS word for word the poem, but sounds like the music was written first. Don't you think most buyers will realize this is the poem?
I for one did not know that THE BELLS is a poe(m).
I'm glad I learned it here, it has always been one of my favourits on the album.
Why should the makers of this website should have chosen the guitar riff as an opener ??? logic, pure logic, it's the best piece of music on the entire album, and they know it.
But that doesn't mean that this is a great album. It is OK, I bought it, like it, but it misses that sparkle "tehy" had on the Project.
Most of the tracks on the APP albums were written by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons. Ocassionaly, Andrew Powell also contributed with music.
However, it is public domain that all the lyrics and most of the sang music was composed by Eric Woolfson, while the instrumental tracks were mostly written by Alan Parsons. This was very noticeable during the Alan Parsons album (after Eric and Alan split away), in which Alan only contributed in the instrumental tracks (apart from making all the sound processing, which is superb).
But I think it was the close collaboration among Eric and Alan which made the magic appear. Now that they are not longer together, they are not going to make better music than when they were The Alan Parsons Project.
We will see (hear) in a few days, what Alan is going to bring us on his new album A VALID PATH. I read one critic who said, that if we liked STEREOTOMY, FREUDIANA, ON AIR, etc ... we are not going to like this album ... We will see.
Perhaps it is just what we need, Alan going new ways, but it is not that we are on unknown grounds ... because some of the songs are new versions of TAPP songs, written by Erick Woolfson and Alan Parsons ...
Well, after listening a few times to this new AP album, I can only say : it sucks !
If you like Eric Woolfson and the Alan parsons project, you will be disappointed with Alan's new CD. It's boring, without any respect to the original songs. Using Orson Wells' voice as a sample and play it with a house boom, is not my piece of cake.
On a scale from 1 to 10 I would rate this one a 4 !
Very disappointed !!