Now Playing: Lee Michaels "Carnival Of Life" LP
Topic: Addition
Although a '1-tracker' in some people's ears, the obscure Liquid Smoke album has begun to see some real action on the collector market, enough so that it's time to bring it down from The Attic and add it to the regular Acid Archives.
LIQUID SMOKE (Long Island, NY)
Liquid Smoke 1970 (Avco Embassy AVE-33005)
On the unpredictable Avco Embassy label, here's a white soul band who amped up their sound enough to attract the attention of psych collectors. The organ/guitar backing rocks pretty hard, but this is only one step removed from all of those horn bands that collectors hate. The band is pretty tight and tough, but aren't even remotely original. The highlighted songs are well-known covers, the singer postures throughout (not a single growl or groan sounds like it hadn't been rehearsed a hundred times), and while a few songs have half-decent hard rock backing tracks, the arrangements are aimless (backing vocals come straight from the adult contemporary playbook and most of the guitar solos are bland and dull) and the singer always annoys. Records this lousy make me wonder if all you needed to get a recording contract in 1969 was a fuzz box and a drummer who could keep time. Exception: "Reflection" is a pretty solid hard rocker, and even has a decent guitar solo. [AM]
