Oh, What a Mighty Time 1975 Album

New Riders Of The Purple Sage

For some reason, out of all the New Riders albums it is this one which piques my interest, even though in many respects it could be considered as substandard as previous efforts. Certainly, they were on the decline here - they practically give over the title track to Sly Stone and his band, plus, there is an inordinate amount of guests and cover songs - more than normal, at least. But on the plus side of the ledger, the album has a crazy sort of energy going for it which none of the other NRPS albums ever had, which keeps me interested. It's as if they finally decided to break out of their eternal slumber, and finally let loose on a studio record. The title track with Sly Stone really sets the tone in this regard, just building off the same "oh, what a mighty time" lyric for what seems like an endless amount of time. Nothing else on the album even begins to match up, but at least some of the songs are funny when they are supposed to be funny ("Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother"), authentic ("La Bamba"), and so on.