Blondie's debut record was the aural equivalent of an Archie comic, and I mean that in a good way. And even the "raw" Blondie could easily play a whole range of styles over the course of an LP – that was their strength, after all.

Before there was Ween, there were Sparks, or rather the Mael Brothers, who cut a couple of records Stateside to little interest. UK audiences took more readily to their idiosyncratic sound which broke big during the glam era, but never above middling status in their native U.S.. In a way, this might have been the perfect glam rock record, but also contains a deeper thread of absurdity that's deceptively hard to crack, and warrants repeated listening. The big song was "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both of Us", which more than establishes sound and tone for what was to follow. All the innuendos, overtures, and bombast here feels strangely numbing as you move through the record, but the basic up-front premise of the Brothers Mael more than keeps you on your toes. The only thing I found odd about this record was, sometimes eccentricity no matter how impressive can be wearing after a while.

There's a couple of fairly informative articles out there on this record, and good thing, because otherwise it would fall into the dustbin of history. My interest in Boxer comes through the band Patto, an early 70's band of note, for a few reasons – one of them being just about everyone in that band was in a bunch of other less-known bands people should know about, but more important, Patto cut a couple of records that were pretty damn good. Very unique in that they contained a guitarist (Ollie Halsall) who played guitar as if he was a free-form jazz artist. But that's another story for another review. Boxer was a different thing, a supergroup of sorts, playing more straight-ahead rock. Actually, this record sounded a lot like the very last Spooky Tooth record (The Mirror, if you're wondering), but with just Mike Patto's vocals, and lots and lots of Tim Bogert's bass playing. I mean, LOTS. Too much, as you can tell by my last comment. Overall, it's not even close to a good record all the way through, but I do like the first 3 songs. Stuff like "Red Light Flyer" and "Big Lucy" was classic Patto in action and probably should have scraped a chart somewhere. For that alone, I cut Absolutely some slack. Absolutely.

There were tons of acts from the 70's to geek out on post-haste, but if there was any one of them tailor-made for the role, hard to find a better candidate than Klaatu. Not only did they take the name from the old sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still, but also got caught up in a Beatles hoax, and had their biggest song covered by The Carpenters. There's way more to read about, but what concerns us here is their second record, Hope – essentially, a concept record about space travel to a lost planet. Released the same year Star Wars came out, it's a bit of a wonder it didn't receive more attention at the time, but then you actually listen, and begin to understand why. There's a ton of orchestral input from (naturally) the London Symphony Orchestra, which is at certain intervals wondrous and others rather disconcerting. This was way beyond the plebeian tastes of 1977, and even the group's own debut record, which already was a strong dose of quasi-psychedelic guitar pop to the left of Queen and similar acts. Overall, it's stunning how they held this all together and made it sound so clean on record, although a lot of the music doesn't leave much impression. I liked this record because it was fairly adventurous, and if you take as fantasy you'll probably come back to it again as I did. But don't beat yourself up if you forget to.

There were some daffy albums and concepts throughout the 70's, and then there was Deaf School's debut record 2nd Honeymoon. Not that I could accurately describe a record such as this one. Hailing from Liverpool of all places – yes, the same town as The Beatles – but sounding nothing like them at all. This was more like goofy, loony, off-the-wall cabaret or Broadway music, as I believe the lineup was something like seven people (including male and female lead singers), but done in a low budget manner. I'm not convinced it was intentional, which makes the album even more puzzling to contemplate, IMO. Anyway, this was one of those oddball oddities which if you come across, can't hurt to try a few times, but not everyone is going to get it.