I paid all my dues so I picked up my shoes

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

27/05/73 : Daltrey - Roger Daltrey

My visits with The Who haven't been exactly great musically and the more I read up on them all, it's only John Entwhistle who emerges with any kind of credit (and I'm sure if I was to investigate him to any depth, he'd turn out to be annoying as well).  But, whilst I have little time for Roger the man, I'm quite intrigued to hear what this sounds like.

And I obviously was intrigued, because the album doesn't appear to be available on streaming platforms so I had to search for each track individually - I only managed to find half of them, but I feel it gave me enough of a feel for the thing to attempt a write-up.  And that's mostly because I surprisingly liked them - they're all pretty well put together with some nice orchestration on them.  His voice isn't the strongest, but it is quite expressive - he obviously believes in the material and is giving it his all.  I particularly liked "Giving It All Way" - it's a very decent track indeed.  This album sounded like the sort of thing that McCartney should have been making at the time - I was also reminded of Elton John and Billy Joel at times.  All in all, a pleasant surprise.

We're at #8 in the charts this week on his second week of a six week run, having peaked at #6 in his debut week - considering the dearth of albums this year and some of the dross we've heard that enjoyed decent runs, this really feels like it deserved better.  The top five this week were Bowie, Pure Gold (a new entry), 20 Fantastic Hits, Beatles (Blue) and Beatles (Red).  And Macca is at #6 as well - sigh.  The next new entries are all previous visits - Shirley Bassey (#10), Paul Simon (#21) and Hawkwind (#24).  Linda is the top woman again at #6, but she's joined by both Liza and Shirley in the top ten so it's a decent week for the ladies.

Wikipedia has some interesting stuff on the politics behind the album - The Who's management were not keen on it being a success so tried their hardest to derail it, which ultimately ended up with them losing the gig with The Who.  Most of the tracks were all written by David Courtney, who I've never heard of and Leo Sayer, who I have, but no-one had at the time.  And the opening track "One Man Band" was later recorded by Leo and was one of his biggest hits, getting to #6 in the UK.  I was amused by Robert Christgau's comment though - "by anybody else, this would be one more dumb concept album, and it still is".  I didn't particularly get concept album vibes though - it just felt more like an album.

"Customers also listened to" - well, we'll never know. will we?  Let's guess at The Who and Pete Townshend stuff - I suspect we won't be far off there.  But, from what I've heard so far, this seems to be a step above most of The Who stuff - maybe if I heard the rest I'd be horrified (there's probably a reason why only some tracks are available) but that didn't happen, so well done to Roger!

20/05/73 - Not the shortest album I've met
03/06/73 - Wtf is this?