Here we are and here we are and here we go

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

04/12/77 : Rocking All Over The World - Status Quo

Somewhat surprisingly, this is our fourth visit with the Quo - my reactions have generally been "ironically enjoyable", "surprisingly enjoyable" or "absolutely bloody awful".  I'm expecting this era Quo to a touch of the former with a whole album being far too much of "a good thing".

Yeah, I'm not far wide of the mark there - I'm amazed they saved the title track until the start of side two though.  I was also surprised to learn that it's a cover version (first recorded by John Fogerty in '75 - interesting, but still not great) but I knew it was, of course, the song that opened Live Aid.  The rest of the album is very much in the same vein, with the exception of "For You" which is very different being much more ELO than Quo and their cover of The Beatles' "Getting Better" which is bearable, but completely inessential.  And how long do we think they took designing the album cover?

We're at #6 this week on their third week of a fifteen week run, with it having peaked at #5 in its second week.  The top five this week are the Disco Fever compilation (about to start a run of six weeks at the top over Xmas - it must have sold a truckload!), the Bread best-of (about to start a run of six weeks at #2 - ditto), The Sex Pistols, Gladys Knight and Rod Stewart and the highest new entry was Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Works Vol 2, which I have no desire to experience in the slightest.

Wikipedia tells me it's their tenth album - Francis Rossi and Alan Lancaster hated it ("a poxy album") but Rick Parfitt liked it ("it's fucking great").  There's little word on critical response, but it suggests that Robert Christgau at least liked it more than the Queen album (he's a weird one).  It also did surprisingly well in Europe - #9 in The Netherlands, #8 in France and #7 in Germany.  There's no accounting for tastes, I guess.

"Customers also listened to" Chas & Dave, Slade and, errrr, Arsenal.  Apparently they're a Belgian electronic music band, all of which makes even less sense than the football team.  I'm not a Quo fan, but this album feels to me as good an album as you're likely to get out of them - although I fear this won't be my last opportunity to find out if that's true...

27/11/77 - Acceptable background sounds
11/12/77 - Also surprisingly enjoyable

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