Turn yourself around - turn it upside down

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

02/10/77 : Bad Reputation - Thin Lizzy

I don't know if I've ever listened to a Thin Lizzy album - oh, it turns out I have but it seems like it really wasn't very memorable.  Which doesn't exactly set my expectations sky high...

Well, it's fine I guess, but it's all very pedestrian - there's very little of "The Boys Are Back In Town" energy to this.  And I'm desperately trying to think of anything more to say - and failing.  All a bit of a disappointment, really.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their second week of an eight week run, with this being as high as it got.  The rest of the top five were the Diana Ross best-of, Jean Michel Jarre, a Rolling Stones live album (a new entry) and Elvis Presley and, for a change, we have two more new entries in the top ten - Steely Dan (#6) and The Stranglers (#8).

Wikipedia has more than I was expecting on the album and an amusing amount of it explains that stuff didn't happen around this album because of "misunderstandings" involving band members.  My favourite is that their usual cover artist didn't work on this album because Phil Lynott went to his home to arrange it - but instead of going to Madison, Connecticut he went to Madison, Wisconsin (which I imagine was slightly different).  The critics were surprisingly nice about it ("the hardest and heaviest that Thin Lizzy ever made" - really?) and it did a lot better in the US than I was expecting, getting to #39.

"Customers also listened to" Phil Lynott, Free, Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher - I don't mind a bit of Gary from around this time, but apart from that I'm fine without experiencing the rest of them.  As I'm fine without experiencing this again, but I'm not completely scared off Thin Lizzy - I feel there's got to be better examples of their stuff out there.

25/09/77 - A real-life, actual WOMAN!
09/10/77 - The King's last album

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