Wah-wah-wah

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

17/06/79 : Sky - Sky

I know I've heard this because my parents owned it - I seem to recall it's jazzed-up classical stuff and pretty bearable.

Well, I'm right that it's pretty bearable, but it's more progged-up than jazzed-up and most of it is actually original rather than classical material. It all sounds skilfully done (to my untrained ears) but it is all instrumental and me and instrumental albums tend not to get on - however because it's only 36 minutes long it doesn't really outstay its welcome.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on their fourth week of an impressive 39 week run - somewhat surprisingly for such a long run, this was as high as it got but it came back for another seven runs throughout '80, spending 56 weeks in the chart in total. The top five this week were impressive 34 week run, with it peaking at #7 in its thirteenth week. The top five this week were ELO, ABBA, Blondie, James Last and David Bowie (which I should have done this week but I thought I'd already listened to it - there's no harm done in doing it next though) and the highest new entries were Dire Straits (#6) and Earth Wind & Fire (#11). 

Wikipedia tells us this is their debut album - and that's pretty much your lot, other than telling us that the classical numbers are by Antonio Ruiz-Pipó and Erik Satie. Their entry describes them as a supergroup and they're certainly a mixed bag with John Williams, Francis Monkman, Herbie Flowers, Tristan Fry and Kevin Peak coming from varied backgrounds and countries. There's no word on the critical response other than a retrospective review from AllMusic that said it didn't really go anywhere (which is hard to argue with) but commercially it also did OK in Australia, getting to #10. 

I struggle to imagine discogs.com charging us a fortune here and you can indeed pick up a decent copy for a quid and you can even pick up a red translucent vinyl copy (which I bet looks very cool) for £24. I'd say this is perfectly fine if you're looking for some proggy instrumental stuff, but I'm afraid that's not something I ever find myself looking for.

08/06/79 - One I'd somehow missed
24/06/79 - Some interesting sounds

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