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Babe Ruth - Kid's Stuff CD (album) cover

KID'S STUFF

Babe Ruth

 

Heavy Prog

1.69 | 26 ratings

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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk Researcher
1 stars Babe Ruth’s debut album featured a hard-rocking blues singer (Juanita Haan) that could have gone toe- to-toe with Janis Joplin, a pianist who played like he’d just downed a half-bottle of white crosses, and multi-instrumentalist Alan Shacklock who gave the band most of the sounds that landed them with the ‘progressive’ label in the early seventies. Each of the three albums that followed was decent, but none of them approached the power and energy of that debut.

With ‘Kid's Stuff’, the fifth and final Babe Ruth album, the band hit rock bottom. And I use the term ‘band’ loosely, since Ms. Haan was gone by the time this released. In fact, none of the original members of the band were still around. Drummer Ed Spevock, who had replaced Dick Powell before the second album was the only member who had even appeared on any of the band’s hit singles, and the none of the rest of the players on this record had even been in the group for more than a year.

It seems Babe Ruth was one of the first progressive bands to fall victim to the disco and punk eras, and they had wasted no time in doing so with the suspiciously disco-sounding and Spevock-penned single “Elusive”, released in early 1976 from their fourth album “Stealin’ Home”. Things would only get worse after that. Ellie Hope and Ray Knott were recruited (possibly with help from Capitol) to fill out the group for a final album, but copies would be fitted with cutout notches before it even hit store shelves. A supporting tour was too little, too late and most of the members left after the tour. Bernie Marsden went on to be part of an early lineup of Whitesnake; keyboardist Steve Gurl backed an early Virginia Astley vehicle known as Victims of Pleasure; and Ed Spevock landed a gig with a briefly reformed Chicken Shack lineup, and later spent time with the long-lasting music turnstile known as Enigma. Ed’s last known gig was with a Steely Dan tribute band known as “Stealing Dan”. And so it goes.

But it gets even worse than that. Hope and Knott carried on for a while even after the label dropped them, and eventually changed the group’s name to Dream Coupe and enlisted a couple members of a regional cover band known as Brewster. Given the times (1977) and the band’s interest in making a little money, they changed their name once again, this time to Liquid Gold, and went over to the dark side for good. Liquid Gold would release a string of disco hits in the late seventies and early eighties, including the mega-hit disco anthem “Dance Yourself Dizzy”. And the prog gods were most distressed.

You’ll notice I haven’t commented on any of the songs on this album, and I’m not too inclined to, but decorum dictates that there at least be some mentions.

None of the songs on the album are progressive in the least, and a few like “Since You Went Away”, “Sweet Sweet Surrender” and “Oh! Doctor” are nothing more than dance tripe in sheep’s clothing. The rest are comprised of fairly tame blues-leaning contemporary rock except for the short instrumental “Nickelodeon” which sounds (interestingly enough) like something Virginia Astley would have been proud to put out. Go figure.

So in the end this is nothing more than a really, really bad album, packaged and pushed out like a lamp- heated fast food meal on a Styrofoam plate. If that sort of thing appeals to you then you might actually find something to like on this record; if that’s the case, I might also suggest you improve both your musical and culinary tastes. This is a one-star album if I’ve ever heard one (and actually I’ve heard several so I can say with confidence this one fits the bill perfectly). Not recommended.

peace

ClemofNazareth | 1/5 |

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