Super Hits of the '70s: Have a Nice Day, Vol. 10 (CD - 1990)

Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry.

Compilation producer: Gary Stewart.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry.

Compilation producers: Gray Stewart, David McLees, Bill Inglot.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grien.

Remastered by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry.

Compilation producers: Gary Stewart, David McLees, Bill Inglot.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Remastered by Bill Inglot and Ken Perry.

Compilation producers: Gary Stewart, David McLees, Bill Inglot.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Compilation producers: Gary Stewart, David McLees, Bill Inglot.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Compilation producers: David McLees, Gary Stewart, Bill Inglot.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

Compilation producers: Gary Stewart, David McLees, Bill Inglot.

Includes liner notes by Paul Grein.

On their 15th go at '70s song archaeology, Rhino dishes up the decade's kaleidoscopic music menu in all its intriguing and over-the-top glory. Tapping the 1975-1976 period, the 12 cuts take in indelible novelties (C.W. McCall's 18-wheeler hit "Convoy"), '50s nostalgia (Pete Wingfield's "18 With a Bullett"), Defranco Family-issue kitsch (David Geddes' "Run Joey Run"), and glam pop (Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night"). There's also plenty of soul and funk variants, like Jigsaw's disco symphonic "Sky High," Joe Frank Hamilton's blue-eyed "Fallin' in Love," and Hot Chocolate's dancefloor-filling "Sexy Thing." The maturation of the singer/songwriter is also essayed (Janis Ian's still-solid "Seventeen"), while a country tearjerker finds its crossover legs (Jessi Colter's "I'm Not Lisa"). A few duds, a few gems, and a fair share of songs you will not need to hear a third time around. ~ Stephen Cook

This might have been one trip into the past that Rhino Records should have thought about very hard before making. Oh, there are two really good moments here, Cliff Richard's sole thrust at U.S. success, "Devil Woman," and the Sanford/Townsend Band's upbeat, catchy "Smoke From a Distant Fire," but otherwise a lot of this CD is given over to records that -- unless you had a lot of good times listening to the radio while driving during the late Ford or early Carter administrations -- it's difficult to imagine anyone wanting to own this terribly much: Rick Dees' brain-damaged dance hit "Disco Duck," which did everyone the service of hammering a nail in the coffin of the disco boom in the course of becoming one of the biggest selling singles of 1976; "Get Closer," which was among the weakest of Seals & Crofts' hits, despite the presence of Carolyn Willis of Honey Cone and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans fame; the rural melodrama (seemingly by way of Erskine Caldwell) "Judy Mae" by Boomer Castleman (aka Owen Clarke of the Lewis & Clarke Expedition); Dean Friedman's adenoidal tale of Garden State romance, "Ariel" (which, if not for its break, would be uncomfortably similar to the Hollies' "Carrie-Anne"); Engelbert Humperdinck's "After the Loving"; and "Living Next Door to Alice" by Smokie. It's nice to hear this stuff mastered to Rhino's usual high standard, though how nice it is to hear some of this stuff itself is problematic. Peter McCann's "Do You Wanna Make Love" and Hot's "Angel in Your Arms" fill out the middle ground between the peaks and valleys of this disc, and the notes are unusually humorous, even for this series. ~ Bruce Eder

One reason that a lot of rock & roll fans hated the '70s was the lightheartedness that came to characterize radio -- basically, radio became fun, and it was rough, if you were an Allman Brothers fan or a devotee of almost any harder rock sounds, to tolerate a lot of the lighter sounds that filled the airwaves. Volume eight of this series shows just how confusing it could be flipping the dial in the summer of 1972; hard rockers like Jo Jo Gunne (an offshoot of Spirit) and their "Run Run Run," country/rockabilly band Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen and "Hot Rod Lincoln," Sailcat's "Motorcycle Mama," and Python Lee Jackson's "In a Broken Dream" (featuring Rod Stewart on the vocals) are here, interspersed with Gallery's relentlessly upbeat "Nice to Be With You," Cleo Laine's performance of the pop-devotional "Day By Day" from Godspell, the downright strange "How Do You Do?" by the Dutch duo Mouth & MacNeal, and the Addrisi Brothers' blue-eyed soul hit "We've Got to Get It on Again." The latter, for the singing/composing duo, was one of a pair of early-'70s triumphs, the other being the 5th Dimension's rendition of their "Never My Love." The whole disc is cheerfully schizophrenic with a few interesting and bizarre moments amid the one-shot wonders; the single edit of Argent's "Hold Your Head Up" has retained its power across the decades and was among the few self-consciously heavy-sounding records to scale the charts in those days. And then there's "Sylvia's Mother" by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. Among the tracks here, the latter, an over-the-top country-pop-flavored satire, was, along with "Alone Again (Naturally)" by Gilbert O'Sullivan and the Gallery cut, probably responsible for giving AM radio the bad name it got. They do sound very good here, however, and they are fun (as it most anything intended that way by professionals) in moderation. ~ Bruce Eder

For their 12th go at '70s hits and kitsch, Rhino delivers a beefy selection of indelible radio fare to prove just how strange and wide-open that decade's music was. From the MOR pop end of things, smashes like Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun" and Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling" qualify as prime examples of the one-hit wonder retirement plan, while cuts from Stealers Wheel and Redbone chart just the beginnings of the Beatles' ongoing hold on popular music. And, yes, there's true kitsch, too: If Marvin Hamlisch's sousa ragtime ("The Entertainer") and Ray Stevens' slide whistle and banjo novelty ("The Streak") don't grab you, Mocedades' proto-Celine Dion grandstander ("Eres Tu (Touch the Wind)") and Sister Janet Mead's peppy bit of symphonic blasphemy ("The Lord's Prayer") will. But there's more, notably rocker's delights from Rick Derringer, David Essex, and Black Oak Arkansas. A gas of the truly disorienting variety. ~ Stephen Cook

From the sublime to the ridiculous -- that was what popular culture of the '70s was like (with detours into the sublimely ridiculous), and pretty much defines this 12-song CD. Opening with the mega-hit, Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting" (gorgeous arrangement, great beat and tune, disposable lyrics), it passes through Sugarloaf/Jerry Corbetta's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" (which manages to incorporate several musical references to the Beatles, as well as the names of three of them); Hot Chocolate's "Emma," a disquieting and offensively overwrought, melodramatic tale of a suicidal actress; Sammy Johns' hippie fantasy "Chevy Van"; and the Hudson Brothers' miserable, sub-McCartney ballad "So You Are a Star." And Polly Brown, of the British group Pickettywitch, does a pretty fair Diana Ross impersonation on "Up in a Puff of Smoke." So far, the disc has offered us a string of one-hit wonders and short shelf-life talents, but we finally hit some more substantial talent with Leo Sayer's infectious "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)" and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils' eerie, ethereal "Jackie Blue." Michael Murphy's "Wildfire" maxes out the "haunt count" on this disc, but a genuinely close second comes as the finale, 10CC's soaring "I'm Not in Love." The sound is excellent, and the notes are more informative than usual. ~ Bruce Eder

One of the virtues of this ubiquitous series (which seems to have become, for Rhino, the corporate equivalent of the dance to the death of the hapless girl in The Red Shoes) is that it's usually "safe" -- except in cases of the most egregious drivel, there's nothing on most of these volumes that's going to do you too much harm hearing again. Oh, there are two reminders of how low the bar for acceptably stupid pop crazes was getting -- actually, "Stars Wars Theme/Cantina Band" by Meco isn't that bad a cut, but it does open up a Pandora's box of bad memories of other Star Wars ephemera (including echoes of Saturday Night Live's surreal sketch of a dorky lounge singer rendition of the movie's title theme), and, by skipping over Meri Wilson's "Telephone Man" after the first listen, chances are good you'll come out unharmed but maybe lightened up a bit in mood from the other 11 songs. Sides of the '70s that are good to go ankle deep into include Jay Ferguson's and Exile's respective riff-driven AM anthems "Thunder Island" and "Kiss You All Over"; Dan Hill's sensitive singer/songwriter classic "Sometimes When We Touch"; Warren Zevon's crunchy, tuneful, darkly comical "Werewolves of London" (which was one of the rare non-Stones, non-Byrds tunes ever to rate a cover by the Flamin' Groovies); David Gates' post-Bread MOR film-based hit "Goodbye Girl"; and Bonnie Tyler's raspy-voiced hook-fest "It's a Heartache." Perhaps the most unusual cut on this 12-song CD, however, is Ram Jam's high-wattage update of Leadbelly's "Black Betty," which, along with the use of the latter's music in association with the TV rock showcase Midnight Special, saw to it that the Hudie Ledbetter estate was collecting lots of money (if not a great deal of recognition) in the 1970s (and in the 1990s, when this rendition was remixed and re-released). The sound is excellent and the notes are even funnier than usual. ~ Bruce Eder

Super Hits of the '70s: Have a Nice Day reaches an amazing 19th volume with this collection, which includes laid-back yet upbeat hits like Orleans' "Still the One" and soft rock and pop gems such as Climax Blues Band's "Couldn't Get It Right," Kenny Nolan's "I Like Dreamin,'" Alan O'Day's "Undercover Angel," and Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy." David Dundas' quirky, instantly catchy "Jeans On" and Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" -- aka the theme to Rocky -- provide some contrast to the rest of the collection's smooth, sweet, often sentimental pop, but for the most part Have a Nice Day Vol. 19 captures the '70s at its sappiest, which means it's completely successful in its goals. ~ Heather Phares

This could easily be the most enjoyable single volume of the Have a Nice Day series, filled with memorable singles (most of them good) by a range of artists (some of them one-shots) who reached their respective commercial peaks in 1971-1972. A few of these songs also seemed to define the audience sensibilities of their era, if not necessarily their artists. The producers even admit that "Precious and Few" by Climax, featuring Sonny Geraci (formerly of the Outsiders), was the underlying motivation for conceiving this series in the first place; typical of its era, it is the perfect pop/rock single, cut by an artist that simply didn't leave behind an accompanying album even remotely as popular or successful musically. "Precious and Few," "Brand New Key" by Melanie, and "Don't Say You Don't Remember" by Beverly Bremers (which sounds like a '70s version of "End of the World") comprise the soft side of this disc, and the folky-serious side is provided by Jonathan Edwards and his Top Five hit "Sunshine" -- a perennially popular ode to iconoclasm, it transcends its time. Much more evocative of the era is "One Tin Soldier" by Coven, which is a great big-band folk-rock number about the futility of war (this dates from a time when even a lot of people on the right had wearied of war as a national pastime) belted out by the lead singer like she's performing for her life -- at least, the song sounds like the band really means it, much more so than the feature film Billy Jack to which it was attached. Mostly, though, this disc is characterized by its very ballsy rock numbers, most notably "Hallelujah" by Sweathog, Lee Michaels' soulful girl-trouble lament "Do You Know What I Mean" (featuring the drumming of Frosty, aka Bartholomew Smith, whose percussive skills also drive "Hallelujah"), and Redbone's Cajun rocker "The Witch Queen of New Orleans." Those were all, in the context of the time, very hot-sounding sides. Progressive rock even reared its head on the pop charts that year, with "Joy" by the English studio band Apollo 100 adapting Johann Sebastian Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," and "Softly Whispering I Love You" by the English Congregation, complete with full boys' choir, both of which used classical music in a different way as the jumping-off point for some rock experiments that worked, at least commercially, as novelty records. The sound is superb on this volume, and the whole disc constitutes a pretty full order of the kinds of sounds that were filling the airwaves in the transition years from the '60s to the '70s. ~ Bruce Eder

This volume in Rhino's Super Hits of the '70s series may prove especially gratifying, not only for the songs themselves -- there are a lot of tracks here that one might like owning but wouldn't necessarily purchase specifically -- but also for heralding the end of the disco boom; there was, indeed, a morning after the long night. There's some wimpy AM material here, to be sure, most notably "Sad Eyes" by Robert John and "You Take My Breath Away" by Rex Smith, but generally the stuff on this disc was made by people who had a point to make. Hot Chocolate's "Every 1's a Winner" makes for a lively opening, and Nick Gilder's "Hot Child in the City" is a distinctive cautionary tale. It all turns into fun with John Paul Young's "Love Is in the Air," the work of ex-Easybeats Harry Vanda and George Young that provided a respectable and hook-laden end to the disco era, quickly picked up by the more prodigiously talented Tom Jones, and which has since seen a revival with use in two television commercials circa 2001. And we get one of the triumphs of Nicolette Larson solo career, her Top Ten version of "Lotta Love," a song written by Neil Young, for whom she'd previously served as a backup singer; Suzi Quatro's and Chris Norman's "Stumblin' In" marked a high point for both performers in America. All of that, plus John Stewart's very serious "Gold" and the Knack's still-powerful "My Sharona," Sniff 'N' the Tears' "Driver's Seat," and Ian Gomm's "Hold On" could almost make an onlooker 20-plus years later think that the '70s weren't so bad after all. As with the rest of the series, the mastering is impeccable. ~ Bruce Eder

This disc is something of an education, for its intriguing mix of talent represented -- a quarter of the acts were nearing the end of their effective careers as chart-topping artists: The Raiders, Tommy James, and the Fortunes (all of whose careers went back a decade or more) would never see hits as big as what is represented here ever again; meanwhile, Lobo, Jerry Reed, and Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds were just starting their careers as stars. And then there were the one-shots, like Chase and Daddy Dewdrop, whose sole moments of glory are presented on this disc. No one ever said that rock music needed to be strong in the brains department, at least in terms of content -- listeners should remember that when listening to Daddy Dewdrop's "Chick-A-Boom (Don't Ya Jes' Love It)," which took sleazy lust and a slowed down strip-joint beat to number nine on the charts in the spring of 1971. Coupled with "Burning Bridges" by the Mike Curb Congregation as bookends on this volume, they run from the salacious to the serious, with stops along the way for country novelty digressions (Jerry Reed's "When You're Hot, You're Hot"), pop culture religious devotion ("Superstar" from Jesus Christ Superstar), topical songs ("Indian Reservation" by the newly re-christened Raiders, aka Paul Revere & the Raiders), easygoing folk-rock (Lobo's "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo"), and some exquisitely crafted pop (Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds' "Don't Pull Your Love," the Fortunes' "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again"). Why Redeye, whose delightfully upbeat "Games" illuminates this disc, never had another hit of this size is one of those great unsolved mysteries -- it was an original, and one would think there'd be another good one somewhere in their song bag. A rare Richie Havens appearance in the Top 20, with a bluesy reworking of "Here Comes the Sun," is a reminder that careers can endure for decades without a string (or even a pair) of big chart singles. For a time, it even seemed like Mike Curb, of the Mike Curb Congregation, might endure for decades, though not in music. This disc closes with the upbeat "Burning Bridges" by the Mike Curb Congregation. Featured over the closing credits of the movie Kelly's Heroes, the song dealt with lost and missed opportunities, and it might even have been prophetic about Curb himself. Notorious for dumping all of the seemingly drug-related acts off of MGM Records when he headed the company (thus likely hastening that label's doom) and bringing the Osmonds to the forefront of popular culture, Curb later ended up as the obstructionist Republican lieutenant governor of California, making mischief whenever he could against Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. His antics didn't get him anywhere with the voters, who rejected Curb in a primary run for governor and ended his career in elective office. ~ Bruce Eder

Latching onto this volume of Rhino Records' Have a Nice Day series is like finding a rich vein of tin -- yes, mining it might make you rich and successful, but there's no glamour in it. The opening track, Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis," fools you because it's actually a worthwhile and enduring piece of pop/rock that wouldn't do anything but delight audiences in any era -- and some of the stuff here, such as Golden Earring's "Radar Love" and Wet Willie's "Keep on Smilin'," does endure about as well as the Muldaur cut. On the other end of the scale are numbers like Jim Stafford's "My Girl Bill," which is too cute for its own good no matter how you take it, and is the kind of record that made many '60s listeners think of giving up radio, and "Billy Don't Be a Hero" by Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, which could have pushed people over the edge if the Stafford song didn't -- although it was at least encouraging as a change in attitude from earlier songs such as "The Ballad of the Green Berets" and "Long Live Our Love," which seemed to celebrate the meat-grinder carnage of Vietnam. In between those poles are Andy Kim's "Rock Me Gently" and Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods' "Who Do You Think You Are," passable airwave fillers that are of interest here for the clarity that the CD mastering gives them, which allows one to appreciate the playing and craftsmanship of those records. Similarly, one is unlikely to own First Class' Beach Boys-like "Beach Baby" -- a worthwhile latter-day beach classic -- or the less good but so bizarre it ought to be heard "Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)" by Joey Levine (working as Reunion) anywhere except on a collection like this. And Paper Lace's "The Night Chicago Died" -- awesome in its awful, hook-laden, pop culture pandering glory -- will thrill anyone buying this disc with a straight face. ~ Bruce Eder

This mid-'70s volume (covering material primarily dating from 1974 through 1976) has a distinctly soft country-rock tone, characterized by Ian Thomas's "Painted Ladies" and King Harvest's timeless "Dancing in the Moonlight," broken by pop/rock successes such as "(I Don't Want to Love You But) You Got Me Anyway" by the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver and Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues." The two hits that everyone remembers from this set, however, are Brownsville Station's teenage rebel anthem "Smokin' in the Boy's Room," which implanted the late Cub Koda -- guitarist and co-author of the song -- forever into American popular culture, and Orleans' "Dance With Me," maybe the prettiest country-rock song of the decade. Mike Post's "The Rockford Files" was an anomaly, as the only instrumental theme off of television to chart during the decade. Nazareth's "Love Hurts is an amazing transformation of a '50s ballad into a hard rock number. And Morris Albert's "Feelings" has been mangled by lounge singers and parodied so many times that the original has become unlistenable, and it is mercifully saved for last. ~ Bruce Eder

With the 20th volume of this collection of the '70s, Rhino breaks its chronological survey and goes back to pick up the pieces it missed the first time around. And with hits like "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" (Mac Davis) and "Disco Duck (Part 1)" (Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots) topping the offerings, you have to wonder, why bother? ~ Michael Gallucci

This reviewer wasn't prepared to enjoy this album as much as he ended up doing; back in the summer of 1973, he worked in a record store whose owner insisted that "Playground in My Mind" by Clint Holmes (which opens this collection) be played over the PA continuously for two weeks, an experience comparable to getting one's teeth drilled with a rusty nail (the workers would throw on the Allman Brothers' Live at Fillmore East as soon as the owner left, natch). Actually, the only real embarrassment here, from a rock standpoint, is Maureen McGovern's "The Morning After," which comes off as pure pop-schlock even in some of the more dubious company here and likely would have disappeared without a trace if not for its use in the disaster movie blockbuster The Poseidon Adventure. Otherwise, one is struck not only by the high quality of some of the musicianship -- not just on Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell's "Dueling Banjos," but also on Deodato's jazz/R&B/classical fusion hit "Also Sprach Zarathustra" -- but also the range of sounds on this disc, not that any of it is terribly challenging or demanding. Those latter two cuts are as close as anything here gets to revelatory or earth-shattering -- the rest runs the gamut from innocent expressions of love ("Funny Face" by Donna Fargo, "Daisy a Day" by Jud Strunk) through decent mainstream pop/rock (B.W. Stevenson's "My Maria") and a Latin-flavored pop-soul jewel (El Chicano's "Tell Her She's Lovely"), to a surprisingly edgy piece of misogyny by Gilbert O'Sullivan ("Get Down"). The most unusual tracks here are the two most topical numbers: Albert Hammond's "The Free Electric Band," a silly tale of generational conflict that seems to think little of '60s idealism, and "Uneasy Rider" by the Charlie Daniels Band (from Daniels' pre-right wing days), a comical tale of an encounter between a long-haired hippie and a bunch of rednecks outside of Jackson, MS. The digital audio is excellent -- far better than one remembers these tracks sounding on AM radio or 45 rpm playback -- and the notes are reasonably thorough. ~ Bruce Eder

Taking on the first two years of the decade, Super Hits of the '70s, Vol. 16 revels in that sound of rock played by a TV studio orchestra, with brass and fuzz guitar a-dueling and rock opera bombast getting a good neutering: While Ides of March's "Vehicle" heeds the call of the former to Blood, Sweat & Tears proportions, the Assembled Multitude's anemic "Overture From Tommy" tackles the latter. The budding months of the Woodstock Nation's ten-year-long hangover also offered up Christian camp anthems by the Seekers ("I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing") and Robert John ("The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), saw some late-hour elevator strains from Ferrante & Teicher ("Midnight Cowboy"), and witnessed a last gasp of bubblegum psychedelia, compliments of Tin Tin ("Toast and Marmalade for Tea"). And there were some bona fide classics, too, thanks to Ten Years After, Arlo Guthrie, and one-hit wonder Blue Magic. It's like shimmying with a headache. ~ Stephen Cook

Rhino takes the low road for their sixth volume of '70s radio fare, mostly sidestepping the mega hits in order to bring you a mixed bag of true marginalia from the early years of the decade. Save for Stampeders' river-boat harmony side, "Sweet City Woman," and Five Man Electrical Band's Partridge Family-issue anthem "Signs," the majority here probably won't activate even the most persistent of nostalgic memories. That said, kitsch buffs will still delight in Bobby Russell's novelty portrait of the familial weekend ("Saturday Morning Confusion"), John Kongos' T Rex imitation ("He's Gonna Step on You Again"), and Lulu's overheated ballad musings ("Oh Me Oh My [I'm a Fool for You]"). And let's not forget the insidious influence of Tony Orlando & Dawn's "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" (Pipkins' "Gimme Dat Ding"), as well as premonitions of the Doobie Brothers' swamp country (Brewer & Shipley's "Tarkio Road") and Linda Ronstadt's belting ways (Gayle McCormick's "It's a Cryin' Shame"). ~ Stephen Cook

A celebration of hits from 1972, this volume of Have a Nice Day opens with a great one-two punch and stays strong until near the end, when it falls into a boringly conventional vein. The intro is "Brandy" by Looking Glass, one of the most powerful one-shot hits of the decade, and in second spot is the upbeat, catchy acoustic-textured "Beautiful Sunday" by Daniel Boone, which, if it isn't in the same league with Looking Glass's entry, at least has great hooks and holds up to repeated listening. Gary Glitter's strange, quasi-instrumental (or at least wordless) Top Ten hit "Rock and Roll Part 2" represents one of the more successful glitter rock entries onto the U.S. charts, and "Speak to the Sky," a number 15 hit by Rick Springfield in 1972, is closer in spirit to the good-time music of the later Easybeats than to the earnest emoting of "Jessie's Girl" a decade later. "Popcorn" by Hot Butter was an almost proto-disco number that, despite its underlying silliness, had an almost hypnotic power over listeners with its swirling synthesizer arrangement and the soaring melodic arc at its center. Some of what's here isn't quite as distinctive as those entries; "I'd Love You to Want Me" is merely a superb piece of pop/rock from Lobo, and "I Believe in Music" is a suitably upbeat pop adaptation of a much more spiritually oriented original by Mac Davis. Cashman & West's "American City Suite," after an opening that seems to imitate "Younger Girl" (and several other Lovin' Spoonful numbers), turns into one of the more daring pop-music efforts of its era -- the seven-minute conceptual piece starts out as an acoustic guitar-based folk-rock piece and ends in a style closer to Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park." Chi Coltrane's name was bounced around the airwaves for a while, courtesy of a heavy advertising and promotion campaign by Columbia Records, and her larger-than-life voice deserved more success, but if she was only to be remembered for one hit, she could have done a lot worse than "Thunder and Lightning" -- an original by the singer with a powerful horn and sax arrangement that fits her singing perfectly. The disc concludes with the Edgar Winter Group's "Frankenstein," a chart-topping instrumental that seems even harder than it is in the wake of Gilbert O'Sullivan's slow romantic ballad "Clair." ~ Bruce Eder

This is a goofy entry in the series, mostly owing to the presence of Hurricane Smith's "Oh, Babe, What Would You Say," Loudon Wainwright III's "Dead Skunk," and Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show's "The Cover of 'Rolling Stone'," interspersed between Albert Hammond's "It Never Rains in Southern California," "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel, "Brother Louie" by the Stories, Dobie Gray's soul ballad "Drift Away," and "Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne," which had the distinction of becoming an almost-major hit by Looking Glass. Nothing, however, fully prepares one for the closing track, the defiantly upbeat bubblegum pop sensibilities of "Heartbeat--It's a Lovebeat" by the DeFranco Family, a sound one had hoped was lost to the world when Donny Osmond's voice changed. ~ Bruce Eder

The 37 minutes of prime early '70s radio fare on this, the third volume of Super Hits of the '70s: Have a Nice Day, shows just how lucky AM radio listeners were in 1970-1971. The material runs the gamut from heavily produced pop/rock product like the Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You" through Mungo Jerry's skiffle-like international hit "In the Summertime," to the downright strange, chant-like "Neanderthal Man" by Hotlegs (the post-Mockingbirds and Mindbenders, pre-10CC incarnation of Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme), but it's all eminently listenable, and much of it is surprising. Alive & Kicking's "Tighter, Tighter" was one of Tommy James's big successes of his post-Shondells career, as well as the one national hit for which the Brooklyn-based group is remembered. Similarly, Brian Hyland's blue-eyed pop-soul rendition of Curtis Mayfield's Impressions-era classic "Gypsy Woman" was a triumph for producer Del Shannon, returning Hyland to the charts for the first time in eight years. There are lots of one-shots and near one-shots here: Denver-based Sugarloaf's "Green-Eyed Lady" seemed to point the way to a big future that somehow got derailed -- why the Jerry Corbetta-led quartet couldn't come up with another hit for four years is anyone's guess, given that this was an original and the group (especially Corbetta at the keyboards) had a field day expanding the song in some reasonably progressive directions within the confines of the pop idiom; similarly, R. Dean Taylor, the most successful white artist ever developed by Motown, managed a chart-topper with the ominous "Indiana Wants Me" but never equaled that success; and Bobby Bloom's "Montego Bay," which hit the Top Ten in the late fall of 1970, was the veteran songwriter's first hit of his own, and might've jump-started the whole reggae boom in America by three years, but it was an isolated triumph. Bobby Sherman demonstrates why his star was falling with the distinctly pop sound of "Julie, Do Ya Love Me," while Punch, a one-shot A&M Records act, closes out the 12-song disc with "Fallin' Lady," a frantically paced piece of pop/rock from the summer of 1971 that sounds like Tom Jones meets Up With People. None of it is exactly profound (that what FM radio was there for), but it all sounds great, and this reviewer would've stayed tuned to a set like this. ~ Bruce Eder minimize