CRYSTAL MANSION (1979 Album)
Crystal Mansion had one more shot with a third self-titled album in 1979, Crystal Mansion (also called Tickets) that was released on 20th Century Fox Records, the same label that released Milan’s only LP in 1964, I Am What I Am. A notice in Billboard magazine calls the band “a new record act” and notes that some of the “top veteran local jazzmen” have been recruited to accompany them, among them “saxophonists Jim Horn, Bill Green, Bud Shank, Buddy Collette, Marshal Royal, and Tom Scott, bassist Richard Davis, trumpeter Jerry Hey, trombonist Bill Watrous, keyboard man Steve Porcaro, and percussionist Alan Estes”. Three-time Grammy winner and album producer Brooks Arthur (who was the engineer on the band’s other two albums) is quoted as saying of the band: “I feel so strongly about Crystal Mansion’s musicianship and ability, I felt only guest artists of that caliber could perform well enough with this band.”
Allmusic’s Joe Viglione gives this 1979 release Crystal Mansion a somewhat higher rating of 2½ stars and says: “‘Lonely, Faraway, Missing You’ is a snappy opener, more appealing than Ambrosia, Player, and the Atlanta Rhythm Section, but falling short of the brilliant pop of Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds. However, that’s the market this band reached out to, not gritty enough to be Rare Earth and too hard to appeal to the fans of Debby Boone, who sings on the wonderful ‘Gather My Children’. The Crystal Mansion were a more than competent pop band that got lost in the rock & roll shuffle. ‘Place in Space’ is another stellar track – FM adult contemporary, if you will. The problem is that there wasn’t a format for solid adult pop music that didn’t make it to Top 40 prior to the invention of AAA [adult album alternative] radio.”
(August 2015)
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I think that I have now purchased all four of the albums by past UARB the Loons, one of three UARB’s that number Mike Stax among the bandmembers. While I still do not have the EP 5 x 4 by past UARB the Crawdaddys (which also included Mike Stax), I did pick up the 45 that features “There She Goes Again”. Even more surprisingly, I came across the other two albums by past UARB Crystal Mansion in some record store or other: their 1969 album Crystal Mansion and also their 1979 album Crystal Mansion that is also known as Tickets. (More recently, I did come across a copy of the Crawdaddys EP 5 x 4 on Bomp! mailorder, along with the original 7-inch Jesus Loves the Stooges – but I still don’t have a copy of the green-vinyl Kill City by Iggy Pop and James Williamson that also came out in 1977).
(Year 10 Review)
