Alessi

Artist: Alessi

LP: Driftin'

Song: "I Don't Wanna Lose You"
[ listen ]
Song: "Space"
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My friend Trevor and I went to Easy Street Records & Cafe in West Seattle for breakfast yesterday, and while we were waiting for our table I rummaged through some bins and found the Alessi Brothers' third LP! The identical twin heartthrobs invited some other famous and talented musicians to join them this time around, including Seals & Crofts, Lee Ritenour, Melvin "Wah Wah" Watson....and even Paul Stanley stopped by to contribute guitars and backing vocals to one of the songs. Gene Page arranged strings on both "I Don't Wanna Lose You" and "Space," and that's the late Richie Havens contributing the non-Alessi-sounding voices on the latter. 

So does anyone else think it's odd that even though Bobby & Billy are identical twins, one has a sorta' hairy chest and the other one doesn't? I mean men weren't shaving their chests yet in 1978, were they?

[ The Alessi chests: not identical. ]
 

Apollo

Artist: Apollo

LP: Apollo

Song: "Apollo"
[ listen ]

Song: "Space Cannibals"
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After my appointment at the Doctor's office in Fairhope, I headed north to the small town of Daphne to visit a record store there called Bay Sound. It's a small store, but loaded with lots of neat vinyl at good prices. I picked up a pile of old soul, R&B and funk, in addition to a weird Spanish-language clown record that I'll likely be posting here soon. The guy working at Bay Sound was friendly and willingly sampled tracks from my pile of interesting-looking LPs. His assistance was only interrupted once, when he accidentally charged a customer $1,095 for a $10.95 CD using the store's new credit card payment system. Understandably, he had to stop playing my records to make a few calls.

Anyway, this 1979 self-titled album by Apollo is one of the things I picked up at Bay Sound. The group was originally called Kryptonite, after the rocks that could destroy Superman, but the folks at Marvel Comics realized that allowing this group of musical youngsters to name their band Kryptonite would surely destroy their enterprise, so the group had to come up with another name...Apollo! Though their lineup featured talented future record executives Benny Medina and Kerry Gordy (the antics and escapades of Benny living with the Gordy family in Beverly Hills is evidently the basis for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air!), Motown wasn't interested in funding a second Apollo album. So this is, unfortunately, Apollo's one and only LP. You can read all about the group on Wikipedia here and go here to read a harsh and humorless Apollo review.

[ Apollo: 1979 ]

[ Bay Sound — Daphne, Alabama ]

Inter Galactic Touring Band

Artist: Inter Galactic Touring Band

LP: Inter Galactic Touring Band

Song: "Love Station"

[ listen ]

Song: "Robot Salesman"

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My Vibra Pocket Translator, which will be helpful for my volunteer gig at Casa Latina, arrived in the mail yesterday and I was thrilled to find it packed with an expensive bottle of wine. I'm also expecting my Vibracon Globe to show up in a couple of months (if my report isn't rejected), but I'm kinda' bummed that the Globe Robots have been discontinued. You can read about Inter Galactic Touring Band here, where you'll find out what famous soul singer handles lead vocals on "Love Station."

Omega

 

Artist: Omega

LP: Skyrover

Song: "Metamorphosis"

[ listen ]

After spending long and tedious days presiding over the nerve-jangling Clash of the Titans, Zeus would often mosey over to the lobby of the Mt. Olympus Hotel where he would relax to the soothing, otherworldly music of the Hungarian progressive psychedelic space rock band Omega. You can read about the group here, where you can also find a list of all their albums.