Formed in 1969 from the ashes of the Small Faces along with Ron Wood and Rod Stewart, rowdy bar-room rockers the Faces released four albums during their relatively short career. The final one was Ooh La La, which I picked up at a boot sale on Easter Monday for £2:
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| Faces - Ooh La La (1973) |
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| Rear cover |
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| Gatefold |
With Rod on the verge of leaving the band due to the success of his solo career, it's Ronnie Lane whose stamp is all over this record, particularly on Side 2, where he is credited with writing or co-writing every cut.
The front cover art is a Python-esque novelty with instructions to "squeeze top of album down". This makes the top-hatted feller's jaw drop to reveal a set of gnashers, and literally minutes of fun can be had making him laugh while his eyes roll. 70s album covers were so much more fun!
My top tracks - The title track of course, co-written and sung by Ron Wood:
and the album openers; Silicone Grown and Cindy Incidentally.
Next up, for £1 was Millie Jackson's 1978 album Get It Out'cha System:
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| Millie Jackson - Get It Out'cha Sytem (1978) |
It opens with the funky title track, which is then followed with the three-song suite of Keep the Home Fire Burnin'/Logs and Thangs/Put Something Down On It, where our Millie takes the fire/log/forest metaphors to the saucy max. A heartfelt cover of Dolly Parton's Here You Come Again opens Side 2. Sandwiched between this and Kenny Rogers' Sweet Music Man are three soulful ballads, two of which were co-written by Millie and her long-time collaborator and co-producer Brad Shapiro.
Get It Out'cha System reached no. 14 on the US R&B album chart. My top track:
Lastly, for 50p was Street Life by jazz- funksters the Crusaders:
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| Crusaders - Street Life (1979) |
By the time Street Life was released, the Crusaders had been around for 20 years. This album was their biggest success in terms of sales and is worth the admission price alone for the wonderful 11-minute disco-favourite title track featuring the vocal talent of Randy Crawford, the single version of which featured in 1997's Jackie Brown:
There's a record warehouse here in Singapore where the owner has obviously got the bulk of his stock from a defunct radio station (the singles tend to have "Rediffusion" written on them in marker). The soul section has a good selection of Stylistics and Millie Jackson records which are slowly migrating to my house. Caught up is my favourite Millie album, though Lovingly Yours is good too. She's enjoyably mucky, so Singapore couldn't have been that straight-laced in the 70s.
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