Alan Parsons Project: Classic or Dud?

I would doubt it with every fibre of my very being.

also: search the one & only Trefethen album!!!!!!

"In the mid-'70s, engineer, songwriter, and musician Tom Trefethen began a lengthy association with soft rock band Ambrosia, engineering their first three albums. The origins of this partnership can be traced to the early '60s when Trefethen and future Ambrosia bassist Joe Puerta struck up a friendship, learning guitar and writing songs together. While in high school, Trefethen played with another Ambrosia founding member, Christopher North, in the psych-rock outfit Blue Toad Flax. Along with Burleigh Drummond and David Pack, North and Puerta formed Ambrosia in 1971. Although it took the group a few years to score a record deal, their debut album -- produced by Alan Parsons and engineered by Trefethen -- was a Top 30 hit upon its release in 1975. Trefethen received industry recognition for his work when the record was nominated for a Grammy for Best Engineered Recording. Before the end of 1976, he engineered two more recordings that became Grammy nominees for his contributions, Take Me Back by gospel singer Andraé Crouch and Ambrosia's second effort, Somewhere I've Never Traveled. Also during this time, he worked on Parsons' debut effort, Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Crouch's Take Me Back was the first in a string of contemporary Christian albums Trefethen would engineer. Glow in the Dark by Chuck Girard, Welcome to Paradise by Randy Stonehill, and For Him Who Has Ears to Hear by Keith Green are all considered important releases in the development of the CCM genre. Trefethen's work with Ambrosia continued until the release of Life Beyond L.A. in 1978. After the album was released, he focused his attention on releasing his own album, which he had finished recording in 1977. He soon hooked up with Michael Nesmith's Pacific Arts label and engineered Nesmith's album Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma, released in 1979. A year later, Pacific Arts released Trefethen's album, titled Am I Stupid or Am I Great?/It's All Mom's Fault. Assuming all songwriting and production duties, Trefethen was joined on the album by all original members of Ambrosia helping out on instrumentation. Alan Parsons and Andraé Crouch also made guest appearances. The songs and the packaging of the LP suggested a loose concept album; the bizarre cover photo showed raincoat-clad Trefethen and sister Tina sitting atop a jet engine. Despite some promising response from college radio, Trefethen's eccentric brand of pop never found an audience, due partly to poor distribution and other label tribulations.

Trefethen took a break from music business after the release of his album but returned in the 2000s, building a studio and creating his own production company. With assistance from Parsons, he released the ambitious, Internet-only single "Johnny's Gone Away" in late 2005. Trefethen performed the song, written in 1980 after the death of John Lennon, at the 25th annual Lennon candlelight vigil in Hollywood. He also recently contributed his talents to the Mountainfilm Festival, composing and producing three original musical works for montages presented at the event. Interestingly enough, Trefethen's name is semi-famous outside of music. His 1969 sketches of a vehicle designed to break speed records are well known among enthusiasts of high-speed land travel."

There should be a TS thread between Bumrocks, Lovefingers, and the Dream Chimney people.

I agree Alan Parsons Project are underrated, but let's not exaggerate here :)

"Time" = Most depressing, most suicide-inducing song of all time = Classic

Seward OTM. Can't quite picture a goth band doing it though, unless they were industrial maybe.

Anyway, I've bought some CD's of APP now and the Edgar Allen Poe thing scared me off after only a few tracks. I really dug "I Robot" but I've still only heard it once (I was delighted to find it included Steve Harley singing on one track too! Wow!). "Eye In The Sky" was kinda half and half as far as good vs. boring tracks. I'm rather digging "The Turn of A Friendly Card" right now, though.

I was disappointed that I revived this and no one said anything! I'm playing "I Robot" now and it's great fun even where it kindof veers into the cheesier aspects of 70's music. That Steve Harley track is so ominous. In fact, there's a real darkness to much of this record.

From our upstairs porch I watch my neighbor,
a small town accountant with a voice like a toy keyboard,
begin his walk to work in his navy blue Botany 500 suit,
bought used in an L.A. consignment store while visiting his widower son-in-law and blind granddaughter,

and according to my neighbor, formerly owned by Gene Rayburn, the semi-retired game show host whose grotesque aura still haunts the seven o’clock time slots of my body’s internal clock along with Merv Griffin, Don Rickles, Cloris Leachman, Bert Convy, Wink Martindale, and the tenants of every Hollywood square,

those terrible hucksters, sickening adults/hyenas who seem to have had their protegés on every Main Street,
the men with perms, tight gray curls erupting over the alcoholic topography of their oiled faces,
a legion of salesmen ruined by bad translations of an already disastrous California ideal,
their eyes stinking like boiled cocktail onions as they emerged from “sleek” 1980 Thunderbirds,
all marinated teeth and snowplow moustaches,
fresh from invigorating divorces,
dragging tawny S-shaped girlfriends by the wrist to wooden gargoyle waterbeds where stereo systems built into the headboards played “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parsons Project endlessly through the night.

- DCB

snagged Pyramid on vinyl today, as of the first track it's terrific

I have a soft spot for some of this stuff. But I have to add, the only time I've ever been booed as a Dj was when I tried to sneak a little "Eye in the Sky" into my set.

Actually Chipmunks doing Tom Petty got booed once too, but thats' because people thought I was playing it on the wrong speed on purpose. So that doesn't count.

crap, RIP Eric Woolfson

http://www.facebook.com/EricWoolfson

I had no idea until reading an obit that he wrote all the music for the Alan Parsons Project.

That's terrible! RIP.

weird, playing eye in the sky right now and didn't even see this revive!

bummer RIP dude has made my ears happy

Hearing Mammagamma atm I'm always impressed at how ahead of its time and how good it sounds. I have a friend with me who asked who it was because she thought it was from this year.

"Time" soundtracks one of the best shots in A Fantastic Woman. Will the Alan Parsons Project be this year's John Denver?

apparently not.

also: for years and years I thought "time" by APP was actually "fly like an eagle" by Steve Miller.