MacLean & MacLean - Bitter Reality

They say you can't go home again - mostly because once you move out, it isn't your home. Still it's fun to go back to visit, raid the fridge and leave without doing the dishes. When I was a kid there were a couple of acts who managed to become legendary by only hearing about them second hand: Nestor Pistor and MacLean & McLean. When I got a Bill Cosby record, my cousin Jeff was playing George Carlin. One of those was safer than the other ...

Over the last couple of years I've picked up a couple of Nestor Pistor albums, and had my expectations dashed. Maybe they were funny once. Not to say there weren't some amusing moments, but on balance I just couldn't figure out how this stuff became the stuff of legend.

Here I am with Bitter Reality, the second album by MacLean & MacLean released in 1976, although the copy I have was on El Mocambo and was dated from 1980. At the time I had no idea that Burton Cummings was on the album, although apparently his management tried to block it due to some of the content ... they weren't successful. Jack Richardson, who produced so many great Guess Who tracks, was on board for this album - a mixture of live and studio cuts.

As I mentioned comedy albums can be tricky. I have a number of comedy albums that have aged like a fish in the sun. While this one certainly was tasteless at times, there were some little nuggets here and there that were pretty funny. The songs about pubic hair were great, and the :46 seconds of "Ken and Barbie" was more entertaining than the movie. The highlight on side one is "Frankie Fontaine (King of Genital Rock)" where Mr. Cummings more than acquits himself. I didn't want to laugh at "Shit" but I found myself getting actually laughing at one point.

At the time it didn't take a lot to be taboo and the guys went after everything. Not everything stuck to the wall, and frankly I get the sense most of what was being thrown around wasn't meant to - if it stuck great, if not the next one might. It's interesting to listen now and realize that audiences in 1976 weren't any more accepting than they are now ... the difference is that when people are offended now they have to let everyone know they're offended.

So while a good chunk of the album wasn't really all that funny to me, it was kind of comforting to realize that the more things change the more they stay the same.

Both Gary MacLean (1944–2001) and Blair MacLean (1942–2008) have long since passed on. I suppose they'd take some comfort knowing that while they never became comedy royalty they still left their mark. Excuse me while I go and change my pants.

Comments

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the 90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984 my (dearly departed, and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read just go back and skim it, I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off and on again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

Gary Wright - The Light of Smiles

Gary Wright followed up his double platinum release The Dreamweaver in 1977 with The Light of Smiles . It must have been a surprise and a bit of a disappointment when the album didn't perform as well as hoped. It did chart as high as 23 on the Billboard top LP and Tape chart according to what I read on the wiki, but it must have been more of a spike than anything. As the album didn't seem to attain any certifications that I could see. Not that it matters, I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again (more than once) most of my favourite albums never really attained any significant commercial success. I'd seen this album over the years, but that was about it. Gary Wright was Mr. Dreamweaver and I'm sure somehow it was worked into his epitaph when he passed away a couple of years ago. For me I was really curious about this one, lately I've been a sucker for finding albums that follow a big release. For Gary Wright he was flying high after The Dreamweave...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog