The Osmonds - Crazy Horses

Time for another edition of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you. This time we go deep into the vat of cheese and dip into The Osmonds.

Yeah you read this right. The Osmonds baby, and this is worth your time - really.

Months ago I found a double album of material by the Osmonds. From the brothers to Donnie and Marie. It was a terrible cover, but on the inside were some surprises. Especially the stuff from the early '70s. I figured why not revisit Crazy Horses this looked like it had the potential to be awesome or awful.

Far from being the joke you think you know the punchline to, there was a time these guys were the real deal. The album opens with "Hold Her Tight" a hard rocking song with a heavy driving riff that bears more than a passing resemblance to "The Immigrant Song" released in 1970 by Led Zeppelin. The difference being the smoking horn section and the talk box licks.

Heavy metal wasn't a thing yet and while this may seem pretty tame now, the album flitted between heavy rock and pop. "What Could It Be" had a dreamy chorus that took a page out of the Beatles playbook. It's a pretty cool song, and the strings and horns just add to the whole.

The killer here is the title track. Crazy Horses is a surprisingly heavy song with the Wah! Wah! actually being played through an organ with a wah-wah pedal. Props where props are due. Like a lot of the songs the guys had a horn section to augment the song. It all worked.

There's so much baggage associated with the Osmond brand now that it's hard to think of them as serious musicians and not a carefully packaged novelty act tailor made for '70s television variety shows. While a lot of their music was questionable, the guys showed on their 1972 releases Phase III and Crazy Horses the boys weren't joke, and they were a force to reckoned with. The album end with a "Big Finish" and is probably the best 21 second closer I've ever heard.

By all accounts the guys were an honest to goodness band, with Merrill on bass and lead vocals, Wayne on lead guitar, Alan on rhythm guitar, Donny on keyboards and Jay on drums. Oddly it was around this time that Donny was playing keyboards and not contributing a lot on vocals as his voice was changing at the time.

If you've never listened to an album by The Osmonds you are missing out. This was classic '70s rock, and those boys could indeed play. This was a surprise to me too, but boy how they really were a little bit rock and roll after all.

Comments

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