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Hard To Find 45's is a collector's dream from the Eric Label. Those of us who are completists, working on musical projects or just fans find out very quickly that most Cd collections have the same songs, more or less, the big hits of whatever decade. How many times did I buy a collection that had one song I wanted and fourteen I already had. Another trick was to buy a one hit wonder's Greatest Hits CD, and though some are interesting, others had little to offer besides that one hit. And even in these days of buying MP3 versions of individual songs, there are still many songs unavailable that way, especially when you go back to the Fifties and Early Sixties, which is the general territory of Eric. A British label, Ace, is similar but they rarely venture post British Invasion whereas Eric has even done some 70's and 80's material.
You can be confident with this label. It's the kind of label where the people involved love the music, know their stuff and are dedicated to getting it right. You'll find only original masters here, engineered by people who know how it should sound, and highly informative booklets that discuss every track. The licensing of the songs only lasts so long so get them now. Once before most fell out of print and were selling for around $100.00
With Volume 14, Eric goes where no other oldies label has dared to go, into the Eighties. In the booklet even they acknowledge that "oldies" traditionally applied to the Rock'n'Roll Era up to 1964. But already they had included a great deal of Seventies pop so why not the Eighties, too. Hey, it's been thirty years since the Eighties (seems impossible, doesn't it...) as distant to now as the thirties were to the Sixties, so why not? And besides, they made Eighties Pop as their music of choice, not New Wave or Hair Bands. The result is one of the most even-sounding of the Hard To Find collections, the Seventies and Eighties pop going together very well, a very smooth and mellow mix overall. These were the kinds of very polished pop songs with meticulous studio engineering, mostly electronic keyboards, synthesizers and drums, that sounded great on component stereo systems of the era.
Most of the songs here also share the fact that they were written by the performer, some of whom were in a band and others who were professional songwriters who most often wrote for others. The collection begins with the earliest charting song, Albert Hammond's late 1972 lament about trying to make it in the LA entertainment scene, a song that seems cheerful on first hearing until you notice the misery in the lyrics, apparently a true story for him. Smokie sounds a lot like Dr. Hook & the Medicine show, while Alan O'Day sounds positively crazy in Undercover Angel. There have always been occasional retro pieces, and both of these conjure up the Thirties, Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band in a disco medley and Taco (his real name) being full on Eighties synth and electronics. There area number of mellow love ballads here with Champaign doing a soulful How About Us, Double's The Captain of Her Heart with its reserved backup, and the Climax Blues Band sounding very untypical (almost like a slow Steely Dan or 10cc number) with I Love You largely because it was bandmember Derek Holt's solo project. Paul Davis and Bertie Higgens also perform mellow love songs, Higgins' particularly mellow with its Bogie and Bacall references.
J.D. Souther had been around the Laurel Canyon-LA scene for a long time as a songwriter (often for The Eagles) and performer (he was part of David Geffen's attempt to duplicate his success with Crosby, Stills & Nash with a Souther, Hillman Furay Band that never really took off). I always thought he sounded too much like Orbison in You're Only Lonely but the booklet explains this was a deliberate tribute to the great singer. Bruce Hornsby created a beautiful piano based, country-influenced sound for his debut album and The Way It Is remains one of the best songs of the Eighties however untypical it sounds. He went on to get ever spacey and out there under the influence of the Grateful Dead, so if you like his early sound get the original album and not the Greatest Hits. The big sound of the ecstatic sax and guitar in Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street have made it a uniquely memorable song, and who would have ever thought that Phil Collins and Philip Bailey would ever team up for a duet?
There's more, of course. Eric's collections are always close to 20 songs, which is why they have taken the place of many 80's and 90's series that tended to have only 10 songs because earlier CD's held less data. Of course they're rare. Maybe not as rare as they were in the pre-Internet era, but still would generally require you getting the Greatest Hits of a lot of one-hit-wonders. I worked on making my own tape or CD mixes back then and I can personally vouch that getting ahold of songs like It Never Rains In Southern California or Break My Stride was practically impossible.
I'm glad to see that Eric keeps broadening their horizons and look forward to whatever new directions they will explore.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2016
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Top reviews from other countries
Edu A.
otra joya mas de la serie ...hard to find
Reviewed in Spain on March 13, 2013A.P. Moonen
Superior Sound Quality
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2013