Creatures of the Street

Jobriath | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 16, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Collector's Choice
• ASIN: B001CYZ91I
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,332 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Copy Of A Letter I Sent Collector's Choice Music, September 26, 2009

By 

Paisley Yankolovich "Not Unclean" (Laughlin, Nevada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creatures of the Street (Audio CD)

I just purchased this cd and am shocked at the liner article! How could you release a cd and enclose such a hateful eulogy for the artist? I'm not defending Jobriath or denying the truth of the article but surely it is an insult to the fans.

Heck, you even included the fact that no one knew or cared that the man had died!

Your company thought enough to make money of the guy, surely something positive could have been said about his work.

I assume this e-mail will do no good but I had to let someone know how cruel I felt your choices were here.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 1974 glam-rock LP crushed by the hype of its predecessor, September 16, 2008

By 

hyperbolium (Earth, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creatures of the Street (Audio CD)

Jobriath's self-titled 1973 debut received positive notices, but the ensuing publicity hype all but sunk the artist's critical reputation. He'd delivered the musical goods, but his manager's hype machine and a failed-to-materialized grand tour of European opera houses hung over this follow-up like a rain cloud. The notoriety that greeted the first openly gay rock star's debut had turned to scorn and apathy, resulting in little notice of a sophomore album that featured some wonderfully crafted, dramatic glam-rock. It probably didn't help that Jobriath's manager stuck his name in the credits as "Jerry Brandt Presents Jobraith in Creatures of the Street," and suggested the album was a romantic comedy.

Co-producing once more with engineer Eddie Kramer, Jobriath's second album's broadens his reach with additional orchestrations and showy production touches. He continues to sing in a high register, retaining a tonal resemblance to Mick Jagger and Mott the Hoople's Ian Hunter, but here he adds gospel and classical elements to both the vocal arrangements and his piano playing. Despite suggestions that this was a concept album, the concept remains obscure. Still, much of the album sounds as if it were a cast album to a stage musical with rock-opera pretensions. "Street Corner Love" is rendered as mannered show rock, and the stagey "Dietrich/Fondyke" combines a full orchestral arrangement, piano flourishes and a female chorus into a dramatic splash of film nostalgia. The funky "Good Times" sounds as if its tribal-rock vibe was lifted from "Hair" - a period play in which Jobriath had performed a few years earlier.

More inventively, the grittily-titled "Scumbag" is rendered as the sort of music hall country-folk the Kinks recorded in the early 1970s, and Jobriath's orchestration for "What a Pretty" is impressively threatening. Only a few songs, "Ooh La La" and "Sister Sue," break free of the theatricality to stand on their own as glam-rock. There are many similarities to Jobriath's debut here, but the overall result is more fragmented and contains few nods to radio-ready compositions. After promotional fiascos consumed Jobriath's debut, there seemed to be no interest in commercial pretensions on what would be his swansong. Dropped by both his manager and label, he retreated from the music industry, reappearing a few years later as a lounge singer named "Cole Berlin," and passing away largely unnoticed in 1983. With the reissue of his two Elektra albums, modern-day listeners can hear his music in place of his hype, and the music - particularly the debut album - is worth hearing. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I see the Sun; you call it Dawn. You are quickly gone, January 14, 2009

By 

J. Gunning "Allhallowsday" (Midst the Oaks of SRH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creatures of the Street (Audio CD)

Yes, JOBRIATH is from another world, being a creature of the street, and like an old alley cat, JOBRIATH struggled his way forward, hardly on the "straight and narrow," but as in LA STRADA, literally "the street," but figuratively "the road," JOBRIATH was a true contender determined to make his own music... and the characters that populate CREATURES OF THE STREET certainly seem borne of the road (or certainly belong there.) Leaning even more towards theatricality with his second, last, terminally and perennially overlooked album CREATURES OF THE STREET, JOBRIATH pushed the envelope in a kind of Revolutionary act that smacks more of Les Miserables than of American Pop music in the early 1970s (or Glam Rock, a decidedly English affair by this point). Nonetheless, it makes for a no less interesting listen than many well remembered record albums of that year (1974).
This album certainly illustrates how JOBRIATH was no BOWIE clone, perhaps in some ways a better songwriter but not a better singer (which ain't sayin' all that much) and though he does not quite discard the persona he had been accused of having pilfered, JOBRIATH further develops his potential as a recording artist with this indulgent and grand production, including good songwriting, full orchestra, a visionary and fragmentary style, all on a record that should never have been. On second thought: Boulder dash! If ever an artist needed to be heard, and whose potential was never fully realized, it was JOBRIATH. And like BUDDY HOLLY (not fully realized, the 50th anniversary of whose death is FEB 2009) both artists are creatures of their eras, and also, in their own time, unrealized geniuses, quickly gone.