Customer Reviews

Foreigner in His Own Land: Early Years

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Made in USA in 1993, Serial# COLCD-0539, Playing Time 41:47

At least, not exactly... For the record (no pun intended), this is in fact the one-and-only POOR HEART album (with LG on vocals), recorded in 1970 but only first released in 1987 on the PVC label (and credited to POOR HEART, not Lou Gramm.)

It was also released on CD that year under the LG monicker (on vinyl and CD, Thunderbolt Records) using "Foreigner In A Strange Land" as the working title (there's some humour there!)

Now, the liner notes on this 1993 release (which apparently nobody read before releasing the CD) state "Now for the first time, this album of vintage material is available to the public". Maybe I could sue them and bring my 1987 vinyl as evidence!

So don't expect anything like LG's "real" solo albums, "Ready Or Not" and "Long Hard Look". The music here really shows its age, but it still documents LG in the early stage of his musical career, whether he likes it or not: he did, after all, record this stuff...

To answer that above question and review: the answer is--he doesn't. This recording is just another release under yet another title from his 1970 Poor Heart recordings. Unfortunately, the masters of these recordings keep floating around out there and keep getting re-released in an attempt to capatilize on the Foreigner/Gramm name. Lou doesn't get any royalties for these songs, and he has frankly said that he hates the quality and performance of them as well. He'd prefer it if you DIDN'T buy these recordings, as he feels it is not representative of his talent and he'd rather not have people waste their money on them.

You are much better off hunting around for his Black Sheep recordings from 74-75 if you want an excellent representation of his early pre-Foreigner career.

Lou Gramm was with a group called Blacksheep before Foreigner. By that time he was demonstrating talent. Before that, where was any glimpse of a future rock star? There isn't a good song or vocal performance to be found here.

When I received the CD I immediately opened it and put it on. Even though it isn't the typical Lou Gramm sound, it was fun to listen to. The overtones sound like Three Dog Night's music.Glad to have it in my collection