Customer Reviews

Golden Touch

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Especially when it comes to jazz and funk,I'm always excited to here about an album I never knew existed. And for that I never was even aware of this album until several years ago,not too long before Wounded Bird reissued it on CD. This came out the year of my birth. And over the years I've come to understand this wasn't the most comfortable era if you were a band playing funk music. The result of the whole "disco sucks" fiasco basically kept any uptempo R&B styles off of radio. I've heard it called by some "the freeze out". Interestingly enough this was when most bands tended to be at a certain creative height. For Royce Royce it was somewhat sad because they lost their original lead singer Gwen Dickey prior to this release. In the end they chose Richee Benson as a successor,because they knew they could never replace the apparently fame seeking Dickey. Benson is possessed of a more husky,typical female funk vocalist type of singing style. Luckily she also has a somewhat more jazzy approach to her singing. And that worked out fine because the band themselves were facing some of the biggest changes of their ever changing career.

As with their previous album and their second this album opens with a ballad "And You Wish For Yesterday". Honestly I've always had the unfortunate habit of skipping over the slow numbers on funk albums. Which is sometimes a mistake because,for example what would EWF's That's the Way of the World be without the stratospheric "Reasons"? However songs such as the title song "Love Is In The Air" and "Would You Please Be Mind" are the main reason for the four stars. None of these ballads has much character lyrically or musically beyond what the band had done. And NONE hold a CANDLE frankly to "I'm Going Down","I'm Wishing On A Star" and "Love Don't Live Here Anymore". All the same the uptempo numbers capture the transition much better. A good example is the boogie style of "I Wanna Make It You". The more synthesized style of boogie funk suits Rose Royce pretty well actually. "Funkin' Around",a witty story about smoking a joint in an airplane reflects producer Norman Whitfield's ever present love of the P-Funk sound,even as George Clinton's musical empire was crumbling at this point. "You're A Winner" of course not only sounds the most like the bands earlier funk but blends some of that boogie style in with the classic rhythmic crunch a well.

The album closes with the surprisingly retro (for 1980) funky soul of "Help Yourself",sounding somewhat more like 1970 than 1980. Now there's no question this isn't going to go down in history as one of Rose Royce's classic albums. And trust me they have more than a handful of those. But this is actually a lot more powerful than one might expect it to be. They were facing difficult musical times. And adding to that the extra responsibility of breaking in a new lead singer with Richee Benson. It is kind of sad that they only seemed to be able to strengthen their funk numbers and not deliver a complete album package,resulting in a handful of rather weak slow jams. But they'd done that well in the past. And the energy and drive that characterized the band from the get go wasn't gone yet. So you could kind of call it their first transitional album. That considering they'd wind up recording on up to the end of 80's. And that was likely a good cut off point as well. It's one of their least known albums. And while it's not exactly a full on lost treasure the high quality material here IS of THE highest quality.

This is a sweet little lost gem that features 50% jams and 50% ballads. It was a major improvement after a short period of losing their ground after coming out of the fading Disco Era, but they really started cookin' again when they released this one, the heavily synthesized and experimental "Jump Street" album (1981 Whitfield/Warner Brothers Records) and "Stronger Than Ever" (1982 Epic/CBS Records). On "Golden Touch," One Way comes to mind. NOT a bad thing and you cannot discount the heavenly vocals of lead singer, Ricci Benson. She puts the "rose" in the "royce." :-)