Customer Reviews

Opus X

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

 

 

This would be one of my top 10 desert island CDs. It's one of those albums I can listen to straight through without skipping a song.

It's the perfect blend of Hard Rock and Pop. Bill Henderson always had a knack of writing perfect AOR music. With the help of Ab Bryant and the late Brian MacLeod, they came up with nine perfect little gems.

This was the last album with this line-up. MacLeod and Bryant were splitting time between Chilliwack and The Headpins. Bill Henderson always felt that this album was 1/2 Chilliwack, 1/2 Headpins, which really isn't a bad thing. I always felt Brian MacLeod was was an exceptional singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He left us much too soon.

On this album you'll get the hits "What'cha Gonna Do?," and "Secret Information." "Lean on Me" isn't the classic version of the song you hear on oldies radio, rather, it's an excellent song in it's own right -- one of the highlights of the album. The best song on the album to me is "Don't it Make You Feel Good," a great guitar driven piece.

One thing that you'll notice about this album is the crystal clear production. The only thing that keeps this album from having five stars is the packaging. If you're going to pay $32 for an import CD, you expect a little more bang for your buck. Granted, when it comes down to it, it's the music that's worth paying for, it's nice to have the extras that go along with it. For instance, it'd have been nice if the lyrics were included (as the album had)AND the original photos from the album. Flesh it out a little. It would have been nice to have had the original package.

Side One
1. Whatcha Gonna Do 4:16
2. Secret Information 3:33
3. She Don't Know 4:27
4. Night Time 3:52
5. Lean On Me 4:13
Side Two
6. Don't It Make You Feel 4:19
7. Really Don't Mind 3:42
8. You're Gonna Last 5:09
9. Midnight 4:57

One of my favorite all time - never get tired of it. "Don't it make you feel good"... Sure does...

I wont go in to great detail. I just wanted to put in my vote. This is one of my all time favorite albums. I have listened to some of their other stuff and am not sure how they pulled this off. This is a beginning to end album. There is not a bad song on it. I cant praise it enough.

The songwriting and musical talents of Bill Henderson and Brian "Too Loud" MacLeod meld with crystal-clear production and engineering in perfect harmony. Opus X has everything a music fan could want, from the radio hits "Whatcha Gonna Do" and "Secret Information" to the hard-rocking "Don't It Make Ya Feel" and "Really Don't Mind" to the haunting "Midnight". This album has frequently been referred to as half-Chilliwack, half-Headpins, but to me every song flows smoothly together from beginning to end. Check out MacLeod's drum passages in "Lean On Me", all performed and recorded in one take.

I am desiring to get this album again, this cassette slipped through the cracks on DJ lists. I remember seeing Chilliwack singing this song on "Solid Gold" in 1982 - I was bought. "Whatcha Gonna Do" started the album right, then came the great "Secret Information," which to me had the complete blend of bass, rhythm and harmony. Ended with "Midnight," which began slow but kicked in at the end. This album showed Chilliwack the ability to versify the talents through their music. I lost the album years ago but the memories of that album is still there. If you do get it, you won't be disappointed.

This album is an attempted sell-out to try and ride on the success of the one great hit off the previous album "Wanna Be a Star." The hit track concerned which happens to be my favourite Chilliwack tune is "My Girl" and "She Don't Know" so blatantly tries to rip off this tune that even some of the guitar riffs are just blind copies of the riffs of that track let alone the overall groove and I guess if the overall result is a better track then that's not so bad but unfortunately the band even fails to do this while ripping even themselves off.

This is effectively "Whatcha Gonna Do" and "Lean On Me" (the best track here) with mediocre fillers making up the rest. You would be hard pressed to find an even more disjointed and uncoordinated album by anyone. This sounds like at least 2 artists writing independently for themselves with the output compiled into this mess. Side One (for those of us still familiar with vinyl records) consists of pop ala third rate attempts of the great works of The Little River Band and maybe Hall & Oates while Side Two is a hard/classic rock lover's nightmare with some of the worst hair metal and rip offs I've ever heard.

"Don't It Make You Feel Good" is so bad that it actually made me laugh because the guitar riff reminded me a lot of that wonderful rock music parody by Cheech & Chong on their excellent album "Greatest Hit". The only redeeming factor of the next two tracks: "Really Don't Mind" and "You're Gonna Last" is the very good slide guitar work by the guitarist on the solos which I can tell you as a guitarist myself is not easy to execute when it is done together with normal playing ala the great Jeff Beck used to do and yet if you didn't know any better you'd think that these two tracks sound exactly like Lou Gramm and Foreigner on a really bad day.

The last track "Midnight" is really a rip off of a combination of Foreigner's "Waiting For a Girl Like You" and "Girl On the Moon". This is really depressing given how much better the previous album "Wanna Be a Star" was and there is nothing worse than a band selling out than one that does so so poorly.

The extremely high price tag in case you are wondering is because this is a mini-lp sleeve (mlps) replica from Japan and even this design is poor made from thin, flimsy cardboard that looks like it will fall apart once the glue gets old. One redeeming factor though is that this has been remastered 24 bit and so the sound quality is quite good. The inner jacket has been faithfully replicated and so resembles the original lp with all the lyrics written in tiny print on it.

The bottom line is that this is a very poor attempt at selling out and trying to milk the success of a previous far superior album and falling way, way short. Given the high price of this mlps version as well, I find it hard to justify the value of just good sound quality, two strong tracks and a bunch of very bad fillers that rip off other bands' work.

Not recommended.