Customer Reviews

SAILOR

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There's no doubting that Capitol Records' most successful act during the 1960s was the Beatles. So naturally when the new Fab Four record was ready for release, Capitol put all their energy behind it & pretty much giving their other acts not nearly as much attention. One of the bands that suffered from that record company back-burner status was the Steve Miller Band. After a fantastic debut earlier in 1968 with CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE, the band returned to the studio to follow it up. The psychedelic flights of fancy that marked FUTURE would still be in place, but the burgeoning pop sense that would make Steve one of the most successful artists of the 1970s was becoming more prevalent. Not to mention, one of his band members was already contemplating going solo. All that had an effect (beneficial in the end) on what became SAILOR.

Whereas FUTURE had no hit single to speak of, SAILOR finally had one, even if it was a relatively minor one. "Living In The U.S.A." was of course a live standard in the early, pre-stardom days & just edged into the Hot 100 on its first release, doing similar business when it was re-issued shortly after "The Joker" made Steve a superstar. It's a fantastically upbeat blues romp with excellent harp work by none other than Steve himself. The fact that the band had originally been called The Steve Miller BLUES Band is quite obvious here. I believe except for maybe "Space Cowboy", "Living In The U.S.A." is one of the few early songs that still gets an extensive airing in concert.

The straight-up blues sound is continued on songs like the very informally-recorded "Gangster Of Love" (originally recorded by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, but has since been all but usurped by Steve himself) & Jimmy Reed's classic "You're So Fine". While Eric Clapton may have been England's premier White bluesman, Steve Miller came pretty close to being America's own version, even if he originally never approached Clapton's success rate.

Surprisingly, Steve himself only contibutes to 4 of the 10 songs, including the aforementioned "Living In The U.S.A.". The opening instrumental "Song For Our Ancestors" helps show off Steve's guitar chops which are more considerable than one may think. "Dear Mary" is a haunting, Beatlesque (in the horn, especially) pop song that is almost tear-inducing. "Quicksilver Girl" is equally poppy & very accessible, making it a prime candidate for a single that never was.

Boz Scaggs had proven his potential on his two contributions to CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE & again he does with his 3 songs on SAILOR. "Overdrive" (more country-blues than city) & "Dime-A-Dance Romance" are raw, sweaty blues numbers that show little of the polish he would adopt in much of his solo work. "My Friend" was co-written with drummer Tim Davis & is probably the most psychedelic Boz has ever gotten with his songwriting (I wonder if that's his ringing guitar on the hook). It'd be interesting to wonder what would have happened had Boz stuck around with Steve & the band to megastardom, but perhaps Boz's departure after SAILOR was all for the best. "Lucky Man" was written by keyboardist Jim Peterman & is a slower blues number showing that Steve & Boz weren't the only great songsmiths in the group (the only member not contributing here is bassist Lonnie Turner, who would see one of his songs done on 1969's BRAVE NEW WORLD).

Even with the scant commercial attention being given them & one member about to depart for an equally successful solo career, you couldn't fault Steve Miller & his band for their stamina. They kept on going whereas other bands would grow disillusioned & quit. Perhaps with the great music being made by them on albums like SAILOR, Capitol Records were too impressed to dismiss them from the label. Yet that was very much to their benefit for that gave Steve Miller time to grow creatively & commercially. However, SAILOR proves that Steve was at least making the most of his extended apprenticeship.

Sailor is sort of a darkhorse album, maybe because it is one of the Steve Miller Band's earliest, but it is their best. Everyone knows "Living In The U.S.A." is on Anthology, but what is the studio album?--not sure. Yet Sailor is loaded, with this classic and so much else, definitely no wasted cuts. It contains some pretty, mellow songs, with a little psychedelia, and a number of excellent rockers, steeped in blues. All are marked by instrumental definition and fluidity, except for Boz Scaggs' raucous, fuzz-box-infused "Dime-a-dance Romance." While blending perfectly in the songs, the instruments also have distinctness and clarity, no distortion. Sure, this was the '60s (tho late), but Sailor is made up largely of potent, bluesy rock and roll, not easygoing folk rock. Still, you know what it is you're hearing, even in synthesizer enhancements, and you hear it clearly. This is especially fortunate in a solid substantive recording like this, entirely lacking the pop that often characterized Miller's future work.

The first two tracks are soft, atmospheric numbers, both exquisitely textured. The instrumental opener, "Song For Our Ancestors," with nice background organ, is fittingly punctuated by ship foghorns and melodic, vibrating guitar lines. In "Dear Mary," a pretty ballad, the band creates a sort of isolation, psychedelic in atmosphere, with soft soprano vocals and instrumentation that is mellow and distant. Sound effects of raining come in midstream, and there is even a sort of baroque or Elizabethan horn solo.

The big one, "Living in the U.S.A.," is the best song in an album full of good company. Very fast-paced and hard-driving (literally: check out the car rev opening and closing sound effect), it is a ride through Americana, yellow, brown white, red men, "looking for Uncle Sam, to give you a helping hand...we're living in a plastic land." Closing line: "Somebody give me a cheeseburger." It is not the rhythm and lead guitar that are the stickout, but Jim Peterman's cruising organ and Tim Davis's great drumming. "My Friend" is a lively, earnest statement, very 60s: "So you think you know just what goes on inside your head my friend"? Also quite fast-paced, it has a zippy, whirling instrumental fadeout into the former song.

The five songs following the mellow, somewhat psychedelic "Quicksilver Girl" are full of neat guitar and organ riffs, and swagger in both music and lyrics. Indeed, Sailor introduced Steve's "Gangster of Love" persona, later to surface in the lyrics to "The Joker," and otherwise. Starting with a Wolfman Jackish "bad cat" voiceover, the song is somewhat instrumentally sparse, tho with bluesy bounces, but what cool lyrics: Steve alludes to famous western gangsters, then ropes 55 girls, kisses them, and puts 'em on a freight train. With a truncated pause, "Gangster of Love" also straddles neatly into the trailing number, "You're So Fine," and its bouncy organ. The latter is the only other cover (written by Jim Reed), but has an interesting similarity in sound to "Gangster" (John Watson). Scaggs' better entry is "Fortune Overdrive," with acoustic rhythm guitar eclipsed by the flickering, high-toned leads. A little slower is Peterman's smug "Lucky Man," with more neat instrumental riffs.

From a technical musical and song-writing perspective, Sailor is top notch. As my comments suggest, it is also extremely well produced, and the lyrics and occasional sound effects add to the music to create an atmosphere that is theatrical (tho not melodramatic). These are the reasons it is one of my favorites.

The audio of the 1994 domestic first five catalog Steve Miller CD's has now been supplanted by a set of remastered 2007 Japanese mini-sleeve CD's.

This set also marks the return of availability of "Your Saving Grace", which has been inexplicably out-of-print in the U.S. for some time.

The '07 'sleeve audio has increased volume and better clarity, particularly in the percussion, where the high-hat and symbols are much more prevalent.

The audio on the Japan editions are also superior to that on the Steve Miller box set.

As all 'sleeve releases are limited edition, do not delay in getting yours, as they will probably sell out quickly.

Links to the 2007 Japan mini-sleeve remasters:

Children Of The Future
Sailor
Brave New World
Your Saving Grace
Number 5

WHAT IS A JAPAN "MINI-LP-SLEEVE" CD?

Have you ever lamented the loss of one of the 20th Century's great art forms, the 12" vinyl LP jacket? Then "mini-LP-sleeve" CD's may be for you.

Mini-sleeve CDs are manufactured in Japan under license. The disc is packaged inside a 135MM X 135MM cardboard precision-miniature replica of the original classic vinyl-LP album. Also, anything contained in the original LP, such as gatefolds, booklets, lyric sheets, posters, printed LP sleeves, stickers, embosses, special LP cover paper/inks/textures and/or die cuts, are precisely replicated and included. An English-language lyric sheet is always included, even if the original LP did not have printed lyrics.

Then, there's the sonic quality: Often (but not always), mini-sleeves have dedicated remastering (20-Bit, 24-Bit, DSD, K2/K2HD, and/or HDCD), and can often (but not always) be superior to the audio on the same title anywhere else in the world. There also may be bonus tracks unavailable elsewhere.

Each Japan mini-sleeve has an "obi" ("oh-bee"), a removable Japan-language promotional strip. The obi lists the Japan street date of that particular release, the catalog number, the mastering info, and often the original album's release date. Bonus tracks are only listed on the obi, maintaining the integrity of the original LP artwork. The obi's are collectable, and should not be discarded.

All mini-sleeve releases are limited edition, but re-pressings/re-issues are becoming more common (again, not always). The enthusiasm of mini-sleeve collecting must be tempered, however, with avoiding fake mini-sleeves manufactured in Russia and distributed throughout the world, primarily on eBay. They are inferior in quality, worthless in collectable value, a total waste of money, and should be avoided at all costs.

Sailor, Miller's second album in 1968, bends from his trippy first album "Children of the Future." Still with the same band, his focus seems to be more on the 3 1/2 minute song as opposed to the suites he composed before. What he did retain was his love of sound effects to create a musical landscape. This album puts you somewhere, down by some bay on a gray, overcast morning. Seagulls, boats and foghorns open up the album with the track "Song for our Ancestors." An interesting journey with tremolo guitars and pulsating Hammond B-3 organ. "Quicksilver Girl" and "Dear Mary" are his most psychadelic on the album, giving way to the undeniable heaviness of tracks like "Livin in the USA" and "You're so Fine" "Livin in the USA" was the track that, many years ago, kicked the door open for me with the music of the SMB. I was so jacked up with the organ "cha-chucks" that accompany Miller's harmonica. Jim Peterman's B-3 playing has so much much thickness to it, it just rockets the song along. Scaggs and Miller also turn in great rhythm playing on this and every tune on the album. This album is trippy, yet greasy in a great way. Great late night party music. Yahoo!

This is one great record- and (for what its worth, did you know that Steve Miller (band) is NOT is the Rock and Roll of Fame? I don't think he's been nominated!
The Steve Miller Band had 5 top notch records up to 1970-This record in particular demonstrates all the great qualities of the band.
I got this record in 1970- simply because I heard the opener on late night FM radio and was captivated by the foggy San Francisco Bay imagery the song conveyed-An appropriate opener for a LP entitled 'Sailor'.
The album migrates from the spacey opener to some pretty tough blues rock number "My Friend" and the FM radio rocker "Living in the USA". Boz Scaggs contributes the album closers, two pieces of great blues rock. "Dime A Dance Romance" is great rocker.
"Quicksilver Girl" is one of Steve Miller's best songs and an overlooked gem.
I also like the organ and drumming on this record, a feature prominent on all of Miller's 60s records.
I would like to see his other 60s CDs given the remastered treatment this release and "Number 5" appears to have received.
ALL of these releases are worth purcahsing as they are ALL solid rock albums.

If you're looking for those "lost" albums that capture San Francisco music c.1967/8 then you're in the right place for "Sailor" pretty well epitomises the musical mix swirling through the city's ballrooms at the time.

As with many of their Bay Area contemporaries, The Steve Miller Band were essentially a rock/blues group seeking to incorporate Haight Ashbury ideals into their 12 bar roots. Truth was they were better than most because not only could they play but they also recognised that combining "hippie" music with dance-hall R&B was a pretty impossible task. So, on "Sailor", they take a more pragmatic approach - put simply: you want dance stuff, we do it, you want the ethereal stuff, we do it too, but don't ask us to mix them up too much.

The result? Well... first off, the album contains two low-key classics: "Song For Our Ancestors", a superbly ambient instrumental that starts with almost two minutes of unaccompanied foghorns (truly!) before giving way to a waveringly distant organ, a detached guitar riff and a muffled timpani back-beat to produce a track that, unless you were there, is the closest you'll ever come to experiencing San Francisco in the early morning of its hippie dawn; and, "Quicksilver Girl", whose sparse guitar work, simple lyrics and overly wistful harmonies somehow distil the gentle spirit of "love & peace" without collapsing into corny trash. Second off, you get two excellent, hard-hitting progressive rock cuts in "Living in the USA" & "My Friend" that are up there with anything produced by the more successful San Francisco bands. And... finally, (ignoring the trite "Dear Mary") a half album's worth of fairly high quality late 60's R&B.

Good music, but uncomfortable bedfellows. Yet, despite (or because of) its odd mixture of styles, "Sailor" stands alongside Country Joe & The Fish's and Jefferson Airplane's early albums as one of the best snapshots of what was actually going on in a now very distant time & place.

I think that just about everyone of age 15-33 has seen Steve Miller Band live. With usually about two tours a year, SMB is not a tough act to catch. Everyone's heard Gangster of Love, Abracadabra, and Jungle Love. What makes Sailor so different is that it is a departure from traditional SMB style. The music on this album is much less pop-esque, and features more hard-edge guitar riffs and eloquent song-writing. My Friend is a rock anthem that is on my top-five best song of all time lists. (A shout out to all the U of I Betas for whom this song has special meaning.) Living in the USA is another memorable tune, and the disc also features the favorite Gangster of Love. The limited airplay and circulation of this disc make it a tough one to come across, but a worthwhile one to own. I'd highly reccomend adding this disc to your classic rock collection.

Steve Miller is one of those artists you just can't help but like--a lot. If you come from pop, mainstream rock, or like more esoteric music--any kind of music, really--Steve's songs are hummable, rocking, slick and down to earth. Even as a little kid in the 1970s, I loved "Fly Like An Eagle" when I heard it on the radio

"Fly Like An Eagle" was one of those ditties that worked on both top forty AM and progressive FM. When a guy can do that, he really has something going on.

Now before Miller was flying to the bank like an eagle, back in the 1960s, he was making good albums. So good, even Paul McCartney got in on the fun: on Brave New World, Paul did some of his best bass playing--anywhere-- on a track called "My Dark Hour," a track he played on, hanging out at EMI, during a Let It Be blowout with three other guys you might know.

As far as I know, Sailor does not have a fab, but it does show you why the best bassist in the world may want to lend his Hofner chops to Steve.

The Steve Miller Band was only a few steps more diverse than a psychedelic blues band in 1969. You will not on Sailor hear that 1970s perfect shine you will on The Joker or Fly Like an Eagle.

But there is some great psych, nice blues, and a great, simple, stoned track called "Quicksilver Girl" that my 1970s baby sitting girls, who used to come with both Joker and Eagle, probably never knew existed, and probably still don't

And even if the god who was to become Sir Paul is not on Sailor, a very young Boz Scaggs is. If the guy who made Silk Degrees came out of this band, that has gotta tell you something

My favorite Steve Miller album. As good as I rememberd it. You may not like it as much if you are a big fan of his more popular, later, material.

I bought this album in 1969. Great album! But, of course, anything Steve Miller puts out is going to be a hit. I highly recommend this album. His music was very unique for the times in the late 60's and he evolved quite nicely as time went on.