Customer Reviews

Silk Degrees

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Man I love this CD. I was 10 years told when it first came out in 1976, or something like that. In 1992, I bought the cassette tape to play in my little surfwagon when I was living in Honolulu. The musicians in this band are awesome. Basically, it's Toto playing in the background to Boz Scaggs' voice. Total groove music! Songs are killer! I know this review probably doesn't help, but you've gotta be into 70's music to fully appreciate this CD. Late!

Boz Scaggs happens to be part of a minority. That is, he happens to be able to mix the sound of the blues, jazz, pop and rock in his recordings and it makes for some gorgeous music. Harbor Lights and We're All Alone are very smooth and quite soothing and just make you feel good. Lido Shuffle and Georgia have an uptempo pop/rock beat that almost commands you to get up and dance. I think Boz Scaggs is a very gifted and talented musician and "Silk Degrees" is absolutely, positively worth it's weight in gold. A triumph for Boz.

Boz Scaggs' 'Silk Degrees' is just one of those 70's albums that was soo good that fans and music lovers alike seem to be more familiar with the album as a whole than any one single song. Taken as a whole and on a song-to-song consistent basis, it is that good.

Yes, it was a surprise when Ally McBeal started singing to 'Georgia' on the radio in a recent episode, but like many other fans of this record, I *immediately* recognized the song, the artist, and the album. 'Hey, that's Boz Scaggs, from the Silk Degrees album!'

In fact, 'Georgia' remains one of my favorite cuts from the record, and just an exquisite work of pop art that transcends the decades since its first release. Tender and sweet, but it moves along nicely so that it is difficult to classify its genre. Is it pop? Soul?

'What Can I Say', 'What Do you Want the Girl to Do?', 'It's Over', are some of my other favorites, but it was 'Lido Shuffle' that got me first toe-tapping as a tender nine-year old. Its relentlessly upbeat tempo, fun lyrics and unmistakable chorus are just so wonderfully brassy, and the crisp, finger-snaps accompanying the bass line are just so fresh that it sometimes makes me just want to scream with delight! One of these days I swear I am going to hear that song and just tear my clothes off, run out into the street and do something completely embarrassing and mortifying. I won't care, it will be wonderful, and I'll have Boz to thank for all of it.

In fact, 'Silk Degrees' is so enjoyable precisely because it is such an upbeat, optimistic-feeling, irrepressibly upbeat record. You can tell that Boz and crew really, really feel that everything is going to be alright in the end. And you know, they ended up being right.

This CD has a pretty good rhythm and blues sound. The songs are very memorable and have a nice variety to them. Boz had left the Steve Miller Band to try and do more R&B oriented work when he released this album and he found one heck of a studio band in a group that would go on to become Toto, so this album has a real tight sound to it. Silk Degrees is also a great name for this album because that is really what the music sounds like, silk.

There are several great cuts from this album. "Lowdown" is of course the most classic song off this album, and it deserves the recognition it gets, since it's a really great song. This may be the greatest dance song to come out of the last half of the seventies. "Georgia" which was actually featured on a recent Ally McBeal episode may well be my favorite. It's quite a workout song and has a lot of fun in it. "We're All Alone" is a great ballad with downright haunting lyrics at times. "Harbor Lights" is another good ballad, and "Lido Shuffle" gets my toes tapping and makes me want to dance every time it comes on.

In some ways this album at times almost has a funk sound to it and I think it is that above all that helps to try and distinguish it from other 70's R&B music despite the fact that it is awfully close to that sound.

If you like this album and want to try out something a little more soulful, I recommend you check out Joan Armatrading by Joan Armatrading which was actually released the same year, 1976.

I would recommend getting this album if you like to dance, if you like R&B music, or if you like 70's music in general. Overall this is a pretty good album and it works well as an album, as well as the individual songs standing out.

Okay, you might be looking at the mix that I put together and be like "how can you do that and make it sound good?" Well, Boz Scaggs answers that queston with "Silk Degrees." This 1976 album takes elements of each of these and turns out an extraordinary set of music. "Lowdown" is just such a breezy song that will make you feel at ease, comfortable, and cool at the same time. "Lido Shuffle" will get you up and moving. The band playing for Scaggs would spin off and become "Toto", an FM album rock mainstay in the 70's that would transform into a Grammy winning Top 40 favorite in the 80's. This album is not "Toto", it has a different sound, a great sound, a very down to earth roots based sound. Man, why can't there be music produced like this anymore? Such a shame... Pick this up today.

Quite often, when someone says they like a particular song, it's because of the tune's groove. You see little kids respond to grooves they like by dancing and moving around. That said, "Silk Degrees" is an album that has held up for almost 30 years now, cuz it's a nonstop groove festival! The late, great Jeff Porcaro shows us all (at the tender age of 22) that he understood what made a song great - "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it." Whether it's a ballad, reggae tune, or my all time favorite drum groove ("Lowdown") Jeff keeps the party going. Why do you think they used "Georgia" on an episode of "Ally McBeal?" It gets you up and moving. Actually, I heard "Lowdown" in the grocery store the other day and many people were tapping along on their carts, probably unaware of it, because music is that powerful. When you couple Jeff's drumming with Boz's great voice, and great songs (for years I thought "Lido Shuffle" was "eeo, oh oh oh oh!"), you have the definition of a classic, something that hasn't aged a day and still demands regular rotation. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" was never more true than for this CD.

One reviewer states that it's "hard to beleive that Boz once ruled the airwaves" with the songs from Silk Degrees. It's not hard to believe for those of us who remember when that was the case.

The trouble is, because Boz's work before and after this LP were rather unremarkable, Silk Degrees has been largely forgotten, which is a shame.

A couple of reviewers have stated that "fans of 70's music" will like this CD. Wrong. Fans of good music from any era will enjoy it. If you're under the impression that the junk which passes as music today is good, you may be in for a shock to hear music on Silk Degrees which is very smooth, tight, clean, melodic and simply enjoyable to listen to. And don't beleive for a second that nonsensical assertion that Silk Degrees is "disco." This sounds nothing like the Bee Gees or Donna Summer.

"Lowdown", "Lido", "We're All Alone" were the big, big songs of their day, and it was amusing to see "Georgia" resurrected on Ally McBeal. As other reviewers have said, there isn't a bad song on here.

The superlatives and accolades for this monumental opus have just about been exhausted and would just be repetitive at this point, so I have but one thing of potential interest to share with you. I had the pleasure of catching a Boz Scaggs concert on a snowy night November 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana, on the beautiful limestone IU campus. I'm not going to waste your valuable time by telling you how much I enjoyed Mr. Scaggs and how lucky I feel to have been able to see the man perform in his prime and in his full glory. But I will relay to you what Mr. Scaggs himself recounted as the backstory for the song "Georgia." The song is about a man who fell, and subsequently paid a hefty legal penalty, for a girl named Georgia, who, though she was a minor, was "all woman" (Mr. Scaggs's own words.) Right there and then, I realized what Mr. Scaggs had been singing about all along when he mentioned "search lights" and "if I ever get out of *here*" (*here* probably being the state penitiary.) Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this tidbit that Mr. Scaggs shared with us in the audience in November 1980.

My hands-down favourite recording of all-time. Any fan of R&B, soul or jazz should make this disc the centerpiece of their CD collection. The production values on this disc are absolutely amazing (especially when you take into account 1976 recording technology) and putting this album together must have been pretty costly for Boz - he appears to have spared no expense whatsoever in creating this masterpiece. An absolutely essential addition to your collection.

I remember when "What can I say" and "Lido Shuffle" were released as a 7" inch double-A sided single in 1976. Boz is the buz" were the words across all his posters.

Back then all the album tracks received airplay which helped shape this as the classic album it is today. From the feel good "Lowdown" to the catchy "It's Over" and "Georgia" this album is full of songs to get you up and dancing! Add some gorgeous ballads to balance it out ie. "We're All Alone".

Follow up albums didn't fare as well but contained glimpses of Silk Degrees ie. the singles "Hollywood" and "Breakdown Dead Ahead".

For anyone considering purchasing this album, you will not be disappointed.