Customer Reviews

Super Hits Of The '70s: Have a Nice Day, Vol. 16

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Have A Nice Day-Volume 16" is one of my two favorite CD's in this 25 volume series from Rhino Records. The majority of the tracks here are good, with "Vehicle" and "Ride Captain Ride" possibly being the best songs here. This collection also contains some fine instrumentals as well. You get "Midnight Cowboy" and "Theme From Tommy". Nonetheless, there are some sleepers, such as "Toast And Marmalade For Tea", "The City Of New Orleans" and "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast", hich is perhaps the best one in the sleeper category. The track that really turned me on to this CD is "Small Beginnings" by Flash, a group formed by Yes alumni Peter Banks and Tony Kaye. The beginnings of Flash were rather small indeed, for they never had another hit single. "Small Beginnings" did make the US Billboard top 30, and is the progressive-rock masterpiece of this CD. This is the only place you can find this track, so fans of Yes and oldies music should have this title in their collection.

Rhino pulls no punches with their now-infamous collection of 70's tracks that offer some hidden treasures, but also a lot of buried (and best that way) musical corpses. This particular edition ain't all that bad, considering some of the other earlier volumes.

The Blood, Sweat and Tears-inflected "Vehicle" and "Ride Captain Ride" are fine, stand-out tracks that still rock out on various radio stations. However, it is the folk-flavored songs that will pique the most interest. "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (before infamously being transformed into a corporate shill for Coca-Cola) is offered up in its earlier, sentimental form; but will I be able to hear it without thinking of Coke? Nah, doubt it!

Other stand-outs include "The City of New Orleans", one of Arlo Guthrie's best songs by far. Also included is a rocker still played on FM classic-rock stations today, "I'd Love to Change the World", which has great acoustic and electric guitar by frontman Alvin Lee, yet lyrically leaves a bad taste in my mouth with its shameless (hopefully tongue-in-cheek?) socialist posturing.

The "Tommy Overture" by The Assembled Multitude is a pleasant listen, but doesn't groove the way The Who did it. Wayne Newton's "Daddy, Don't You Walk So Fast" is just a plain stinker, and should automatically prove to everyone why Wayno is stuck in the home for musically-spent artists, Las Vegas. Robert John's pre-"Sad Eyes" "Lion Sleeps Tonight" doesn't hold a candle to the Tokens' version. Ick!

The rest is pretty much filler, and not really known all that well. But I have to say that "Toast and Marmalade..." and "Never Ending Song of Love" are pretty darned good fillers.

All in all, decent songs, accompanied by only a few clunkers. My biggest gripe (as it is with every volume in the collection) is that the discs aren't longer. Surely, they could have turned a 23-volume set into a good 14- or 15-volume compilation. Ah well, just enjoy hearing these songs again in CD clarity. Just be aware that amongst the diamonds are a few turds.

After seeing how the format for the first 15 volumes played out, you were probably expecting the likes of the George Baker Selection's "Paloma Blanca," Rhythm Heritage's "Theme From SWAT" and Sweet's "Action" to be featured here; instead, they decided to dedicate this volume (and the next) to tracks they somehow overlooked the first time. Maybe they should have left well enough alone: Delaney & Bonnie's "Never Ending Song Of Love" wasn't all that bad, I suppose, but their other 1971 hit, "Only You Know And I Know," would have been a better fit here; and they also picked the wrong version of "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing," as the Hillside Singers' rendition contains some lyrics omitted by the New Seekers ("Put your hand in my hand, Let's begin today/With your hand in my hand, help me find a way."). Post-Sputnik babies will find "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" to be a distasteful (even if arguably necessary) reminder of the family breakups that scarred so many of them as children, and "City Of New Orleans" includes one line that would be considered "politically incorrect" if the song came out today ("Freightyards full of old black men"). Fortunately, however, three 1970 offerings - "Vehicle," "Ride Captain Ride" and "Midnight Cowboy" - save this collection from being a total disappointment.

Super Hits Of The '70s: Have a Nice Day, Volume 16 gives us more great `70s hits in this 25 CD series. I like the quality of the sound and the diversity of artists makes it an interesting album to hold onto for some while to come. Some of these can be hard to find on CD elsewhere so this is a good `70s hit music album.

The track set has several songs that appeal to me very much. Blues Image performs their rock ballad "Ride Captain Ride;" the very subtle country twist enhances the melody. Blues Image harmonizes the chorus really well, too.

The Assembled Multitude does a great job with their interpretation of the overture to the rock opera Tommy; and listen for Ten Years After doing a somewhat psychedelic rock styled ballad entitled "I'd Love To Change The World." "I'd Love To Change The World" really makes great use of the electric guitar and the haunting vocals impress me a lot.

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)" by Robert John features some excellent harmonizing for this rock tune; and I love that musical arrangement! The New Seekers also perform their classic hit "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing." "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" sounds perfect and it is so beautiful that I don't mind it being thrown in here with other rockin' numbers that aren't quite so "soft." Moreover, the CD ends marvelously with Arlo Guthrie's very well known "The City Of New Orleans."

My one complaint is that the CD could have had another couple of songs on it. I think they may have limited the CDs in this series to twelve songs each to squeeze out an extra CD or two and therefore profit more from selling the entire series to fans of `70s music. That's a shame any way you interpret it so I will take off a star to make this a four star review. In addition, Ferrante & Teicher's "Midnight Cowboy" is very well done but it seems to be thrown in for some shock effect as I didn't expect this on a `70s hit music album of rocking tunes. Oh, well.

Super Hits Of The '70s: Have a Nice Day, Volume 16 will be a great choice for any fan of `70s hits. There is a good diversity of songs on this album and that helps to bring back plenty of fond memories.

Putting Wayne Newton next to Ten Years After is a risky move. Unlike some of the other volumes of the series "Have a Nice Day," this CD is a curious hodgepodge of styles and sounds. Lots of the tracks probably don't ring a bell for most music lovers ("Toast & Marmalade for Tea" and "Small Beginnings"?). Diehard collectors will want this CD for its eclectic selections. All original versions.

I bought this cd orginally to get one song.(Toast and Marmalade for Tea by Tin Tin) I heard the song on my favorite oldies station and could not get the tune out of my head. I decided to download it from Itunes but to my dismay I discovered that Itunes did not have it. I then decided to try Amazon and found the song as part of this 70's cd. I didn't look at any of the other songs on the cd but after listening to all the tracks I was quite surprised by how good the cd was. I recommend this cd to any 70's music lover!

The real gems here are "Vehicle" by the Ides of March, "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image, "I'd Love to Change the World" by Ten Years After" (which is, by the way, the full album version), and a lower charting classic "Toast and Marmalade For Tea" by Tin Tin.

But, there are a few disappointments here. Not for the song, but for the version selected for the song. For instance, "Overture from "Tommy" by the Assembled Multitude. I've always only heard the original version by The Who, but this version did chart as a single. "Never Ending Song of Love" by Delaney and Bonnie" is a great song, but this is the 45 version. "I'd Like to Teach the World To Sing" by The New Seekers is a great song, but they did have two great tracks on Top 40 radio. Their other big hit was "Look What They Done To My Song, Ma", and unfortunately, it was never included in any of the "Have a Nice Day" CD's. "Midnight Cowboy" is a decent track but it sounds to me like it belongs in the sixties, not the seventies after "Ride Captain Ride". I really do wish they had the full version of "Small Beginnings" by Flash. Either give us the full version or don't have it here at all. It charted lower than the Top 20 so being here, and incomplete is disappointing. My one guilty pleasure here is Wayne Newton's "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast." And Arlo Guthie's "The City of New Orleans" is okay, but I've always associated Arlo with "Alice's Restaurant."

The song I absolutely can't stand here is Robert John's "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." With this song and his later seventies hit "Sad Eyes" Robert John is totally a joke artist. He was serious, but we all laugh at him. But, unforeseen as it was, "Toast and Marmalade For Tea" by Tin Tin, turned out to be my favorite track on volume 16.

Each and every "Have A Nice Day" CD has something to disappoint us with, but, you can always just burn your favorites together on your own personal collection and put these original CD's into storage.

Brilliant CD bringing back a whole heap of memories - full of nostalgia!!

I couldn't pass up this album because it has some songs that are hard to find elsewhere, especially this version of "Overture From Tommy," but it's a confused collection. Unlike the first albums of this series that were highly focused on a given year, this one spans from late 1969 (when "Midnight Cowboy" first appeared on the charts) through late 1972 ("The City of New Orleans"). Also, some of the songs are too obscure ("Small Beginnings") and there are no really exciting songs anywhere, which makes it a fairly dull listening experience.

I'm not a great fan of this type of collection, but this one has one of my all-time favorite tunes on it that can be found nowhere else ("Toast And Marmalade For Tea"), and most of the other tunes take me back to the AM-radio playing at my suburban neighborhood pool what seems like 1000 years ago.

There are, as there always are with these collections, 4 or 5 tunes that are just garbage and would be better off forgotten. Why would anyone listen to "The Assembled Multitude" (whatever that is) stumble through the Overture from Tommy when the Who's version is lightyears better? Why would anyone listen to The New Seekers "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing," a tune better known for being used in a Coke commercial than anything else? And why, why, WHY would anyone listen to Wayne Newton sing anything at all?

The 70's were very weird, that's why.

By the way, I grew up during this period and listened to the radio every waking hour, and I can say with absolute confidence that I never heard of Flash or their awful, awful song "Small Beginnings" until I bought this CD.