Customer Reviews

Super Hits

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For the casual listener, Wild Cherry produced one of 1976's most popular songs and promptly disappeared from the planet. What happened?

Rob Parissi, the band's founder and lead singer, has said he feels the band failed because most of their subsequent material was over-produced. From a record sales standpoint he is probably correct, because much of the material on Wild Cherry's second and third albums is quite different from "Play That Funky Music."

However, from an artistic and critical perspective, the "Electrified Funk" and "I Love My Music" LPs contain some pretty decent 70's R&B. Some of the tunes are reminiscent of early 70's Motown, while others feel like late 70's Philly soul. Half of the tracks on "Super Hits" are from these two albums, neither of which have been released on CD.

All of Wild Cherry's singles are present in this compilation except the rather weak "Baby Don't You Know." In its place is the excellent "1 2 3 Kind Of Love," which was released as a single in 1978 but given absolutely no promotion by Epic.

The disc also contains the regional hits "Hot To Trot" (the cut that most resembles "Play That Funky Music") and the lush "Hold On (With Strings)." The latter is a superior remake of a song that appeared on Wild Cherry's first LP.

While it would be nice to see Sony release a more substantial retrospective of Wild Cherry's work, until that happens the budget-priced "Super Hits" is the band's best collection available on CD.

Why not just release a double album of Wild Cherry and I love my Music. I liked the second album very much yet the songs are mostly unavailable. Too bad!

When I first saw this album, the first question I asked myself was "Did they have any big hits other than 'Play That Funky Music'?". In all likelihood, probably not. But it wasn't as though they didn't give it a shot. After their self-titled debut, they recorded three more albums (all currently out of print) but chart success would elude Robert Parissi & company that time out. Of the other nine tracks on this 40-minute disc only "1 2 3 Kind Of Love" had serious hit potential. "99 1/2" is a cover song originally by Wilson Pickett. "I Love My Music" has a disco beat while "Hold On" is a ballad of sorts. "Hold On To Your Hiney":good beat, awful title. "Electrified Funk" is a live track that sounds remarkably impressive and "Keep On Playin' That Funky Music" is interesting but expendable. This was a rock band who mixed in funk and disco to good results. And even though this disc shows that there was more to them than just "Play That Funky Music", they may forever be associated with the label "one hit wonder". Too bad.

I bought this CD for one track, Play That Funky Music. It is a classic "Dancing in the car" piece. It is the perfect example of the musical statement that "You can't dance and stay up tight."