Customer Reviews

Touch

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is it folks. If you ever wondered where Progressive Rock come from, look no further. This record is a wonder of arrangement, songwriting, playing and production. And it was made in 1968! Almost every single prog rock group of the late 60's and 70's owes all their royalties to this one record. From Yes, Genesis, Queen, Rush and everyone in between, this is where they got their ideas. If you are a fan of this genre in the least, you must purchase this record ASAP. No one is paying me to say this. I once heard that Jimi Hendrix rented studio time next these guys just to hear them record the album. Among the players/writers are Dan Galluci who I believe played keyboards on the seminal "Louie Louie" or at least produced it. This album is, as my generation says "Bad-A$$." The only people I have ever seen have this record is my Dad and his friend. We are truly lucky that it is available on CD.

The aural wonders these young men pulled out of contemporary equipment of the late 60's is astonishing. From the opening "acid" rock mega blow-out "We Feel Fine" to the "Tomorrow Never Knows" inspired "Down at Circes Place" to the closing epic "75" it will melt your mind. This album makes anything Yes did sound like the Patridge Family. It's a shame this record is not in every one's top 10 list. As far as I can tell it went largely unoticed when it debuted. Hopefully now this can be rectified. It may not be for everyone but if you are a prog rock fan, you have to, have to, have to, have to buy this...you won't be sorry. Prepare to be blown away. I promise the hype is justified.

It's about time! I've been waiting 35 years for this. With bonus cuts to boot. Throw Vanilla Fudge, Pink Floyd, & Nektar together & it's still not even close. My buddy & I each picked up a copy at a teen club headshop sound unheard because the cover looked so cool. Way, way back in the late 60's. We were still in high school & it was all about the music, not the lifestyle. Not yet anyway. I wore mine out within 6 months & I've been watching ever since. The song Seventy-five has one of the sweetest, most lyrical & expressive guitar solos I've ever heard. I'm a guitar player so I was always partial to passages that set me on fire &/or adrift. Every week I'd call the Kinetic Playground (Chicago's Fillmore where I saw Tull & Zeppelin open for Vanilla Fudge $5.00)asking if Touch was on the schedule yet. The booker said he was getting alot of calls but couldn't even find out if Touch was a touring entity. He thought maybe they were just a studio act. Oh, but the magic they put down in the studio. My historical record collection is now complete with this final jewel in my crown. Right along side Led Zeppelin I, Dark Side of the Moon, Remember the Future (Nektar), Lou Reed's Rock & Roll Animal, & the 1st Vanilla Fudge album, Touch is home where it belongs. Rock, jazz, louds, softs, real, cosmic, thinking, feeling...check it out. It's unlikely you've ever heard anything quite so settling or unsettling.

I first heard this album back when it came out in the late 60's.It was the album of choice for ....well... quiet introspection...and it is finally out on CD.We never tired of hearing cuts 5,6,and 7.The doctored sound on these cuts especially are well worth the price of the CD..This was big stuff back in the 60's,and these guys blew everyone out of the water when the album came out.It hasn't lost it's charm for me,even after all these years.

Too few people heard this album back in the late 60's and many of us dreamed of either finding an LP (obtainable, but difficult) or wondering if the modern age of digital would finally produce a CD worthy of the sound. WELL THIS IS IT. It's an excellent reproduction of the LP with no discernable loss of quality. RELIVE IT. LOVE IT. LOOK AT SMOKE RINGS!!!! Progressive Jazz Rock with blaring horns, dynamic range, shocking melodies and ripping, operatic themes (and a little depression thrown in for good measure) mark this album as unique in the history of music evolution (IMHO). OK...I'm a fan and feel like I just found the Holy Grail from my long lost LP collection.

Luckily I was able to find a copy of this album (an import) back in the 70's sometime. A great record! I had heard it first from a friend from Oklahoma who had the album. Who would have thought you could hear this stuff in Oklahoma! I always thought that Touch sounded like what King Crimson would have sounded like if they had moved to Los Angeles before In The Court of the Crimson King. This album came out first and I can hear many sounds that are similar to later released albums. Definitely this is an influence on:

King Crimson-both sides of In the Court (and In The Wake of..,I believe) start with a loud fast song and the second track is a quiet more acoustic song. Same as the Touch album.

Alice Cooper-listen to The Spiritual Death of Howard Greer, then listen to songs on Love It To Death and Killer. Note the similarities, with that organ and guitar sound.

EL&P-the 2 quiet tracks on Touch-Friendly Birds and Alesha and Others, have nice piano melodies very much like what Keith Emerson did on the first EL&P album.

Yes-all through the Touch album hear the vocals that are similar to John Anderson's (high pitched and multi-tracked) on the early Yes albums. The music on We Feel Fine and especially Seventy Five sounds like it could be Yes.

More groups probably copped the Touch sound but I can't think of any more at the moment.

The bonus tracks on this re-issue are good:2 demos, a single and 2 extended jams, one from 1973, many years after the album released. It sounds like they were having fun in the studio. The booklet has much info about the band and the album, and a reproduction of the lyrics and the poster that came with the original album.

Get it.

What an wonderful example of musical brilliance. Progressive rock at it's finest!

Tracks 5,6,&7 comprise a non-stop musical experience that encompasses everything from classical-rock, jazz-rock, incredible vocals, and a dynamic range wider than I have ever heard before. Amazingly complex, this music is like nothing I've heard before. The other tracks are ok, but tracks 5,6,&7 alone are more than worth the price of the disc.

The recording is amazingly clean, considering the time it was made (late '60s). The sound is full, open, and clear, with no tape hiss or other audible defects.

These guys were so far ahead of their time, that they were never appreciated for their genius. I owned this album when it was on vinyl, wore out a few of them, but they became unplayable, and I waited for years for this to finally be released on CD.

I judge it both musically and technically comparable to both Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper.

It is, quite possibly, the most excellent CD I own.

I remember seeing these guys on "Where The Action Is", a rock music show on ABC, along with Paul Revere & the Raiders, Freddy Cannon, and others. Only then they were called Don and the Good Times. I learned this purely by accident when a friend referred to the Touch album as "Don and the Good Times Takes Acid". A comparison of mebers proved he was right, about the "Don-and-the-Good-Times" part, at least. In addition to the music itself, I was impressed by the fact that the sound on the album continued completely around the label.

The year was 1960 something, and there was this one album...
Every night it was on the turntable to close out a day.
Back in the day there was side one and side two and most of the time, you hardly listened to both sides but this Touch album, well that was a completely different deal. After hearing a song called Friendly Birds on the underground FM station one evening, I rushed to get the LP. After a couple of days, I went back to the store and bought another copy so I didn't have to get up to flip the record over, it was so mesmerizing, never ever heard anything like it and 40 years later it still blows me away. Talk about a flash of brilliance. And just like that, it was over. Other than a 30 year break, I listen to it every day.

While Hendrix was still dreaming up Electric Lady Land he hung out with these guys in the studio. He was blown away by what he heard. This album is cut from the same cloth as Electric Lady Land, Sgt Peppers, The Wall, etc...
A timeless masterpiece... I had it when it came out new, and my buddies and I were stunned.... all these years later it is still stunning.

5 stars for the music. A great album as most reading this will surely know.

The original Renaissance CD release may have been tweaked with too much EQ, but at least it seemed to have its dynamics intact. This version (mastering credited to Paschal Byrne) is a loud, compressed mess. There is a little less top end, which I like, but the punch is just squashed. "We Feel Fine" has a Dynamic Range TT Meter reading of 6, to give you an idea just what a mess this thing is. You can just hear the limiter pushing those drum fills and slams down into a big, wimpy wall of sound.

Guess I'll keep listening to this epic work from 1969 on vinyl. I'd take the original CD version over this any day, but neither even come close to the magic sound this had on the Coliseum vinyl cut. If you have to have this on CD, I highly recommend seeking out the original release from about 1993. This version is a downgrade. It does have one additional bonus track that is new, so I suppose for the devoted collector, it might be woth picking up. Just don't expect much from the sonic treatment this has been given.