Customer Reviews

Whole Oats

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

 

 

"Whole Oats" is Daryl Hall & John Oates' first album. With this album, Hall & Oates were experimenting with various musical styles-from folk music standards on songs like "All Our Love", "They Needed Each Other", "Southeast City Window" and "Thank You For...", to rhythm & blues standards on "Fall In Philadelphia". It is this kind of experimentation that makes this CD wonderful to listen to. "Lazyman" features the theme line "is your a** getting sore?" and "Goodnight And Goodmorning" was later covered by Cecilio And Kapono. The CD's cover featuring an opened oatmeal box isn't bad, either. Better buy this CD before Atlantic decides to shelve it.

This is the album that kicked off a great career. It may not be the greastest album they made but it's not bad either. It's obvious that they were looking for there sound. I would reccomend this for die hard fans like me.

Whole Oats will be much more appreciated by those who really like Hall & Oate's music. The best tracks are I'm Sorry, All Our Love, and Fall in Philadelphia. All of which were released prior to Whole Oats as demos. The first two demos are somewhat hard to find. The demo version of Fall in Philadelphia can be found on a lot of the versions of Past Times Behind.

Also decent are Goodnight and Goodmorning, South East City Window Side, Lilly {which features a false ending} and Thank You. All these listens later, "I'm Sorry" is hands down the best track. I'm amazed it was left off Atlantic's "No Goodbyes" album {which was the best of the early Hall & Oates albums by Atlantic records}.

I'd like this album a lot more if it weren't for the songs Georgie and They Needed Eachother. Both are depressing and way too metaphoric. Rereleased without them, this album would have faired better.

I can never believe some of the negative reviews this album gets.
It is without a doubt one of Hall & Oates's best - definitely one of the
more soulful ones. More folksy, rootsy, and as I said more soulful than
their chart topping 80's hits. Don't miss out because of the negativity.

I find this album to be their best work. "I'm Sorry", "Goodnight and Goodmorning" as most songs on the album are well crafted and extremely nice to listen to. There later pop/top 40 stuff was good, but this was really the best. I have it on vinyl and CD.

This is a little know album by Hall & Oates. The album is not the typical H&O stuff from the 80's, but it's an excellent album which includes one of their greatest songs ever! 'Fall In Philadelphia' is an exceptional song which is worth the price of the CD on it's own. An interesting debut from the Philly Soul Duo.

Daryl Hall's and John Oates' debut album gained very little attention when it was released in 1972. Not one song from this album appears on the 2004 compilation ULTIMATE DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES. The following year,H&O scored their first #1 hit,SHE'S GONE,from their second album ABANDONED LUNCHEONETTE. That song would later be covered by the R&B group Tavares who had another hit,a cover of the Bee Gees' MORE THAN A WOMAN. Both words in this album's title are homonyms of the duo's last names. "Whole" is the homonym of Daryl's real last name Hohl. And of course,"oats" is the homonym of John's last name.

"Whole Oats" is actually a play on words. Daryl Hall's original last name was "Hohl" and he and John were originally called "Whole Oats" as their first single "I'm Sorry" will attest. Lots of good light, tasteful mostly mid-tempo rock on this album. A fine precursor to "Abandoned Luncheonette" and like "Luncheonette", produced by Arif Mardin.

Best tracks are "I'm Sorry", "Goodnight & Goodmorning", "Southeast City Window", "All Our Love", "Lilly (Are You Happy)" and "Fall In Philadelphia".

1972's 'Whole Oats,' while not a spectacular debut, is
certainly a step above(and is more appealing than) their
near-disastrous third album 'War Babies' from 1974.

Half of the album is pretty good - the rocking 'I'm Sorry,'
'Fall In Philadelphia,' 'Goodnight And Goodmorning,' 'Lilly
(Are You Happy),' and the more reflective 'Waterwheel'
and 'Lazyman.'

Yes, I admit I own this one(as well as 'War Babies') on LP.

Definitely for the H&O completist/collector, but it might
hold some interest for a more adventurous casual fan who
wants to dig a little deeper than just the hits.

I am a big H&O fan and have been for over 25 years and counting; not so much their "newer" stuff i.e. anything after "Big Bam Boom" (except maybe the glorious "Marigold Sky")but it was really the stuff they did before "Voices" that intrigued me and got me reeled in after "Voices" and "Private Eyes" first got me hooked.

I was deeply affected by what I had heard on "Beauty On a Back Street" as well as "Bigger Than Both of Us" and I went on to try and find as many of their albums that I could get my hands on.

A couple of them, however, I wished I hadn't had done. One of them is this album which you could if you want to be kind call an "experimental" effort but definitely no brilliant debut release by any stretch of the imagination. Another way of putting it would be to say that after this, they could only get better and believe me they really did until things started going downhill with "Ooh Yeah."

With this album, though, only "Lily, Are You Happy" really gives us some indication of what we can expect from the dynamic duo in upcoming albums. No point getting a whole album just for one song unless you are a die-hard collector and need this just to make your collection complete.

I would recommend if you can find it in some used cd store "No Goodbyes" which is a brilliant compilation of their best stuff from their first 3 albums before they changed labels for RCA from Atlantic. It's been out of print for many years and the duo themselves could probably care less about it given their acrimonious split from Atlantic but that is one compilation that would be good to get a remastered version of.

I'm still holding on to my Japanese press that I got years ago. Very precious to me indeed....