Ride Captain Ride

Unconditionally Guaranteed, the universally derided album from Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band is commonly regarded as the nadir of the Captain’s career, the pariah among the pearls. From the cover depicting a weasel-eyed Beefheart clutching fistfuls of money to the lightweight and accessible tunes centring on themes of love, sex and happiness, people claim to hate this album with a burning passion. Even Beefheart wrote it off, insisting that buyers should take it back to the shop and get their money back, taking advantage of the guarantee…

Blues Image's second album was their most successful, in large part because of the inclusion of their huge hit single "Ride Captain Ride." The rest of the record, however, shows them to be a band in search of a more individual voice, borrowing heavily as it does from Jimi Hendrix ("Love Is the Answer," "Pay My Dues"), Creedence Clearwater Revival ("Running the Water"), any number of average blues-rock bands ("Clean Love"), and the Latin-rock fusion of Santana ("La Bamba," "Consuelate," and the instrumental "Wrath of Daisey")…

Hit collection Warner Music Group with lots of interesting tracks! With the support of performers The Cars, Chris Spedding, Nicolette Larson, America, John Sebastian, Shirley Bassey, Blues Image, The Spinners the contrast of this selection is filled. X5 Music license music rights from select recording owners for sales and marketing of music products, customized by the X5 team for the digital marketplace.

It may not be the "ultimate" collection of hits from the 1970's, but this ten disc set does indeed offer 198 of the songs that helped define the decade. Happily, they are all original recordings by the original artists, as they were heard on the radio. True, in a few cases that means the selections are "radio edits" (Rod Stewart's 1971 hit "Maggie May", for example, is missing the 30 second instrumental introduction that was included on the original album, but rarely played over the airwaves), but why quibble? The songs, though not necessarily remastered, all sound great, and the set includes some genuine treasures that have not (yet) been offered on other compilations. Highly recommended!