VICTOR

Unfocused, meandering and over-arranged with a story line that I suspect would make itself comfortable on an episode of "Barney & Friends," Rigoni & Schoenherz issued this double album for Bacillus/Bellaphon in 1975. Frankly, I'm surprised it left the cutting room floor. That somebody bothered to write out a score for the Royal Philharmonic for this mess just about boggles the mind. It wants to be a brilliant pop album and has its moments, but it's almost like some abandoned Moody Blues project from eight years prior. It's so dated. At times, it is just so completely uninspired. I can only assume the idea was a double long player to appease the Les Humphries Singers crowd, but this absolutely had no business dragging on for four sides.

To be honest, I find it really hard to even become engaged in the music enough to truly do it justice in a review. It's like some 70s TV movie soundtrack which has no end and is almost completely anonymous. Suffice it to say when I spun this again today for the first time in a while, I was curious as to how bad it would be scored here. That it somehow has managed a 4.95 (admittedly on only 3 ratings prior to mine) came as a complete surprise. All I can say is that I don't hear it. The playing is fine, but the parts aren't good enough, and while I won't say the parts sound illogically constructed, it lacks almost any excitement and isn't dynamic enough for an effort of this magnitude. Very competent playing with parts that just sort of go on and on from one to the next but with rarely a hint of passion.

I doubt you could pull enough truly worthwhile material from this to manage a single. Not a single LP. A single! And yet this is a double album worth of this stuff. Only for the most completest European rock collectors in my view.