CLEAR BLUE SKY

There may have been a fair amount of great hard rock bands of the early 70's that got unfairly overlooked or set aside, but Clear Blue Sky is not one of those lost classic bands. Even after hearing their only effort from the 70's, I still can't quite figure this group out or why I decided the time was right for me to get a Clear Blue Sky album.

Right away, the opener hits you and the gigantic problem with the record smacks you in the face; it's production is miserable. Apart from sounding like a lesser hybrid of Jethro Tull and Black Sabbath (and the title of their first track is ''Sweet Leaf''?coincidence?), the production sounds too unnecessarily loud to the point where the guitars sound like they're going to vomit. And it may be extreme nitpicking, but the volume on the cymbals sounds awful.

I like riffs as much as the next hard rock fan, but the riffs here are largely forgettable, and typically songs use about three unrelated riffs that are so poorly connected that any semblance of a fluid track is mostly lost. A track like ''You Mystify'' might have been a great lost rock classic if the actual song could progress with some finesse, but it ends up being a jumbled menagerie of muck.

This especially becomes a gaping problem on their attempt at a sidelong epic track; the three movements have barely any resemblance other than chugging away at riffs hoping for some lasting appeal. The aforementioned ''Sweet Leaf'' is the worst of the lot as it sounds completely without any direction and runs for far too long (at eight minutes, it's the longest of the album).

And yet, this album still manages to have an actual great tune in ''My Heaven''. It's the one time where there's a song that really functions like one. Had the muddy production not been there, this would have been a lost classic.

If the idea of checking out lo-fi hard rock sounds like fun to you, then check out CLEAR BLUE SKY. The idea of ''raw rock'' went a mile too far here.