AMMONIA AVENUE  -  THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT

YEAR:  1984
LABEL:  Arista
TRACK LISTING:  Prime Time,  Let Me Go Home,  One Good Reason,  Since the Last Goodbye,  Don't Answer Me,  Dancing on a Highwire,  You Don't Believe,  Pipeline,  Ammonia Avenue
IMPRESSIONS:  I got this LP as a present either for my 19th birthday or for Christmas.  Memory fails.  Regardless, I had been a fan of the Alan Parsons Project since I heard their first album "TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION" at family friend Ronnie's house in the mid-70's.  Ever since that time, I had gotten each TAPP album as it came out.  This one was part of their early-80s hot streak beginning with "THE TURN OF A FRIENDLY CARD"'s chart success through the even bigger-selling "EYE IN THE SKY" and culminating with this album which saw their last huge radio hit with "Don't Answer Me".  This album is seriously gunning for chart success but it also features some really fine songs beginning with the superb album opener "Prime Time" which I've always considered another stab at their huge hit "Eye In the Sky" due to its similar sound.  While the single, released after "Don't Answer Me", didn't do as well possibly due to a sense of "copycat hitmaking", I find "Prime Time" to be the superior track and much better than "Eye In the Sky".  "Don't Answer Me", of course, goes for that Phil Spector sound and was a true departure in the group's usual sound.  This may not be my favourite Alan Parsons Project album but it is a rock solid collection of strong songs culminating in the epic, cinematic title track -- somewhat of a tradition in the Project's album closers.  The theme or concept of the album has a few different takes; the University of Wikipedia thinks it's about "
the possible misunderstanding of industrial scientific developments from a public perspective and a lack of understanding of the public from a scientific perspective" while allmusic.com's Mike DeGagne describes it as illustrating"how the lines of communication between people are diminishing, and how we as a society grow more spiritually isolated and antisocial."  I suspect quite a bit of both is true.  Just one glimpse at the year of release should clue one into the rather Orwellian flavour of the album.  One look at that album cover also never fails to conjure up images of "QUATERMASS 2".
MY FAVOURITE TRACKS:  Prime Time,  One Good Reason,  Since the Last Goodbye,  Don't Answer Me,  Dancing on a Highwire,  You Don't Believe,  Pipeline,  Ammonia Avenue
FACT SHEET:  AMMONIA AVENUE is the Alan Parsons Project's seventh album and has been certified gold.  All the songs were written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson as usual.  "You Don't Believe" appeared a year before its inclusion on "AMMONIA AVENUE" on THE BEST OF THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT compilation.  Eric Woolfson sings lead vocal on "Prime Time", "One Good Reason", "Don't Answer Me" and "Ammonia Avenue".  Lenny Zakatek sings lead vocal on "Let Me Go Home" and "You Don't Believe".  Chris Rainbow sings lead vocal on "Since the Last Goodbye".  Colin Blunstone sings lead vocal on "Dancing On A Highwire".  The album title was inspired by Eric Woolfson's visit to the Imperial Chemical Industries facility in Billingham, England where he saw a street sign reading "Ammonia Avenue" in a street consisting of miles of pipes with no people or trees in evidence.  The music video for "Don't Answer Me" featured art and animation by DC Comics' artist Michael Kaluta while the music video for "Prime Time" was inspired by horror author John Collier's story "Evening Primrose"; previously adapted for an episode of the "ESCAPE" radio programme. 

I ROBOT - The Alan Parsons Project

YEAR: 1977

LABEL: Arista

TRACK LISTING: I Robot, I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You, Some Other Time, Breakdown, Don't Let It Show, The Voice, Nucleus, Day After Day (The Show Must Go On), Total Eclipse, Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32

IMPRESSIONS: This is the first Alan Parsons Project album I bought for myself after hearing their debut "TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION" album as a kid at my parents' friend Ronnie's house and, subsequently after my parents bought the first album for themselves. Of course, I loved the Edgar Allan Poe theme of the first album and the "robotic" science fiction theme of "I ROBOT" was sufficiently bizarre to make it interesting to me as well. Particular favourites are the ballads "Some Other Time" and "Day After Day" with their operatic bombast as well as one of my favourite Parsons instrumentals "Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32".

MY FAVOURITE TRACKS: I Robot, I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You, Some Other Time, Breakdown, Don't Let It Show, Day After Day (The Show Must Go On), Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32

GUEST ARTISTS: David Paton (bass, acoustic guitar), Lenny Zakatek (lead vocals on "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You"), Peter Straker & Jaki Whitren (lead vocals on "Some Other Time"), Allan Clarke (lead vocal on "Breakdown"), Dave Townsend (lead vocal on "Don't Let It Show"), Steve Harley (lead vocal on "The Voice"), Jack Harris (lead vocal on "Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)")

FACT SHEET: I ROBOT is the Alan Parsons Project's second album. Like Steely Dan, the Project consists of a core duo of producer/engineer/keyboardist Alan Parsons and the late singer Eric Woolfson with a rotating cast of regular sidemen and studio musicians. All the tracks on I ROBOT were written by Woolfson/Parsons except "Total Eclipse" written by Andrew Powell. The album was based on the "I, ROBOT" stories by Isaac Asimov; the noted science fiction author was actually contacted by Woolfson about the album and was enthusiastic. Because the Asimov books were already licensed to a TV/movie company, the comma was dropped from the title and the songs were made less specifically about Asimov's book and more generically about robots. The album cover features the band members inside the escalator tubes in Charles DeGaulle airport's Terminal 1 outside Paris, France. A descriptive paragraph in the album's liner notes reads: "I ROBOT...THE STORY OF THE RISE OF THE MACHINE AND THE DECLINE OF MAN, WHICH PARADOXICALLY COINCIDED WITH HIS DISCOVERY OF THE WHEEL...AND A WARNING THAT HIS BRIEF DOMINANCE OF THIS PLANET WILL PROBABLY END, BECAUSE MAN TRIED TO CREATE ROBOT IN HIS OWN IMAGE." The tital of the final instrumental track "Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32" implies that robots are "a continuation of the story of Creation" since the first chapter of "Genesis" in the Bible only has 31 verses. Pat Benatar covered "Don't Let It Show" on her "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT" album.

TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION - The Alan Parsons Project

YEAR: 1976

LABEL: Mercury

TRACK LISTING: A Dream Within A Dream, The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, (The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, The Fall of the House of Usher, To One In Paradise

IMPRESSIONS: Like Mike Oldfield's OMMADAWN and Frank Zappa's JOE'S GARAGE, I first heard this album because of family friend Ronnie whose eclectic tastes have helped shape my own since I was a kid. The original album I came to know was the "Orson Welles-less" version; it was only later I got the remixed album which included Orson's recitations. Before I even went to kindergarten, my mother taught me to read. And what did she teach me to read on?: TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION by Edgar Allan Poe! So any album featuring song adaptations of Poe tales just had to be a winner with me.
MY FAVOURITE TRACKS: The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, (The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, The Fall of the House of Usher, To One In Paradise

GUEST ARTISTS: Orson Welles (narration), Leonard Whiting (narration, vocals), Arthur Brown (vocals)

FACT SHEET: TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION is The Alan Parsons Project's first album. All the songs are based upon short stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. "The Raven" was the first rock song to use a digital vocoder. The prelude of the instrumental piece "The Fall of the House of Usher" is based on Claude Debussy's operatic fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" composed between 1908 and 1917. The original version of the 1976 album was remixed in 1987 with added narration by Orson Welles, additional guitar passages and altered production techniques including added 80's-style reverb. According to the album's liner notes, Welles never met Alan Parsons or Eric Woolfson (the nucleus of the Project) but sent them a tape of his performance after the album came out in 1976. Leonard Whiting is a British actor best known for appearing as Romeo opposite Olivia Hussey in the film "ROMEO AND JULIET" as well as playing Victor Frankenstein in "FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY". In July 2010, Classic Rock magazine named the album one of the "50 Albums that Built Prog Rock".