AOR Blog: Album Oriented Rock

WTF – The Headpins: Just One More Time (1983)

g28677hpqhn

This song actually hit #70 on the Hot 100 in 1983, but surprisingly did not hit on the Mainstream Rock chart, where many a horrible “rock” song did hit. This video is so bad and so cheesy it HAS to be seen. Is that lead singer a dude? [Read the rest of this entry...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Kenny Loggins / Steve Perry: Don’t Fight It (1982)

d89359k48sj
Though primarily a purveyor of soft rock hits, in 1982 Kenny Loggins “manned up” with Don’t Fight It. This muscular arena rock duet with Journey’s Steve Perry was a massive hit, peaking at #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #17 on the Pop Singles chart. The song was featured on Loggins’ 1982 album High Adventure, the cover of which has Loggins doing his best Indiana Jones impersonation. [Read the rest of this entry...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Bad Album Covers: Stryken – First Strike

Stryken was a band that started out as Stryker, but changed their name to try to avoid comparisons to Stryper, although both bands were “Christian” rock. Here’s a MySpace page on the band with more information. With an album cover like 1987’s “First Strike” (why not “First Stryke”?), it appears that the band had more in common with Stryper than a name.  Apparently the “AOG” on the third dude’s chestplate thing stands for “Armor of God”, which is what they call what they are wearing.  This line of armor includes miniskirts (for the two middle guys) and mascara as well.

8-1

[Read the rest of this entry...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Jefferson Starship: Jane (1979)

jsfapz

Jefferson Airplane

The band that was known as Jefferson Starship throughout the 1970s and early 80s evolved out of Jefferson Airplane, the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock unit that formed in 1965. Jefferson Airplane is best known for “Somebody to Love” and the “Alice in Wonderland”-themed “White Rabbit”.

Jefferson Starship

Tensions among band members and side projects such as offshoot band Hot Tuna led to Airplane members Grace Slick and Paul Kantner to put out solo albums and collaborate on other material. The Slick/Kanter group pulled in Marty Balin and others from Airplane to become Jefferson Starship, and subsequently attained much higher commercial heights than the original Jefferson Airplane. The group, characterized by a more AOR-oriented sound than Airplane, had a string of four straight top ten albums from 1974-1978, including “Red Octopus”, which hit #1. [Read the rest of this entry...]

  • Share/Bookmark
Page 3 of 712345...Last »