The initial list was just over one-hundred albums from 1976. Eliminated albums already featured in two previous posts: My Favorite Live Albums from 1976 and Greatest "Greatest Hits" Albums - The 1976 Edition. Several more albums were eliminated because, in the ears of this listener, they contained no great songs, leaving only albums with at least one great song. Nearly all the albums with exactly one great track – again, strictly my opinion – were rounded up to be Honorable Mentions, which left us with exactly fifty albums for our 1976 Hideaway 40: The Albums feature. The following ten albums, in no particular order, were the last albums cut before the final list of forty was ranked.
Easily one of my favorite power pop albums of all time, Dwight Twilley Band's Sincerely is all killer, no filler. The single "I'm On Fire", which my Uncle Sam loved, was released more than a year before the album. Like Sam, many folks were disappointed that there was no album (or, in Sam's case, no 8-track tape) to further explore the sound of Twilley. Any momentum the single had built up had dissipated by the time Sincerely was finally released.
I hopped on the Jackson Browne train when my Aunt Linda and Uncle John slipped me a cassette of Hold Out directly into my hands for Christmas 1980. The album slowly grew on me with repeated listenings – it was unlike anything else I was listening to at the time – and, when presented the opportunity, snagged two more albums from Browne: 1977's Runnin' On Empty and The Pretender from 1976. The latter album is still growing on me.
Dad bought Wanted! The Outlaws for the Waylon & Willie connection. I don't recall him listening to it at all, but I recall it sitting on his shelf, though it wasn't among his vinyl collection when he sent it to me across the country in the early 2000s. The album was among his CD collection, which I inherited after his 2015 passing, and I began listening to it regularly. That disc is not even half an hour long, and it goes by quickly, with a different track, riff, or lyric stuck between my ears after each listen. Several tracks from the original album were inexplicably missing from that particular pressing. A 20th Anniversary version of Wanted! The Outlaws fixed that issue and added ten additional tracks from the album's original sessions, pushing the disc's time up over an hour. I'm still absorbing that one.
Try as I might, I haven't been able to slot Katy Lied or The Royal Scam among my favorite Steely Dan albums. (Nor the two post-Gaucho albums.) Each album has great tracks, songs I enjoy listening to outside of the parent albums. I've yet to hear Katy Lied or The Royal Scam as coherent, thematic wholes, like Aja or Gaucho. I'm still listening, though.
Since I began buying albums as a music-loving youngster, I foolishly avoided the ones that critics lauded and acclaimed, showing my ignorance and prejudice. Slowly, very slowly through the years, I began reevaluating many such artists and albums. I had originally shunned Bowie's Station To Station and the subsequent Berlin Trilogy (Low, "Heroes" and Lodger), but after falling for Let's Dance, I started working my way back through Bowie's back-catalog for the first time. Upon Bowie's untimely passing in 2016, I once again made my way through his complete catalog, gaining new appreciation and respect for his albums. Still don't get Blackstar; it has proven to be impenetrable for this listener thus far.
"Just To Be Close To You" got some airplay on WLS in late 1976, enough to catch my young ear. It reminded me of "Always and Forever" and might have been the first slow jam I had the awkward pleasure of dancing with a girl. If memory serves, her name was Diana or Janet. I found Hot On The Tracks tucked away in Dad's stash one day in the late Seventies and enjoyed listening to it, though those clandestine listens only seemed to amplify any enjoyment I derived from the music. Discovered the full-length version of "Just To Be Close To You" and the funky track "Fancy Dancer". Years later, I picked the album up on a 1986 CD as a Motown 2-on-1 disc with In The Pocket. Hot On The Tracks is one of the few albums on this list that I can say is no longer growing on me; I have enjoyed it as much as I'm gonna ever enjoy it. Still going to listen to it, but it'll never make the 1976 Hideaway 40: The Albums.
I rushed out the weekend after I first heard Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" to make that 45 mine. Took a couple of weeks to finally locate a copy, but soon it was getting lots of spins on my still-new Sounddesign all-in-one system. Dad was a fan of the Chicago IX - Greatest Hits album, so I became a fan of it as well. Knowing that my new 45 was taken from the Chicago X album, I thought it was only a matter of time before Dad also added it to his collection, oblivious to the fact that he had none of the group's first eight albums. The day finally arrived when he opened a package from Columbia House that featured Chicago X and Chicago XI. By that time, my tastes and interests had moved on; I wouldn't return to the chocolate candy-bar cover of Chicago X until a girlfriend pulled it out of her Mom's collection and dropped the needle on "If You Leave Me Now", and a few memories came flooding back while new ones were being made. We searched the used bins at Bookman's and PDQ over the next few months before finding a copy of Chicago X at her neighbor's garage sale, of all places. The gatefold cover positively reeked of some high times, so she kept it at her place, retaining custody after we split up. Nowadays, I have a 1995 Japanese CD pressing of the album I enjoy listening to when the need arises.
Don't think I ever heard "I'll Be Good To You" on WLS, as I wasn't listening to the station during the Summer of '76, due to geographical interference... I was in Texas, spending the Summer with Uncle Sam and my beloved Texas Grandparents, Elmina and Harold. I may have heard "I'll Be Good To You" on the legendary Cow Talk jukebox, or I may have heard it on a Top 40 station (KILT?) Uncle Sam tuned in from Houston. The song did not re-enter my bubble until the early Nineties, when it began appearing on compact disc series I was buying like Time-Life's Sounds Of The Seventies and Rhino's Soul Hits Of The '70s. While Light Up The Night will always be my favorite Brothers Johnson album, Look Out for #1 is a not-too-distant second.
Luxury Liner is my favorite Emmylou Harris album. Released in late 1976, I didn't stumble onto it until some twenty years after its release, shortly after my friend John Book sent me the Portraits box set. Listening to the first two discs (the third disc turned out to be defective) of the set put me on a journey to listen to all of Emmylou Harris' music I could find. Like her good friend Linda Ronstadt, Harris is an excellent song finder, recognizing songwriting talent while providing her own unique interpretations. Her backing group of musicians, the aptly named Hot Band, could outplay anyone, allowing Harris to do what she does best.
If you're playing along at home on your Hideaway Bingo card, you should have already marked off WLS, Cow Talk jukebox, Uncle Sam, Dad, Columbia House, Texas Grandparents, and other spaces. If no one has a BINGO! yet, let us continue.
My exposure to the music of Earth, Wind & Fire was limited to the three singles that got airplay on WLS in 1975-1976: "Shining Star", "Sing A Song", and "Getaway". I'd like to say Dad had an early 8-track of theirs, but the more I think about it, the more I doubt he did. My own first Earth, Wind & Fire album was The Best Of, Vol. 1, because I was cuckoo for their cover of "Got To Get You Into My Life" and wholly unprepared for the greatness of "September". I've only had a copy of Spirit (the expanded edition from 2001) for less than ten years; after another year or two of listening will make it one of my forty favorite albums from 1976.
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The countdown of the 1976 Hideaway 40: The Albums will begin soon.
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