08
Part Three
KC and the Sunshine Band
Confusingly, Part Three is usually listed as KC and the Sunshine Band's fourth album in their discography. To further muddy the water, lead singer/co-producer Harry Wayne "KC" Casey did not sing on the previous album, The Sound Of Sunshine; it's credited to just The Sunshine Band. The way I remember it working was WLS would play a new single by KC and the Sunshine Band, I would run out and grab the 45, and then the song would show up on a K-Tel compilation. Someone with more K-Tel compilations than I have once said that KC and the Sunshine Band appear on more K-Tel albums than any other artist. I count eight K-Tel albums in my collection featuring songs from Part Three alone:
- Hit Machine
- Stars
- Right On!
- Pure Power
- Pure Gold Collection
- Music Machine
- Disco Rocket
- Super Star Collection
Don't think I bought the Part 3 album until it was released in an expanded edition (Part 3...and More) by Rhino in 1994. That disc has a hodgepodge of eight bonus tracks unrelated to the Part 3 album, including KC solo tracks from 1981, a Spanish version of "Please Don't Go" from 1979, and a 1994 Tom Moulton Remix of the 1975 song "Get Down Tonight". It took me an extra hour to find this out, as I had to make an extra trip back to Zip's because once I got home and popped the disc in, it played MTV's The Unplugged Collection, Volume One. That Rhino disc of Part 3...and More is still my favorite pressing of the album. I always skip tracks 3, 5, and 6 on the disc (as well as the aforementioned eight bonus tracks) because they don't move me like the other five tracks.
07
Ramones
Ramones
The self-titled debut album from the Ramones clocks in at one second under 29 minutes. (KC and the Sunshine Band's Part 3 is 14 seconds over 29 minutes long.) When my father-in-law's glioblastoma came back an inoperable third time in 2016, I spent most of my day with my wife at his house as he descended through home hospice care. Each night when I left their once-happy home, I would blast the first Ramones album all the way home to try to dissipate all the negative energy I had absorbed. It would wrap up usually right when I pulled into our driveway. Most of the time, I felt better and was able to grab a few hours of sleep before doing it all over again the next day. Amazingly, this music has not been tainted by that harrowing experience when it had every reason to be. I got nothing but good memories of him, too. When I grab a Ramones disc to listen to, I reach for 1990's All The Stuff (And More) Vol. 1 and play the first fourteen tracks.
06
This One's For You
Barry Manilow
Wow! From KC and the Sunshine Band to Ramones to Barry Manilow – that's a rough segue. I may have found Barry Manilow's music on my own – he was quite popular on WLS – but Dad bought each of Manilow's first five albums from his self-titled debut in 1973 up through 1978's Even Now, so I was able to listen to them surreptitiously, even discovering the catchy new American Bandstand theme song I heard every Saturday morning on This One's For You. All but one of my favorite songs on that album are front-loaded on the first side of the LP, with "Looks Like We Made It" consigned to the second side, where it easily stands above the other tracks. Aside from compilations and, on some days, Barry Manilow Live, the eleven tracks on This One's For You make up my favorite Barry Manilow album. I inherited Dad's Manilow vinyl albums a few years after I purchased This One's For You on CD. It was the 2006 US expanded version with four bonus tracks. Another copy of the album, this one a 2002 German pressing, fell into my lap as part of one of the music collections I acquired from a former listener's family during my brief time working in local radio from 2019 to 2023. To my ears, the 2002 This One's For You disc sounds better than the remastered 2006 disc. Plus, there is that heavy dollop of sentimental value.
05
Night Moves
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
Dad introduced me to the Night Moves album via 8-track, and I soaked all the songs in as if they were oxygen. The usual 8-track rearranged playlist applies here, with the tracks "Sunburst" and "Sunpot Baby" reversing places to even out the tape. Doesn't bother me at all to listen to it in the original vinyl running order. Is Night Moves Seger's finest outing? Maybe. For me, Against The Wind or live epic Live Bullet are definitely in the mix. Night Moves kicks off with three solid and sturdy songs with Bob and his Silver Bullet Band in their finest form. Then the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section tags in for Side Two, and the songs and performances are still strong if not as well-known. Albums recorded across different studios with different musicians rarely sound this coherent, this well put together. Rarely does an album summon memories of Dad like Night Moves, but it's always warm and pleasant rather than weepy like some still tend to be when they're called up. As I've aged, Seger's words and music, the sound of his voice, continue to appeal to me more and more. I've heard at least six different masterings of Night Moves in the past half-century, and I've enjoyed them all. Lately, I've been comparing a great pbthal rip of the 1980 MFSL pressing to Steve Hoffman's mastered for DCC gold disc, and I find them equally delightful. The very first CD pressing of Night Moves from 1986 is also great-sounding, as is the original vinyl pressing from 1976.
04
A New World Record
Electric Light Orchestra
I'm on record somewhere stating that three songs – "Tightrope", "Telephone Line", and "Rockaria!" – that open A New World Record are among the greatest album-opening triple plays ever. Those three tunes still bring me immense joy, especially when I listen to them back-to-back-to-back. It's about the songs, the sounds, the tempos, and the lyrics. With "Livin' Thing" and "Do Ya" hiding in plain sight on Side Two, A New World Record never fails to please. I know Jeff Lynne would go on to bigger and arguably better things, but his songwriting and more-is-better production style are in peak form here. The strings, the drums, and the backing vocals are all standouts here. My favorite track on the album was "Telephone Line", and it still speaks to me today. Then "Rockaria!" became my favorite track with its high-energy and opera singing meshed with rock sound. Great driving tune. "Livin' Thing" was played a lot before Marky Dirk took it to a different level, but today my favorite track on A New World Record is the "Do Ya" do-over, with the original released by Lynne's ELO predecessor, The Move, in 1972. The song rocks! This album seems like a long-overdue candidate for the audiophile labels because they take great albums and attempt to make them sound even better. I love the way my 1986 CD sounds.
03
Boston
Boston
When I slide my headphones on and play Boston, the world disappears. The sound, obsessively created almost entirely by Tom Scholz, plays out between my ears, blocking everything else out. Brad Delp's emotionally charged, gravity-defying tenor still rings true six decades on, creating an album unstuck in time. During the Great Purge of 1987 and 1988, when I had to sell off nearly my entire collection of vinyl albums and compact discs to pay medical bills, I had a friend come over to my house in his new Toyota 4Runner that had just been outfitted with a CD player and all-new amps and speakers. This guy had won the state lottery a few weeks earlier, and he ended up buying nearly all of the discs that were left after a few DJ friends got first pick. The first disc he popped into his truck, as it was parked in my front yard, with all the doors and windows open, was Boston, so we could all enjoy his new system. "More Than A Feeling" and "Peace Of Mind" play, and he's really pleased, so he turns the volume up quite a bit as "Foreplay/Long Time" begins. Right when the guitars and drums come in around the 2:30 mark, there was a loud pop as his system blew out the speakers. It was sad, but he wasn't mad. He threw some more money at the problem, and they set it up right. That disc was the 1986 US compact disc of Boston, which I recall as sounding really good. Have heard some really nice vinyl pressings since then, including a gorgeous 1976 "Wally" Traugott mastering and a pretty decent MFSL mastering from 1996. The 2000 SACD, remastered by Mark Wilder, was so thrilling the first time; I've yet to feel that again when playing it. Then came Sholz's own 2006 remaster and "subtle" remix of Boston, which is louder than other discs I've heard. My experience with MasterSound discs kept me from trying the Boston one, but I was fortunate enough to score two different Japanese discs during the Pandemic. One of them became my favorite version to listen to for a while, but then I heard pbthal's 2025 rip of a "Wally" pressing. Now it's the one I listen to when I put my headphones on.
02
Songs In The Key Of Life
Stevie Wonder
On any given day, Songs In The Key Of Life could be my top album from 1976. My Uncle Sam only had Vol. I of the two-cartridge 8-track version. He would play "Sir Duke" and "I Wish" and then, when the tape changed programs, he'd jump back to program two again, listen to "Have A Talk With God" before enjoying "Sir Duke" and "I Wish" over and over again. I remember this occurring a few times in his Cutlass. I have listened to Songs In The Key Of Life as if my life depended on it for the past twenty years or so; it was one of the first three discs I played on my system when I first got it set up here in The Hideaway after we moved into it in 2001. When my nephew chose to perform "Sir Duke" on the marimba in high school and later in college for a judged exhibition, I refused to let him download the track from iTunes to practice; I pulled out my 1984 CD and burned him a CD with the track repeating 20x. It did not even occur to me to just put "Sir Duke" on there once and let him repeat as needed; must have been the mix-tape maker in me, I had 80 minutes to work with, so I was gonna try and max it out. Songs In The Key Of Life represents Stevie Wonder at the peak of his powers. That 1984 Japanese compact disc pressing for the US market was all I needed for years and years. I later picked up a 2000 Columbia House pressing for backup that sounded a little different, and then the Audio Fidelity gold pressing, which still plays tricks on me; some songs sound better while others sound worse to me. I heard no issues with the 2011 Japanese SHM-SACD, but I rarely played it. The green color, true of all SHM discs, doesn't sit well with me. It was pretty cool to have all twenty-one tracks on a single disc, though I've never come across the single-disc Blu-Ray Audio version of Songs In The Key Of Life. If the album is re-released with different masterings in that format, I would surely add it to the collection as the ultimate archive of the album. My preferred listening master of Songs In The Key Of Life is the 2014 remastered high-resolution digital download.
01
Fly Like An Eagle
Steve Miller Band
There is a wonderful feeling, almost a floating in space, free from the harsh truth of gravity, that I get when I listen to the Steve Miller Band's Fly Like An Eagle album. Stylistically and thematically, the album breaks down for me with two tracks – "Sweet Maree" and "The Window" – left to play, but damn if that final track, which I have skipped all these years, doesn't have some wonderful stereo test passages within its final forty seconds. I will be forever grateful to the people who lived in that house I passed on my way home from school, where, over the course of a week or two, I overheard the entire Fly Like An Eagle album. It is easily the most-played album on this list of 40 of my favorite albums from 1976. The 1987 US compact disc is my favorite way to launch myself into orbit, though a vinyl rip by an unknown archivist of his 1979 MFSL pressing, a trusted friend passed on to me, is getting more and more airtime. It's all about those details.
Thanks for sticking around through the whole thing. If you missed any part of the 1976 Hideaway 40: The Albums countdown along the way, click HERE to see all the posts in the series.
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