Saturday 24 December 2022

Posted by Gerry Hectic | File under : , ,

Another fantastic re-issue by BBE from the vaults of Perception Records but who are The Eight Minutes and why haven't we heard of the album, 'An American Family' before now as it was originally released in 1972!

Well, I don't know all the answers but the cover would suggest we're looking at some type of type of Jackson 5 on an expansion programme to 8; as in The Eight Minutes.

And would you believe the music is very 'Jackson 8' with the addition of The Undisputed Truth, and other soul-pop incarnations of the time together with healthy dose of Curtis, Isaac, etc.

And they flit from pop ('Loneliest Girl In Town') to anti-war ('Time For A Change'), funk '(I Can't Get No Higher') to do-wop and modern life love, 'Behind To Times' to 'Oh Yes I Do' is quite a jump but then. 'I Love You' is like a quantum leap with it's lush string arrangements; somebody tell me that this was a big hit/modern Northern Soul monster.

There's also the tease of what they could have done with the 6 minutes of 'Take My Love Don'y Set me Free' plus four bonus tracks that weren't included on the original release.

So that's not to say that this was a disfunctional  American entertainment family al a Jacksons/Osmonds/Partridge whichever way you slice the America pie, the three Goggin sisters plus three Sudduth sisters with Juwanaa Glover and Carl Monroe might have dodged the train wreck of a bullet of fame and in doing so, have left us with 14 tracks of a great period in musical history.

'I Love You' is worth this album on it's own and really fits in with the other re-issues from BBE of this time like the two Black Ivory albums (review HERE), Johnny Pate's 'Brother On The Run' OST (review HERE) or even the Julius Brockington album's (reveiw HERE).

Artist: The Eight Minutes

Title: An American Family

Release date: 17th February, 2023

Label : BBE Music

Catalog Number : BBE657 LP / CD / Digital / Bandcamp 

0 comments:

Post a Comment