Has anyone thought about why the hard rock group Steppenwolf is best known for a mere two songs, \u201cBorn To Be Wild\u201d and \u201cMagic Carpet Ride?\u201d<\/p>\n
While I am a huge fan of their self-titled debut, I\u2019ve found my interest in John Kay and crew growing less and less with each successive album. Their third effort, At Your Birthday Party<\/i>, is a lackluster effort that tries to reclaim some of their earlier glory while reaching in other musical directions. The problem is that neither are particularly successful.<\/p>\n
Yes, this is the disc that spawned Steppenwolf\u2019s last top-ten chart hit with \u201cRock Me\u201d — and I will admit this is a pretty enjoyable track, even if it\u2019s definitely not on par with the grossly overplayed two hits previously mentioned. I also was on pretty familiar terms with the track \u201cIt\u2019s Never Too Late,\u201d thanks to one of the numerous \u201cbargain bin\u201d best-ofs that MCA (who bought the ABC-Dunhill catalog a long time ago) put out in the \u201880s. Having gone through some very difficult personal issues of late, this track was especially poignant to me, and it remains a hidden gem in the Steppenwolf catalog.<\/p>\n
If only there were more moments like that on At Your Birthday Party<\/i>. The opening track \u201cDon\u2019t Cry\u201d doesn\u2019t really build up either the band\u2019s momentum or the listener\u2019s interest, while \u201cChicken Wolf\u201d smacks of what could have been, featuring Kay doing his traditional plays on words in an attempt to grab past glories like on \u201cThe Ostrich,\u201d but with far different results this time around. Too bad; this one could have been a great track if it didn\u2019t sound a lot like older Steppenwolf tracks (\u201cTighten Up Your Wig,\u201d anyone?).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty of psychedelia still here (\u201cSleeping Dreaming,\u201d \u201cMango Juice\u201d) and \u00a0in a \u201cwhat the hell were they thinking?!?<\/i>\u201d moment, a touch of country on \u201cRound And Down\u201d. Three words: no, no, <\/i>NO!!!<\/b> (Thankfully for the listener, this genre is dumped mid-song, but the damage is done.) If anything, it sometimes feels like Steppenwolf is trying to cover too much ground to rediscover just who they are and where they belong.<\/p>\n
That is the overall problem with At Your Birthday Party<\/i>, a problem that started to manifest itself on Steppenwolf The Second<\/i>. Just three albums into their career, it seemed like Kay and company didn\u2019t quite know who they wanted to be musically, despite hitting the charts hard with, by now, a total of three songs. That confusion is rampant on this disc, and it shows in the songwriting and performances. Tracks like \u201cShe\u2019ll Be Better,\u201d \u201cJupiter\u2019s Child,\u201d and \u201cGod Fearing Man\u201d all could have been something spectacular, but they all fall into a pool of mediocrity.<\/p>\n
One notable standout is the instrumental \u201cCat Killer,\u201d a bluesy, rollicking piano number that leads into \u201c At Your Birthday Party<\/i> has one or two nice gifts in the pile, but in the big picture, it\u2019s more like the creepy clown doing balloon animals. You just want to turn and run for your mommy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7243],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-41181","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-steppenwolf","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41181"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}