Despite having over a half-dozen albums to their name, The Association is a group best known for three songs: \u201cAlong Comes Mary,\u201d \u201cCherish\u201d and \u201cWindy.\u201d Of those three, two of them are found on their debut effort, And Then\u2026 Along Comes The Association<\/i>, a disc that saw the band surrender the bulk of the musical performances to studio musicians while they handled the harmonized vocals. It is what it is; seeing how many bands did so back in the day, and have continued this practice even to the modern day, I\u2019m not going to demonize the group for doing so.<\/p>\n
Chances are, this isn\u2019t the disc you\u2019re going to find in your grandparents\u2019 or parents\u2019 record collection; more than likely you\u2019ll find the Greatest Hits<\/i> release. The thing is, though, this particular album was second in popularity only to the best-of back in the day\u2026 and, if we\u2019re completely honest with ourselves, it\u2019s not a bad album in the least.<\/p>\n
With six capable vocalists in the group, The Association often leaned on Terry Kirkman and Russ Giguere to handle the duties (though Jim Yester provided lead vocals on \u201cAlong Comes Mary\u201d). What could have been somewhat distracting actually proves to be a strength for the band, as the listener is guaranteed a strong performance on the lead vocals with a comforting balance from the harmonies.<\/p>\n
As for why tracks like \u201cEnter The Young,\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll Be Your Man\u201d and \u201cStanding Still\u201d didn\u2019t get the chance to climb the charts like \u201cCherish\u201d\u2026 well, that\u2019s a complete mystery. Fact is, with rare exception, there\u2019s not a bad track on this one\u2014and even when something doesn\u2019t quite hit the mark like \u201cMessage Of Our Love,\u201d it\u2019s not a complete failure, though some of the audio effects could have been eliminated from the final mix.<\/p>\n
As for the hits? \u201cCherish\u201d rightfully deserves to be recognized as one of The Association\u2019s best tracks, sounding surprisingly fresh even 60 years after it was recorded. (And, brother, don\u2019t think I didn\u2019t feel old typing that last sentence.) \u201cAlong Comes Mary\u201d isn\u2019t quite as strong of a single, but still has enough catchiness for one to understand how it became popular.<\/p>\n
Where does this all leave And Then\u2026 Along Comes The Association<\/i>? Simple: if you want to discover more than the hit singles from this band, this disc is the perfect launching pad, and remains an enjoyable (if occasionally slightly dated) way to spend 30 minutes. For a band that has been all but forgotten except for three songs, it\u2019s definitely worth re-discovering the remaining 10 tracks on this one that didn\u2019t burn up the charts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[11193],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-47398","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-association","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47398","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=47398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47398"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47398"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}