Steve Miller Band - Circle of Love
#588
October 23 1981
By Tom Mott
Steve Miller Band
Circle of Love
Genre: Taking a break after cashing in
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Tom’s Rating: 2.7 out of 5
Highlights
Heart Like a Wheel
Circle of Love
I love Steve Miller AKA Maurice AKA the Space Cowboy AKA the Gangster of Love. I love his clean guitar playing. I love his effortless-sounding voice. I love his 60s psychedelic blues period. I love his "classic" 1973 - 1979 period. I love the clip of him playing Fly Like an Eagle live on The Midnight Special and turning it into an extended spacey hippie jam. I love my personal Dazed and Confused moment in the summer of 1987 when I visited my college roommate in Phoenix Arizona and we all took a big bong hit and quietly listened to Living in the USA while all lying on a friend's waterbed and about three quarters of the way through, somebody in the room said "whoa, I'm gellin' ..." and we all started laughing.
OK, I don't love Abracadabra, but I forgive him. Like the Bee Gees, he has his three distinct periods: the great 60s stuff; the classic 70s stuff; and then the long downhill coast. This album comes after his two BLOCKBUSTER 70s albums -- Fly Like an Eagle & Book of Dreams -- but before 1982's Abracadabra. He's just starting to shift towards his third phase.
Side 1 reminds me of a middling ELO album: catchy, effortless mid-tempo grooves. No actual hits, but not a bad way to while away 15 minutes. Definitely more of a front porch record than the stadium sing-alongs of Book of Dreams. The final track on side 1 is a gentle hum-along that shifts unexpectedly into a series of short, mellifluous guitar solos that held my attention. A welcome surprise.
Side 2 is Macho City. A side-long waste of a record side. It starts out with a truly awful, "wry" spoken "rap" and then turns into a very repetitive psychedelic groove. I'm 90% convinced this is what Steve did:
1. Hmm, I only have 5 songs. What should I do ...
2. Let's grab this an old 12-min jam the band did around the tick-tock-tick doot-doot-doo-doo section of Fly Like an Eagle.
3. I add some "hip" rhyming talk at the beginning.
4. Crud, we're still two minutes too short? Add a couple minutes of rain storm sound effects at the end.
5. OK, mix and master that! I'll be out on my sailboat in SF Bay.
I think too many somebodies got him too many cheeseburgers. So it goes. I still love him. He seems like a nice guy too. He could've done better here.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1cm2YFFWOY28rQos87no9l?si=fit4fUdJTbyHOBImYKlWUw
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