Monday, November 8, 2010

Back to Back to the Egg

I was talking to my buddy the other day, when the topic of Wings' ill-fated 1979 LP "Back to the Egg" came up. He's a personal injury attorney in Detroit, so he's well-acquainted with mishaps. Looking back, I think the "disasters" associated with "Back to the Egg" were mostly external, like Paul's pot bust in Japan and the band's breakup. Listening to what's actually on the record, I don't see what's so bad about it. Maybe I can chalk it up to familiarity.



I heard the album start-to-finish for the first time only recently when I picked it up on used vinyl. It was uncanny: I already knew this entire album. Every track on this thing must have gotten played on AOR radio enough that everything was familiar. Kind of like the Eagles' "The Long Run" or the first Boston album. The difference here is that the Boston and Eagles tracks are still in regular rotation on Classic Rock stations to this day. I don't know about "Back to the Egg," outside maybe "Rockestra Theme".



Here's a 1976 demo of one of those "Back to the Egg" non-hits, "Old Siam Sir":