After tangentially mentioning the band Attila in an earlier post, I decided to give their album, also named Attila, a more in-depth listen.
It is an amazing album. Amazing that it exists and amazing that it is not more well known. While a heavy shadow has been cast over this short-lived band by the negative reviews it garnered in the 1970s, in retrospect, the album may have just been a bit ahead of its time.
Prog-jammers Om Trio, lounge-funkifyers Medeski, Martin & Wood, and even the Garcian manifesto Simplicity seem to have gleaned a similar, hard-rocking, jazz style from the mystical musical ether. The only part of Attila that doesn’t work is Billy Joel belting out psychedelic wacko lyrics; his voice is identical to the Billy Joel we hear on Cold Spring Harbor which by some odd miracle was released only a year after Attila’s rad pressing.
Certainly pick Atilla up if you happen upon it at a garage sale, after all, the value of “the worst album released in the history of recorded music” can only increase.
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