Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen - Tales from the Ozone
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Free Music Notes for Tales from the Ozone
Free Music Review: One of their best - finally on CD!
Hit: 5 Stars
When CC & His LPA came out in 1975, Warner Bros was disappointed with the sales (they had very high expectations). They decided to spend very little to promote the next album --Tales from the Ozone-- and quickly let it go out of print. The 3rd Warner LP was live, not new material, just milking the fan base IMO as the band broke up. I've been a big fan for 30 years, and I'll tell ya, both of the Warner studio albums are EXCELLENT and MUST HAVES. I've been literally waiting for decades to get a chance to replace my worn-out LPs with CD copies of both!!
Country rock doesn't get any better than this!
Free Music Review: +3/4 -- The original band's studio swan-song
Hit: 3 Stars
The 1970s premier hippy-country-rock-swing band recorded four long players and an unlikely hit (a 1971 cover of Johnny Bond's "Hot Rod Lincoln") before jumping to Warner Brothers a trio of albums, of which this was the second. Though the original band was still together, this disc is hamstrung by a songlist that's light on originals, and production (courtesy of Hoyt Axton) that's flat and lackluster."Tales from the Ozone" draws almost entirely from a list of covers including pop and swing tunes from Leiber & Stoller and Cab Calloway, country songs from Hank Williams Jr., Billy Joe Shaver, and Blackie Ferrell (the latter of whom penned the classic "Mama Hated Diesels"). Axton created a flat production, with guitars, drums, fiddle, steel and vocals all competing stage front. Though not nearly as nuanced as their previous, eponymously titled, Warner LP, it does capture a sense of the band's live energy -- something explored even more fully on contemporaneous live albums.
The band was firing on all cylinders during their tenure at Warner, but this album stands in the considerable shadow of its predecessor. Worth a spin, especially for Airmen fans, but not nearly as essential as "Lost in the Ozone," "Live From Deep in the Heart of Texas," or "Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen."
3-3/4 stars, if allowed fractional ratings.