Desperately Seeking Real Music

When this album was new, I heard Imagination and On Your Face playing all day on my aunt's new stereo. Although I have always been an EW&F fan, I was too young to realize who I was listening to at the time. Lately, On Your Face kept playing in my head and after several conversations with friends and family and mumbled lyrics, I found it on this album. An added bonus was Imagination (wonderful), Getaway and Saturday Nite! No disrespect to new artists but there is no comparison between borrowed/lifted tracks and real horns. This music is timeless.

Power Funk....

....one of my personal favorites of Earth Wind and Fire's, partly because when this came out I saw their great stage show and they had just released "Getaway"....and they performed it at the show and the audience went wild. I feel that you just can't help getting into the great Phillip Bailey piece, "Imagination" and I dig "Burning Bush". A fine CD.

The Beginning Of The End

Following hot on the heels of the outstanding #1 albums "That's The Way Of The World" and the blistering live "Gratitude", "Spirit" did nothing to erase the group's momentum, and is mostly remembered as yet another fine album from the period. However, on closer inspection the refined sound begun on "That's The Way Of The World" and continued in the studio tracks from "Gratitude" begins to sound a bit worn here; although fans of the other albums will most likely find "Spirit" more of the same, for me it is the beginning of the group's descent into slick formula. Most of the songs are of the slower kind, moving ever closer to the disco sound which permeated "All'n'All" and "I Am". Not an unlistenable effort, but not one that hits the CD player very often, as one begins to pine for the harder funk grooves and touches of jazz-fusion that made the earlier works so real and vital sounding. Only "Getaway" and the great instrumental "Biyo" rise above the generally substandard murk to remind one of what the group is capable of.