DAVID SOUL: Playing to an Audience of One (Private Stock; 1977)

Track Listing: 1) Silver Lady; 2) Tattler; 3) I Wish I Was; 4) Rider; 5) Going in With My Eyes Open; 6) Playing to an Audience of One; 7) Tomorrow Child; 8) By the Devil (I Was Tempted); 9) Nobody But a Fool or a Preacher; 10) Mary's Fancy

How can you resist picking this one up for a buck? Today, people might get a chuckle out of seeing a collection of tunes released by Starsky (or was he Hutch?), but many forget that before David Soul became a TV icon thanks to that great 70's cop show, he actually aspired to be a singer. Lest we forget, he had that number one single in 1976, "Don't Give Up On Us Baby" (which would then appear on every mushy K-Tel "Sex on the Beach", "Music By the Fireplace", "Smoochin at Sunset" compilation you can think of). That song is not on this album. Therefore, the title of this LP is amusingly ironic. As far as his singing career was concerned, most of us think of David Soul as a one-hit wonder. So, for camp value alone, this album is a real find. It likely got made thanks to his TV success, and his hit single, and surprisingly, time has been rather kind to it. I could envision one or two of these tracks making their way onto a soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino film.

I confess to having a soft spot to 70's easy listening music (and I guess that makes me a perfect Tightwad Music Collector, doesn't it?), but I will be objective here and admit that although I like the sound itself, there is really little variety there. To be sure, there are plenty of synthy strings, dreamy steel guitar riffs, and lots of lyrical moaning about unrequited love and passing through another town. David Soul's singing is pleasant enough, sounding somewhere between Jim Croce and Harry Chapin, yet his thin voice blends too well with the soupy surroundings. The thing I like most about 1970's music, of most genres, is that they seemed to blend with other forms and sounds. Even mushy music (which we now refer to as "Adult Contemporary") attempted to be mildly experimental with various colourings of sound. Case in point, during these unremarkable moanings, one can hear clarinets, ragtime-ish pop (which was briefly fashionable at the time), and even a guitar with a wah-wah pedal, however with a found not too phat that it would scare away the mild-mannered suburban white audience that this record was targeting. There's some diversity here, but it's not much.

Tightwad rating: **1/2 /5

Happy record hunting!

Love,

The Doctor