While everybody else is lauding the Queen film, I can do without that but, 45 years after my sister bought these records, it is time to roll out one of my favourite, contrite admissions, she was right and I was wrong. To be fair, I can't remember particularly disliking The Osmonds but Faust, Lindisfarne, the likes of Medicine Head and Steeleye Span were more conspicuous on my radar at the time.
Would Diana Ross, Marc Bolan or Rod Stewart, for instance, have sat over to the right on a stool to provide backing vocals on The Proud One.
Of course, One Bad Apple is a pastiche of the Jackson Five but that doesn't make it a bad record. Subsequently The Osmonds were a split personality between the 'rock' efforts like Crazy Horses that brought them in a long-haired, denim-clad, drugged-up audience in Paris who knew only that about them before they had to go out in white jumpsuits, in late Elvis style, and sing the likes of Love Me for a Reason.
They are not a completely convincing rock outfit but neither are Black Sabbath, Deep Purple or Motorhead, for me. It is energetic, loud music and has its moments but it is the 'ballads' that they excelled at, songs that I'd love to have written for the love of having written them never mind the royalty cheque.
Give me love, not a facsimile of it is the best line but there are plenty of Tin Pan Alley masterpieces that presumably stand up very well without the welling up of nostalgia for an age of innocence still possible then, reported faithfully in Jackie magazine, that isn't possible any more.
One might have forgotten I Can't Stop, that lends itself well to the Supremes' classic hand gesture, and I'm Still Gonna Need You, which I'm heartbreakingly grateful to be reminded of. The debt they owe to The Temptations, Motown in general, and being a safe version of what was already a safe version of soul music is only the same as that owed by Cliff Richard to Elvis Presley, and no bad thing. Some people take water with their whisky.
All you have to do is be is any good.
I feel no animosity towards those of my teenage 1970's contemporaries who are still poring over Dark Side of the Moon but I had got over that by the time of the Chi-lites, the Stylistics and Al Green, which was only a few weeks later. But, get a grip, lads.
I was really a pop music fan in the first place. The weirdo phase didn't last long and by now it's become drearily mainstream anyway.
And then, one moves onto Disc 2, which is all the Donny singles and then Donny and Marie. What more do you want.
I'm not joking.
