One of my choices is not an "Amazing Album", but I will give Humble Pie's Eat It a shout here. Possibly the most expressive of their albums, although not definitive like Performance: Rocking the Fillmore or Smokin', it had four sides of their world: 1) The Rocking, 2) The Blues/Soul, 3) The Acoustic (Returning to the Town and Country era), and 4) Live Pie. After nice two song start-up, the album was seriously marred on the first album on several tracks with Steve Marriott's vocal being on one speaker resulting in a bad time for headphone listeners - this list includes Is It for Love, Drugstore Cowboy, Black Coffee (The US single, I think) plus most of the rest of Side Two. True, Pie albums were meant to be blasted enough to break leases, but this left one of Rock's greatest voices very buried under in the mix at times although it blends in a charm when the Blackberries back up - at that time they were sometimes seen as an actual part of the group and rightfully so.
Even by the standards of the day, the first album has a slightly muddy mix that sometimes has the Bass a little too high for the music (although with me, it just could be the headphones which rock but enhances the Bass levels), possibly by not having enough time to properly mix the mega dose of songs, maybe by Marriott's ears failing under trying to achieve an epic while forgetting the intimacy that won them fans, maybe it's drugs, maybe all of the above, and album two showed more extremes on Side Four. Thankfully, Side Three actually works all the way and sounds focused, possibly suggesting that Marriott should have took this route again as their next album, Thunderbox, was a worryingly listless and not so inspired album, as the well-traveled band needed a rest with the laid back style of songs like Say No More and Beckton Dumps fitting. Sadly, the badly recorded concert on Side Four recorded in Glasgow featured a singer that sounded like that all of his earnings went up the nose - on a great night, Steve Marriott had the power of a classic Soul shouter, on Eat It's Side Four, he sounds like a rabid granny who formed a tribute band after hearing Rocking the Fillmore...ie a parody of what the Pie could be on stage although the harmonica driven jam on "Roadrunner" was nice. Production-wise, it sounded that not enough care was put into the recording or that the venue was not right for such an event highlighting at their faults by that time...whatever the case, it was a pretty sad side.
What could have been Humble Pie's double epic turned into their falling from grace that could have been saved, but sadly it was not to be. Some great songs and attempts at actually once more opening up their music beyond the Boogie that made them in The US had a sorry production on most of it.
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