ALBUM: The Best of Bread (1973)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$
‘Oh I like bread and butter, I like toast and …’
‘Wait, wait this is not my beautiful song,’ I say, waking up rubbing my eyes. ‘This is not my talented soft rock band.’
It’s the falsetto guy singing ‘Bread and Butter,’ the second best worst song of all time.
Sorry I was dreaming. Or should I say nightmaring.
I went to bed last night with the intention of writing a review for the album ‘The Best of Bread,’ you know that group that when their music is played consecutively with the group America will likely leave you unable to wake up – ever.
Luckily I hadn’t indulged in any America earlier.
(So, probably no need to call the somnambulance.}
There I was, laying there with my ear pods in, listening to the string-laden song “If’.”
If a picture paints a thousand words
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show
The you I’ve come to know
Aaaaaah. I think I fell asleep on the second line but woke up in a sweat with Bread and Butter going through my mind. Dang, an earworm alert at 3 a.m., obviously caused by the ‘Bread’ keyword.
All funnin’ aside, Bread, like America, has written and performed some beautiful songs, including:
Bread: ‘Everything I Own,’ ‘Make it With You,’ ‘It Don’t Matter to Me.’
America: Horse with No Name, Sister Golden Hair, Ventura Highway. (However America gets docked, totally docked, a point for being responsible for ‘Muskrat Love.’)
And on that note, for comparison purposes, I’m going to throw in the Carpenters here. Again, great craft, melodic tuneful songs, wonderful voice. It’s just that all these soft rock songs can be OD’d on really quickly as seen in my opening.
Carpenters. ‘Close to You,’ ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ ‘Rainy Days and Mondays.’
These are just a small sampling of these groups’ hits. Any group or artist that can sell as many millions of records as these did cannot be called ‘bad.’ But excessive radio play in my youth and a developing taste for something a little more powerful, this music isn’t my usual thing.
It is the usual thing for Catherine, my beloved, who has built up some unusual resistance for the deadly and sleepy SRMS (Soft Rock Melancholia Syndrome.) In fact, she can take the three aforementioned groups and add Carly Simon, Carole King and James Taylor and she’s set, right dear? Cat? Cat?
Whoa this is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.*
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*sorry to crash the landing here. But I hope people understand this closing is a Talking Heads reference foreshadowed in the opening dream sequence in which our hero (me) has a bad dream of a squawking falsetto guy from the song Bread and Butter, which I have elsewhere on this website named the 2nd best worst song of all time. So upon waking up from the nightmare, our hero/writer finished the Bread album review, slyly and with great subtlety (ruined only by this end note) brings the story full circle, beause full circles are good.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.