Search - Bay City Rollers :: Elevator

Elevator

Maxine L. Mckern | Iowa | 02/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The best BCR album yet! I like the heavier rock feel of the album and the songs are well written. All Roller fans sholud add this to their collections."

Stoned Houses

David Chris Dalton | Raleigh, NC United States | 10/05/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"My parents accidentally purchased this for me for my 12th birthday. They were requested to buy "The Bay City Rollers Greatest Hits." After my initial disappointment, I put the record on and almost immediately fell in love with it. As the winter gave way to the spring of 1980, I became obsessed with this album, listening to it's tracks over and over and over. At the time I was only somewhat aware that this was the first "mature" offering of the former Bay City Rollers, once lead singer Les McKeown left the band for his ill-fated solo career.



Once I became a serious rock fan in high school, I revisited it again, somewhat surprised that it held up and that my 6th grade ears weren't totally clueless in their infatuation over these sounds.



Many more years later, the original LP long lost, I found another copy on Ebay for a few bucks, and eagerly placed it on my turntable once it arrived in the mail. Again, I was shocked by how well it stood the test of time. Or maybe I was shocked by what a bizarre record it is in the context of the history of pop music. It doesn't matter. I love this and it will always hold a place in my heart. I can tell you one thing. This record IS better than you think it is.



The "grown up" sound of The Rollers is very simple. It was 1979. Imagine Cheap Trick and The Beatles filtered through late-'70s Electric Light Orchestra and this would be the result. If George Martin would have produced "Dream Police" in 1979 instead of the following year's, "All Shook Down," this is very close to what would have probably been the final product.



Favorite tracks are the hard-rocking, "Elevator," complete with Kraftwerk/Bowie mannequin/android imagery crossed with sexual metaphors and the bizarre hard rock/new wave of "Stoned Houses #2," the catchy "Playing In a Rock and Roll Band," and "Turn on the Radio." I also love the heavy rockin' of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle despondency twofer, "Who'll Be My Keeper?" and "Back on the Road Again." The final track, "Washington's Birthday," makes no sense lyrically whatsoever but moves me with it's dark Beatles-esque melancholy.



The whole album is thematically united by confessions of crashing rock 'n' roll dreams. There are more drug references than in Nikki Sixx's, "The Heroin Diaries." The are multiple references to sex, mostly as mindless diversion. The are numerous references to the monotony and pointlessness of the daily workings of the music business.



Although this was to be the rebirth of the Bay City Rollers as adult rock musicians with a new lease on life, the lyrical content tells the story of a band who KNEW their time had already come and gone. The Rollers were, quite frankly, ready for the madness to be over since their rock 'n' roll lifestyle had morphed into something vastly different from the rock 'n' roll dreams of their youth.



Awesome stuff."

"I was young, so young, I was eleven"

R. Pennell | NJ USA | 07/08/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When I first got the cassette of "Elevator" for my eleventh birthday, I was convinced my mom had bought an album from the wrong group...didn't sound a thing like the songs I'd been recording off the Bay City Rollers Kroft TV show, and what was with the big scary red pill on the cover? Trip to the record store to see their photos on the back of the record assuaged my fears. Good thing, too--over time, this album went on to become one of my all-time favorites. That cassette rotted away into unplayability a decade or so ago. How thrilling to finally have this classic on CD. To be honest, not every song is a gem. But there are moments on this CD that are, to me, at the peak of what rock music can be (okay, they got me young, I may be a bit biased here). The Rollers left their poppy "Saturday Night" sound far behind them for this album, but apparently it was an uphill climb, and the old sound caught up with them later. Ah, well, for THIS album (and to a slightly lesser degree, Voxx and Richochet) the Rollers reached for something great, and caught it."