Search - Bay City Rollers :: Once Upon a Star

High Rollers

02/22/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's a shame that the Bay City Rollers are mainly remembered nowadays for tartan turnups and screaming teenagers. Their music, while never pretending to seriousness, was always well crafted and engagingly performed. But what surprises most about revisiting Once Upon a Star after 20-something years, is just how good some of these songs are. Although not responsible for Bye Bye Baby - the biggest hit on the record - the Rollers writing team of Eric Faulkner and Stuart "Woody" Wood (plus Les McKeown) penned some great numbers including the Beatlesque title track and the wistful "Hey! Beautiful Dreamer". The instrumentation is also colorful and unusual - check out the mandolin on La Belle Jeane and Marlina - with touches reminiscent of sophisticated contemporaries like Supertramp and 10cc. The catchy tunes just keep coming, making you wonder why we haven't heard more of them in the recent revival of all things 70s. This is essential music of the period regardless of the packaging."

Inconsistent... but decent

Brewzerr | On the fault line, CA | 09/02/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The Bay City Rollers occupy a very bizarre and unique place in Rock and Pop history. They somewhat managed to fill a void in the mid-70's between Glam, Pop, and Punk. You may scoff at my assessment of the latter... but at the time they were Dee Dee Ramone's favorite band, not to mention that several members of the Ramones have been quoted as saying that the Rollers' classic "Saturday Night" was the main source of inspiration for their own "Blitzkrieg Bop". Also, look closely at the live band photo on the back of the first Damned album... Rat Scabies is sporting classic Rollers' Tartan highwater flares! Before the Damned he played in a BCR cover band called the Tartan Horde with Nick Lowe.

Now... where "Once Upon A Star" is concerned... this may have been the second album, but it was the first album to feature performances solely by the Rollers themselves without the accompaniment of studio session musicians, as well as being the first album to showcase the band's breakaway from the songwriting team of Martin/Coulter, who had previously penned most of their previous recordings. The album is much better produced than the previous ("Rollin'") by Sweet's then-producer/manager Phil Wainman, and features mostly compositions written by members Eric Faulkner and Stuart "Woody" Wood. The only problem is the same problem that seemed to plague the Rollers throughout their career... inconsistency. Songs like "Let's Go", "Marlina", "Keep On Dancing", "Bye Bye Baby", and "Rock And Roll Honeymoon" were excellent examples of what the Rollers could do when they got their confidence levels up to snuff... but the horrible sugar-coated tripe of stinkers like "The Disco Kid", "La Belle Jeane", and "Hey! Beautiful Dreamer" were obvious misguided attempts by highly unlikeable manager Tam Paton to appeal to the 13 year old female teen market that the Rollers had surely outgrown at this point in their career. This mis-management is exactly what did the Rollers in a few years later.

Like all of their first 4 albums, this is not a bad album... just very uneven and unsure of itself.

"