Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Soulful Norm Burns

This week's posting is quite late, due to a brief vacation and some computer problems. I'll get back on schedule with another post within three days, and will be posting a full Song-Poem album to WFMU soon. Today, a record which caught me off guard, "Since You Came Into My Life" by Norm Burns and the Five Stars. I would describe this as Norm Burns (completely failed) attempt to provide the customer with some early '70's soul music. I definitely hear elements of that Philly Soul (one of my least favorite genres, to be honest) here, as well as other soulful sounds of the era. The results, particularly Norm's painfully uncomfortable vocal - possibly the worst I've ever heard from him - are fairly bizarre, and not what I expected to hear on a Sterling record. See what you think: 

Play:  

  The flip side, "What Kind of Fool Do You Think I Am?", is a much more typical example of the run-of-the-mill bland side of the Norm Burns experience, nowhere near the highs of his best ("Darling, Don't Put Your Hands On Me" and "The Human Breakdown of Absurdity" come to mind) or his most amazingly bad (see above). Oddly, this side is attributed to Norm, not with the Five Stars of the flip, but with Sterling's other identified band, "The Satellites". Since I suspect these were both the same band, I find the differing billing sort of interesting:

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I recently acquired Norm Burns performing TENNESSEE BLUES b/w A SAIL BOAT IN THE MOONLIGHT WITH YOU on STERLING RECORDS 451. I don't have a player and have not been able to listen to it, but after listening to your post, I can only say he is awful.