Needless to say I don't have any of Alan O'Day's albums in my collection but I do have some certain songs that he wrote for other people. Alan, best known as a one hit wonder artist with Undercover Angel passed away from cancer at age 72.
O'Day wrote for a lot of major bands that recorded for ABC Dunhill, John Kay and later Three Dog Night covered Easy Evil to which was a minor hit for Kay in 1973, Angie Baby done by Helen Reddy and I'm sure he had a hand in writing Are You Old Enough to which Mark Lindsay did as a flop single. Three Dog Night also covered a bizarre number called Heavy Church on the Naturally album and both Cher and Steppenwolf did Train Of Thought, Cher had the hit version, Steppenwolf's version can be found on the 1976 Skullduggery LP. The Righteous Brothers took his Rock And Roll Heaven up the charts in 1974.
Appetizers, his 1977 LP contains Undercover Angel and Angie Baby. Later O'Day would help write songs for the Muppet Babies TV show and co writing with Janis Liebhart on that and other assorted projects for National Geographic and Disney. In 2008 O'Day did a new album called I Hear Voices and it's a good listen.
O'Day is now in the Rock And Roll Heaven that he wrote years ago. He will be missed.
http://alanoday.com/
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"Heavy Church" is pretty good, "Rock and Roll Heaven" is tolerable. Even "Train of Thought" was OK -- you never hear it anymore. "Undercover Angel," ugh. Not everything from the '70s was Golden, Ghod knows....
ReplyDeleteTrue the 70s had their share of Crapola stuff. I'm more familiar with other's doing O'Day's music, Helen Reddy's Angie Baby isn't bad, but Undercover Angel, may have paid the bills for Alan but it's not one of my faves. Far from it, but he seemed to be a pretty nice guy judging of what I read from his website.
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