I like the album, like the cinematic grandeur of "The Fall Of The House Of Usher". Unlike the stuff from "I Robot" onwards, it seemed like a one-off. I was the other way round, for me "Tales" also stood apart but for different reasons. They wouldn't go anywhere near "Eye In The Sky" and considered "The Turn Of A Friendly Card" a sellout.
Musically this and "I Robot" were the only APP albums, my older "serious about music" friends accepted. Back in 1983, it was (seemed like?) a big deal. It's heartwarming that what once used to be my probably first "grail record", can now be easily found for 5€. Wow! Now it finally made sense.īut: In order to obtain the album like that, one had to raid the 2nd hand bins. That it was half the price of those Arista albums seemed about right.īack then I was still too new to the wonderful world of vinyl to understand what was going on but when I saw the copy an older friend had, I got the idea: A gatefold. A strange looking single sleeve with zero credits and a large, red "Special Price" sticker. In 1986 the 43 charting album 'Stereotomy' was released, represented by the songs 'Limelight' and the 82 charting (5 on the Mainstream Rock chart) 'Stereotomy. And the version of "Tales" they sold new in the early 80's felt wrong. Both songs are good, if somewhat mundane and less than inspired, particularly in comparison to the music of the Alan Parsons Project's earlier years. Everything else was on Arista and had gatefolds. (I'm glad he kept putting out great stuff after!)Ĭontinue on with further discussion of "Tales of Mystery and Imagination".īeing younger, I discovered APP through the hits so me and my friends were working our way backwards.Īnd "Tales" was probably the very first album that showed me how crucial looking for second hand vinyl was! For me, it was always a bit of an odd man album out. My thoughts at the time about this record is I assumed that it would be a one-shot deal as Parsons had assembled a large group of musicians and performers and I couldn't imagine he would be able to do a follow-up on this order. I love the dark, moody orchestration by Andrew Powell in ".House of Usher". The opening suite of tracks on Side 2, "The Fall of the House of Usher", through the closing track "To One In Paradise" is probably one of the most unique-sounding album sides in that decade.
#ALAN PARSONS PROJECT BEST HITS FULL#
Let's start, obviously, with Tales of Mystery and Imagination - I first heard this late at night on free-form FM radio in '76 back when full albums used to be played in their entirety and was entranced immediately by the opening sounds of "A Dream Within A Dream", and the entire album became one of my all-time favorites of the 70s. Here's the original APP album discography: Couldn't find that this had been done previously for APP.