Billy Carlucci
and
Reid Whitelaw
were a pair of New York-based songwriters who, after kicking around the business for several years, hit paydirt in 1968 when they wrote the tune
"Goody Goody Gumdrops"
for
the 1910 Fruitgum Company
. It was the first of a string of
pop
songs the team would write for the
Kasenetz-Katz
bubblegum empire, and they formed a
bubblegum
act of their own,
Marshmallow Way
, who cut an album for
United Artists
. But by 1970,
Carlucci
Whitelaw
had ambitions to make music that was classier and more mature, and they signed a deal with
Audio Fidelity Records
for their new project.
The Golden Gate
combined polished pop tunes and a production that matched the well-crafted
pop/rock
of acts like
the Buckinghams
with horn-based arrangements in the manner of
Chicago
Blood, Sweat & Tears
.
's one and only album,
Year One
, is a notably more ambitious and less gimmicky work than
had delivered in the past; with a handful of top studio musicians backing them up and the vocal group
the Tradewinds
adding background harmonies,
's craft is impeccable (beyond a few shaky vocal moments that reveal these guys were songwriters first), and the production and arrangements are a canny reflection of both the style of the day and the studio-centered
background of the composers/bandleaders. But the catch is that the songs on
may have been smarter and more carefully crafted than
's previous hits, but they weren't as catchy or as fun to listen to, and while this LP is popular among avid enthusiasts of studio-bound
, for all its ambitions and imagination
lacks the hum-along hooks that separate an OK
album from a great one.
deserved to be congratulated for their ambitions, but on the evidence of
, they should have remembered to write some stronger melodies at the same time. ~ Mark Deming