More of the Music of Steve Miller
The top end of this album is a problem on most pressings — dry and somewhat brittle — but on the best pressings the highs are extended, sweet and fairly natural. The soundfield is open and transparent with three-dimensional space that brings out the “trippy” sound the band threw in all over this album.
The MoFi has a bit more going on up top than most domestic pressings (forget the dubby imports) but the combination of blurry bass and compressed, lifeless sound fail to let this album sound the way you remember it in your head from back in the day.
Finding a good sounding copy of this record is not easy. Most of them sound like they’re playing underwater.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Space Intro
Fly Like An Eagle
Wild Mountain Honey
Serenade
Dance, Dance, Dance
Mercury Blues
Side Two
Take The Money And Run
Rock’n Me
You Send Me
Blue Odyssey
Sweet Maree
The Window
AMG 4 1/2 Star Review
Steve Miller had started to essay his classic sound with The Joker, but 1976’s Fly Like an Eagle is where he took flight, creating his definitive slice of space blues. The key is focus, even on an album as stylishly, self-consciously trippy as this, since the focus brings about his strongest set of songs (both originals and covers), plus a detailed atmospheric production where everything fits. It still can sound fairly dated — those whooshing keyboards and cavernous echoes are certainly of their time — but its essence hasn’t aged, as “Fly Like an Eagle” drifts like a cool breeze, while “Take the Money and Run” and “Rock ‘n Me” are fiendishly hooky, friendly rockers… Though it may not quite transcend its time, it certainly is an album rock landmark of the mid-’70s and its best moments (namely, the aforementioned singles) are classics of the idiom.
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