7 Park Avenue

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About 7 Park Avenue

Amazon.com Badfinger leader Pete Ham hanged himself in 1975 three days before his 28th birthday, leaving behind six albums, a note declaring the group's manager a "soulless bastard," and the demos collected here. Most of these songs didn't make it to Badfinger's records, a circumstance 7 Park Avenue's liner notes put down to a glut of material. A couple of tracks contain bits that Ham would later adapt for "Day After Day" (a verse from "Matted Spam") and "Baby Blue" (a melodic fragment in "I Know That You Should"); that both those hit singles are more distinctive pieces is a hint to why some of these numbers were rejected. Ham's homemade music has some of the same fragile quality of another Rykodisc reclamation project, Big Star cofounder Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos, but often lacks the bite of both Bell's record and the finest Badfinger studio cuts. It is, however, somewhere between sad and appalling to hear Ham sing "Just How Lucky We Are" only months before his death. Much closer to that reality is the closing "Ringside," with its resigned passages about being bid on. Happiness prevails on a few cuts (an acoustic "No Matter What," "Hand in Hand," "Catherine Cares"), but even if Ham had merely faded into obscurity, this disc's overall effect would be that of a thoughtful, downbeat craftsman at work--not always at the height of his powers, though filled with emotion. --Rickey Wright Product description This CD is the 1997 Rykodisc release. Catalog RCD 10349. There is a punch hole through the UPC. The back of the jewel case is cracked. From the Label The album’s original mono master recordings were sonically cleansed in 1993 to remove dropouts, clicks and generally brighten their quality. Additionally, new overdubs were added to some tracks in 1994 and 1995 by former Badfinger member Bob Jackson and former Iveys member Ron Griffiths. A pure-pop songwriter in the truest sense, Ham’s writing is bright and infectious, while at the same time being highly personal and introspective. While all of the album’s songs are rooted in the pop idiom, Matovina comments that “these songs show Pete’s ability to write with authority and confidence while incorporating the influences of a variety of musical styles. It belies the image that Pete was simply the ballad/power pop writer that his work in Badfinger cast him in. It presents another facet of his writing.” Stripped-down, as they appear on 7 Park Avenue, Pete’s songs bear an intimacy that was often lost to production gloss on Badfinger’s studio albums.