The First Class delivered one of the sunniest injections of harmony pop in the mid-70's with the deathless "Beach Baby," a song that one-upped
the Beach Boys in the nostalgia stakes. That song was undoubtedly their finest moment, but
Grapefruit's
Beach Baby: The Complete Recordings gives curious listeners proof that they had more than just the one song up their collective sleeve. With songs written by longtime hitmaker
John Carter and
Gill Shakespeare and sung by a trio of
Carter,
Chas Mills, and man of a thousand hits,
Tony Burrows, there's never much doubt that the end result wouldn't be first-class pop music. The set collects their two albums, 1974's
First Class and 1976's
SST, along with singles, songs written and performed by the same core people, and a batch of advertising jingles. The first album is much in the vein of the kind of radio-friendly, good-times-great-oldies nostalgia that "Beach Baby" captures so well. It also tacks on fine versions of songs that other
Carter projects had released -- namely, "Funny How Love Can Be" and "Dreams Are Ten a Penny." The album's second single, "Bobby Dazzler," is a fun mini-rock opera that, if it hadn't stiffed, might have led to a stage play. The process got as far as demos, seven of which are aired here for the first time. The band's second album,
SST, ditched the nostalgia angle in favor of mature and orchestrated pop more in tune with the trends of the time. Songs touch on disco ("Ain't No Love"), smooth MOR ("Life Is Whatever You Want It to Be"), tender acoustic ballads ("And She Cried"), and horn-driven rock & roll ("Old Time Love"), with nary a hit in sight but with craft to spare. Further singles didn't make much of a dent, but hearing them collected here is nice, as it ties a neat bow on their story. The third disc of the set collects jingles that
Carter wrote in the '70s; they are fun, but much better are the
First Class-style songs the team issued under different names. "Oh California" by
Magic is a lost summer gem,
Starbreaker's "The Sound of Summer" adds some majestic French horn to the template in surprising fashion, "Sidewalk Johnny" by
South Bank Wheels is probably the best disco song ever written about skateboarding, and "Silver Surfer" is retro surf at its silliest (and best.) The occasional clunker aside, the non-LP material here is frothy fun, a perfect match with "Beach Baby" and essential components of what turns out to be a great collection. It's silly, baked in that most dangerous of feelings -- "the good old days" -- and as close to perfect as this kind of pop music can be. ~ Tim Sendra
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