Mostly, Alexis deliver a concoction of soft rock which will appeal to fans of early Air Supply, Alessi, or even Chicago, however, can I mention the words ordinary and pedestrian in the same sentence?
Written by: gdmonline
ARTIST: Alexis
ALBUM: Alexis
LABEL: MCA
SERIAL: MCA 2260
YEAR: 1977
CD REISSUE: Discogs Reissue List
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA
LINEUP: Eddie Ulibarri – vocals, piano, celeste, synths * Robbie Fallberg – guitars * Dave Peters – sax, synths * Dick Walker – piano, synths, vocals * Larry Braden – bass * Randy Reeder – drums
TRACK LISTING: 01 Fly By Night * 02 It’s About You * 03 We Need Help Now * 04 Goodnight My Son * 05 It’s In Your Hands * 06 Late Night Rocker * 07 Lord Keeps Account * 08 Moon Worlds * 09 Elam
Background
I think this Denver based band only sneak onto this website due to the fact that Ron Nevison produced them, and the fact that the cover art is pretty cool. There are some interesting moments admittedly, and the guy who does his best to keep the band’s head above the ‘keep it interesting’ watermark, is guitarist Robbie Fallberg.
Mostly, we get a concoction of soft rock which will appeal to fans of early Air Supply, Alessi, or even Chicago. Indeed Ulibarri’s vocals could compare with Air Supply’s masterful Russell Hitchcock, but that would be comparing the apprentice with the master!
With Alexis’ music, the softer it sounds, the more cheesier it becomes, sounding as though it is a prisoner of that era alongside often repeated sitcoms and reruns of old TV shows.
The Songs
‘Fly By Night’ is an excellent hard rock opener, before we digress to the 70’s with ‘Its About You’, complete with sax and orchestral passages. The hillbilly rock of ‘We Need Help Now’ is definitely different, and could quite easily be misunderstood by listeners, while the valium inducing ‘Goodnight My Son’ is aptly titled me thinks.
We return to form with the brash ‘Late Night Rocker’ not before we get the awful ‘Lord Keeps Account’ which sounds like cabaret music aboard the Loveboat. They try to repair the damage with ‘Moon Worlds’ which ventures nicely into Blue Oyster Cult territory while ‘Elam’ is another experiment for patients with insomnia.
In Summary
I’m sure that Alexis had great potential as a true rock band, but with so many cooks in the songwriting kitchen, consistency in their material was something we were not going to get. Hence, the mish mash of styles present on the album. Not exactly a head turner, and nor a commercial success by all accounts, so one wonders what MCA actually saw with this lot.
The band by all accounts were not very happy with the Ron Nevison production, so we can only assume that his production skills got better over the following years (re: UFO, Starship, Survivor, Chicago, Shooting Star etc).
Alexis on Video
Click to go to YTM album page.
A brief history on the band Alexis.
A company representative was paid to keep us up all night with drinks, drugs and girls, so when we arrived at the president’s office for the record-signing photo, we’d look like the rock-n band they wanted us to be. Hollywood in those days was ruled by cocaine.
The Hyatt House on Sunset Blvd. had an ambulance parked at the door for potential musician drug overdoses. Hookers wandered the upstairs hallways. The promotional matchbooks from the Record Plant featured an Aphrodite-like half-naked girl standing in a field of poppies smoking a joint.
The smoke curled into the air to spell LSD. Mind you, these were promotional materials! Our band Alexis had started out as Stargazer playing clubs in Denver and Dallas. Our drummer Randy Reeder had connections with Greg Lake. He got our demo tape heard by record companies.
MCA bit and then Led Zeppelin and Heart’s producer Ron Nevison took the group into the studio. I wasn’t there but the band said they were frustrated by Nevison’s habit of turning the control-room mix up so loud that nobody could communicate. As a result, the album sounded worse than the demo tape the band had produced out of Autumn Sound in Dallas with Larry Wallace.
Being friends with Stevie Wonder, Reeder had Gary Ozlabal remix a couple of songs. I, the father of the band, paid for those tapes. Those sounded equally awful. That $6,000 cassette sits at the bottom of a cardboard box in my garage.
The band went out on tour to support the grim album. One highlight story was that the lead singer Eddie Ulibarri had a problem with the lead singer of Average White Band, the band they were on tour with. Apparently, a fist-fight broke out at the front desk of a hotel.
Since Alexis didn’t sell more than 30,000 albums, the contract for a second album was never realized. The members went their separate ways, some to more music, some to corporate work and others to obscurity.
Dave Walker, one of our guitarists never got over how Sugarloaf (another Denver band) stole his jam riff and incorporated it into a major part of ‘Green Eyed Lady’.
Alex Newberry, Sarasota, Fla.
Thanks to user Stargazer (i.e Alex) for the story.