Atlanta Rhythm Section
Champagne Jam

“Champagne Jam“, released at the beginning of 1978, is the career apotheosis for the Atlanta based on a commercial standpoint. The soft yet firm sound, both rocking and swinging, reaches a high standard, and the thematic quality rises further, managing to offer easy approaches even for less savvy and demanding music enthusiasts.

It is at this point in their history that this sextet from Georgia enters the big circle, becoming headliners in arenas with capacity over fifty thousand seats across America. In the concerts of those years, they had as opening acts groups that would later forge even more successful careers, such as Heart, Foreigner, Van Halen, Journey… while our heroes were competing for the main role of the evening with artists like the Doobie Brothers, Aerosmith, Genesis, Santana, Springsteen.

The album sales are driven by the single “Imaginary Lover”, an extremely smooth and aphrodisiac ballad with an irresistible melody. Its lyrics present the curious thesis that it is better to reserve one's desire for affection and transport for an “Imaginary Lover”, full of virtues and devoid of any issues, essentially “going solo”… Um, it might be an idea, it could avoid many headaches and worries.

Another curiosity related to this track: a major US radio station accidentally aired it by playing the record at 45 rpm instead of 33 rpm: the result was that listeners flooded the station with requests for a repeat, mind you, at the same, incorrect speed… And so it was done, for months!

Shockingly, with that alteration in pitch caused by the record spinning too fast, poor Ronnie Hammond's voice ended up sounding exactly like Stevie Nicks', who was at the time America's most popular singer thanks to the still recent, gigantic success of her Fleetwood Mac's “Rumours”. The stories go that Nicks herself, upon hearing the song on the radio, bought the album and wittily added the altered version of “Imaginary Lover” to her demos of new tracks, ready to propose them to her band for the next album “Tusk”. Thinking it was entirely Nick's own work, her fellow Mac members showered her with compliments… only to be informed by her that it was a song by a Southern group from Atlanta, beautifully sped up and pitched! “Too bad! Are you sure? It really sounds like you singing!” said her bandmate and fellow singer, Christine McVie!

The jewels of this album overshadow and comfort the more ordinary episodes. One of them is the opening rock’n’roll “Large Time”: a dry and peremptory riff from J.R. Cobb’s electric guitar starts supporting, on its own, the first verses of the song. Only halfway through the three minutes of the track do Barry Bailey's other guitar and Goddard's sharp Rickenbacker bass skillfully arrive to inflate and toughen the sound, creating the apotheosis. The lyrics speak about Lynyrd Skynyrd and the then-recent tragic plane crash that befell them.

“I’m Not Gonna Let It Bother Me Tonight”, which follows immediately, couldn’t be more contrasting: relaxed and sneaky, in the purest ARS style, in search of mellowness, the balance between all five instrumentalists while Hammond's beautiful voice harmonizes with increasing intensity until the elegant closing chords.

After “Normal Love”, which is the typical slow piano ballad, a bit languidly sung by Hammond aimed at still appealing divorcees in search of fresh meat, following the bouncy boogie that titles the album and after the already celebrated “Imaginary Lover”, comes “The Ballad of Lois Malone”, which is another tribute, already in the title and then in the initial arpeggio and sounds, even in Ronnie Van Zant-style drawled interpretation, directed at the unlucky Skynyrd friends.

The album ends peacefully with a new ballad “The Great Escape”, accessible but anything but sappy, and with the final “Evileen”, usually filled with executive class and with Barry Bailey “working wonders” (an awkward expression but I've run out of adjectives for him) with his solo guitar.

The Atlanta's best-selling album, therefore. In my opinion, it is surpassed in quality and emotionality by two, three, perhaps four other subsequent albums, but nonetheless, it’s a full five-star record.