Steve Miller Band - Number 5 (1970)

Featuring an even more robust and muscular production than predecessor Your Saving Grace, 1970's Number 5 was recorded in Nashville, so expect a little more down-home feel and the odd fiddle n' banjo thrown in the mix. But it's still a rich and heady brew, and by no means a countrified offering.

This album does veer off occasionally on different tangents with horns and strings appearing on stylistic exercises which give an overall feel of the material being a bit more lightweight than previous efforts (a Mexicali song about eating chili?). That, and the weird, stoned liner notes, not to mention a picture of Steve laughing in an embrace of children on the back cover, one has to wonder if he was losing the plot.

But this is the last album of his pre-global stardom phase, so if he was getting a little loopy on the wacky tobaccy, well that's ok since we know he soon pulled it all together again to release an unprecedented string of timeless classics. Enjoy it for for what it is, and especially for the solid gold nuggets like the pre-ZZ Top electric boogie of Going To Mexico, the transcendant and lysergic Never Kill Another Man and others.

The Steve Miller Band - Your Saving Grace (1969)

Much more funky, groovy, soulful and free-flowing than the polished n' precise mega-hits of the mid-70's, Steve Miller's first 5 albums (all before 1973's breakout hit The Joker), are for many purists the "true" Steve Miller albums.

4th album Your Saving Grace was recorded by Glyn Johns and features the ubiquitous Nicky Hopkins tickling the ivories in support of the then-Steve Miller band trio. And by this, I imply a mark of quality.

One look at the cover shows that the flower power era had yet to fully subside, but don't be fooled, this is no hippy dippy shit with harpsichords and singalong chanting. So if you're sick to death (and who isn't?) of Jet Airliner or Rock N' Me, then you owe it to yourself to delve into the early albums and attempt to undo the damage of playlisted classic rock radio stations which churn out the same songs again and again until you can't stand it anymore and impose a 5-year listening ban on Steve Miller, which is exactly what I was compelled to do some years ago.