Bliss Band-Dinner With Raoul (1978)

Bliss Band was a British band from the late 1970s that released two albums before disbanding in 1980. The band was formed by vocalist and keyboardist Paul Bliss in 1976 after leaving Dog Soldier, with whom he had released an album in 1975 and had also contributed to several Moody Blues projects. For the production of their first album, "Dinner With Raoul," released in 1978, Paul Bliss enlisted Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff Baxter, along with Michael McDonald on vocals, Andy Brown on bass, Alan Park on keyboards, Phil Palmer on guitar, and Nigel Elliott on drums. This debut album is brimming with great compositions in the purest West Coast style, venturing into more jazzy moments, all overflowing with catchy and pleasant melodies. The melodic sections are combined thanks to the vocal prowess of Bliss and McDonald, along with the keyboard elements that make this an excellent example of late-seventies Californian rock. The final result is astonishing, and it's no surprise given the production by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and the outstanding contributions of Michael McDonald ("Slipaway" and "Stay A Little Longer"), which evoke the sound of early Steely Dan and The Doobies Brothers, making it a hidden gem of West Coast melodic rock. Tracks like "Over The Hill", "Don't Do Me Any Favors", "Right Place, Right Time", and "Here Goes" only need Donald Fagen's involvement to transform "Dinner With Raoul" into a lost "Katy Lied", with that smooth, striking, and subtle music contained within its grooves. Inexplicably, as happened to so many others, this album was lost in the abyss, perhaps because there were simply too many similar releases at the time (which there undoubtedly were), which is why many of these works inevitably went unnoticed.