Cheap Up Up & Away (Music) (Fifth Dimension) Price

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Customer Reviews of Up Up & Away

It's the Jimmy Webb factor, of course!
The only Fifth Dimension albums that stand up consistently are this one and the Magic Garden. The magic ingredient is Jimmy Webb - otherwise they stray too far into bland MOR. Not all the songs are by JW but the arrangements take up all the tracks to a very high standard.
The ultimate highlight, apart from the obvious ones like "Up Up and Away" and "Go where you wanna go", has got to be "Rosecrans Boulevard". I venture to suggest that it is one of the best of JW's songs. I have found it circling in my mind over and over as I tried to grasp its intoxicating totality.

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Positive hit, positive album cover, negative filler
Maybe The 5th Dimension just isn't to my taste, since I consistently find their regular albums disappointing, including this one. I've always liked the positive, inspiring, fresh feeling of this album's hit "Up, Up And Away," but the remaining songs on this album are generally quite negative. The song titles alone hint at this: "Another Day, Another Heartache," "Which Way To Nowhere," "Never Gonna Be The Same," "Poor Side Of Town," "Too Poor To Die." The worst is probably "Rosecrans Blvd.," where the singer admits he used a woman numerous times and then expects the listener feel sorry for his resulting loneliness. That theme still might fly if it weren't for the horrible lack of song regularity, changing tempo, *and* changing meter, which makes it all sound improvised. Too bad. I used to live in San Diego and knew Rosecrans Blvd. well, and would have liked it immortalized in a presentable way. The slowed-down version of Johnny Rivers' "Poor Side Of Town" here is worse than Rivers' original version, since it discards the catchy signature lick and slows it down to the point of near unrecognizability. Some good points: "California My Way" is active and positive, as is the title song, and "Too Poor To Die" is semi-humorous. Other than that, it might be better to get their greatest hits album instead. Except that it lacks some of their best songs like "California Soul"... I guess you just can't win.

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Review of Up-Up and Away
The fifth's debut album is wonderful. Full of great pop tunes and the fifth's wonderful harmonies. Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo have terrific voices. This can be evidenced on "Misty Rose", "California my Way" "Never be the Same." Though they were grouped to sound like the Black Mama'a and Papa's they have a distinctive sound all there own. Interestingly my cat chills out to this album and that's all the recommendation I need that this is a great album.