The Montclairs "Dreaming Out Of Season"
haze25
759 Posts
This album has been killing me the past week, especialy "grand finale", the title track and the opus "do i stand a chance". great songwriting, melodies and concepts (grand finale) makes for a killer soul record that should be heard by everyone. that is all.peace,x 
Comments
ive always thought this about this album
the concetp and harmonies are incredible..a killer album and do i have a chance is my favorite cut as well...and that is a hard choice on an incredible album
do yourself a favor and pick it up
co-sign on the mentioned tracks, but also "unwanted love" is a great modern (not boogie) dancer.
it's just a great Soul album all the way through and I think that's why it was reissued in the early 90s, long before most of the other reissues/boots.
especially in that era
the lead singner if i am not mistaken..and this is why i respect the conceptual stuff even more
its inspiring for any one trying to sing soul music (such as myself)
The Montclairs seem just a little too early ('72-'74) to be called "modern soul."
At the time, Jewel/Ronn/Paula was reissuing a lot of their older catalog albums on vinyl, and one of them just happened to be the Montclairs. Probably timely too, since Phil Perry was starting to catch on as a solo act.
o.k - just call it uptempo soul dancer - I don't want to start the discussion about modern soul, boogie, etc. again
The Montclairs are one of my favorite soul groups bar none. Which means a lot beacuse group soul is my thing and I listen to a lot of it. Still need to scrounge up some pennies and grab the next "Hey You" that hits the 'bay.
And just to annoy you again:)
I'll call it crossover. It definitely has that 70's feel and don't really fit in the northern or modern categorie
Just a really good soft-soul record is all it is. Nothing out of the ordinary.
see, so you just call this stuff crossover? really? thats interesting. because it definitely gets dumped into the modern soul category in as far as a lot of comps are concerned.
montclairs album is dope though. theres a couple tracks on that bsides and rarities thing they did thats dope too.
why only 1 record though"?
Nah, that was GamleOle who called it crossover. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a really good soft-soul record, man. No different from the Moments or the Chi-Lites or any other similar groups. No offense to anyone, but crossover from what?
Not to be nitpicky, but I always understood "modern soul" to be anything post-disco, or at least after '76. A group like the Montclairs would have been considered passe by then, which is why I was surprised to see them classed as "modern."
Isn't crossover just a nerdy sub-genre description of this kind of not-yet-modern soul?
We are talking about like 8 different things here.
Modern used to just mean 70s soul. That was in comparison to 60s soul which was more in vogue back in the days.
More recently the term "Crossover" has helped to differentiate between 60s northern and late 70s/early 80s modern. Often refers to mid-tempo soul tunes from the mid-70s. There's a different definition of "modern" in northern soul circles than there is for guys after 80s synth/drum machine/jherri curl stuff.
Pickwick is describing the group in absolute terms, 70s sweet/soft/group soul.... people who are saying "modern" and "crossover" are using collectors terms.
"Crossover", as used in soul collector circles, has nothing to do with the more traditional definition of commercialization or "crossing over" to a bigger audience.