Mother's Finest : Iron Age
(Atlantic - 1981)
Category : underrated

Whereas all of Mother's Finest's releases before this one were a mix of Funk and Rock, a bit like Sly & The Family Stone, the Funk part on 'Iron Age' got reduced to the point that nearly the only Funky thing about it were the black voices of Glenn Murdock and Joyce Kennedy. Kennedy in particular shines on this album. Her powerful voice blows all those (by comparison) lightweight neo-soul singers à la Destiny's Child right out of the water.

But that's just the beginning. 'Iron Age' is impressive both in terms of song writing and energy, releasing one high impact killer track after another. This should've been on the playlist of any decent Hard Rock fan at the time as it was at least as good as the best material that bands like Aerosmith were releasing at the time. It should've been a big hit on American Rock radio as well. But despite the presence of accessible songs like 'Illusion' and 'Luv Drug' it didn't. Why? Because they were (apart from the guitarist) African-Americans? Because the combination of white Rock and black voices was too weird for some? Who knows.

Unfortunately for Mother's Finest black radio refused to play the album as well, but at least that wasn't so surprising given the fact that this was no Soul, Funk or Blues. It's the lack of interest from the Hard Rock community that's baffling.