A mid-70's buddy flick about drug smuggling, taking place on a sailboat to Hawaii? I thought you'd never ask. Too bad the finished item was pretty substandard. All of the characters are shallow and exaggerated. I feel like I'm watching a cartoon, and strangely enough, the poster ad for this flick was cartoonish. "If you're into dope, sex, and cheap thrills..." Well, at least you were given advance warning.
There's a weird, borderline-sadistic 3 Stooges vibe hovering over this very low-budget hippie-era crime flick about violent drug pushers run amok. Amidst the wanton pointless violence, and other pointless things that happen here – one of the main characters is called "Acid", which is the only thing worth remembering.
Hailed as one of the very first punk records, it's pretty underwhelming to today's ears, most likely. Actually, it was to my ears, too. Everything that this album wanted itself to be appeared to come to fruition on the last track, "(I Live For) Cars and Girls", but even that struggled to get the point across. The Ramones would do this exact same stuff a year later but were a million times more entertaining and efficient doing it. The Dictators gave you sad sack covers of "California Sun" and "I Got You Babe". Take your pick.
Love Unlimited's debut was the rough female equivalent of an early 70's Isaac Hayes record, packed with supposedly simmering soul tunes interspersed with vocal "raps", to make the record seem more exalted and dramatic. For Ike, that formula worked fairly well, but for Love Unlimited, it was generally a miss. The spoken word sections at best didn't add anything to the record, while at worst...while the material does get better as you move through, although for something relatively short, it dragged in general. If the name sounds familiar in any way, they also happened to be Barry White's backing group, and White produced this record, along with most of the others released by the trio.
