Better late than never, but I finally had some time to sit down and listen to this a few times.
All American Boy is really a guitar players' record - I was struck listening to it how many different kinds of tones and textures Derringer uses. Phasers, flangers, tremolo pedals, leslie speakers, different types of clean and distortion tones, talk box, the list goes on and on. As some have noted, the lyrics can be a bit juvenile - having had some time to think about it, and with what I learned about Derringer writing the liner notes for this, I've started to maybe think that rather than being some kind of cynical ploy to appeal to teenagers, it's more to do with the fact that Derringer himself didn't have a 'normal' teenage life. By the time he was 16 he was already a star with the McCoys, so he didn't really have the chance to grow up normally, and I think the lyrics sort of reflect both some arrested development and also a kind of rose-tinted idealism for a normal childhood and adolescence that he never really got to have.
Having said that, the lyrical shortcomings are easy to overlook because the quad mix on All American Boy is phenomenal, absolute showcase material. There are so many little surprising moments that had me grinning from ear to ear - I used to think Larry Keyes was CBS's best quad mixer, but D-V's recent run of material that's featured a lot of Young's mixes (along with the Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert, Appice SACDs from Sony Japan) have me seriously reconsidering that notion. It's also worth noting that the quad mix of All American Boy is by far the most dynamic version of the album, weighing in at nearly DR14 on the dynamic range meter. You can really feel it in the music too, and cranking it up makes it even better.
I don't think Spring Fever holds up quite as well - there are some improvements, including Derringer's vocals (which are much stronger, presumably thanks to 18 months of non-stop touring with the Edgar Winter Group) and the lyrical content, which is a lot more mature (relatively speaking) than All American Boy. What I do miss from that album is the variety of sounds - Spring Fever was recorded quickly (probably in just a few weeks) in between his commitments to Edgar Winter, and it kind of shows. The guitar sounds are less varied throughout, and there's less of the production flourishes I liked from the previous album, like the female backing singers that really helped carry Derringer's somewhat limited range as a vocalist. The album also suffers from the 'you have your whole life to write your first album, and a year to write your second' problem in that it doesn't have a lot of new material. What is new I really like, songs like Don't Ever Say Goodbye and He Needs Some Answers are excellent hard rockers, and Rock (despite being an All American Boy outtake) is probably the highlight of the album, but beyond that it's reused material in the form of covers (Hang on Sloopy, Walking The Dog) and songs he wrote for Johnny Winter (Still Alive and Well, Roll With Me). It's great that Derringer was so busy and all that year, but I think he was spreading himself a bit thin songwriting-wise, giving songs to Johnny Winter, and 4 other new songs that would appear on the Edgar Winter Group with Rick Derringer later that year.
The quad mix of Spring Fever is good, but for me, not nearly as revelatory as All American Boy, probably no surprise since the same guy (Shelly Yakus) did both mixes. It is a very good mix though, and there's certainly no reason to ever listen to the stereo version of Spring Fever again, that's for sure!
I also think All American Boy is sonically quite a bit better than Spring Fever, most likely due to the fact that it was recorded at Caribou Ranch, a great sounding studio that produced Chicago's 6th through 11th albums. Spring Fever has that kind of grungy midrangey New York sound that reminds me of the albums of Aerosmith and Blue Oyster Cult from the same period, which I never found really sonically satisfying. Again not bad by any stretch, but the contrast is probably more apparent by virtue of following All American Boy on the same disc.
It probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, the remastering on this disc, like every album we've been so lucky to get from D-V thusfar, is second to none. When I was listening to All American Boy I think I was marvelling at how (ok, not stylistically, but sonically) it sounded like it had been recorded yesterday, and also incredibly grateful that I'll never have to bother with the Q8s of these two albums, which as recently as last year were selling for $75+ each on eBay.
Really proud to be associated with this, even in a small way.
If only it went up to 11
