Amazing Grace (Badlees Album)
| Amazing Grace | ||||
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| Studio album by The Badlees | ||||
| Released | April 2, 1999 | |||
| Recorded | Bret Alexander's Basement Studio Wapwallopen, PA |
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| Length | 39:09 | |||
| Label | Rite-Off Records | |||
| Producer | Bret Alexander | |||
| The Badlees chronology | ||||
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Amazing Grace is the fourth full length studio album released by American band The Badlees. It was released on their independent label, Rite-Off Records, in April 1999, just as the band was working to get out of their contract with Universal.
The Badlees recorded their follow-up to the blockbuster River Songs in 1997. The album was called Up There, Down Here and was ready to be published, but the sale of Polygram to Seagram's put all projects on hold indefinitely. Over the final months of 1998 and into 1999, the Badlees played steadily to packed shows in and around Pennsylvania but made little headway with the label that continued to hold them in corporate limbo. They requested, then demanded, then begged the label to either release Up There, Down Here to the public, or release the Badlees from their contract, but got little to no response.
Finally, they came up with a radical idea to simply make their own fully produced, full-length album independently and without consent from the label. Bret Alexander was confident that his ever-growing home studio was to the point where they could accomplish this mission sonically. Terry Selders felt that this rash move by the band could not possibly be ignored by the folks at the new Universal Music Group, and was bound to cause some movement one way or another. The band members realized that this action would probably mean the death of Up There, Down Here, as Universal owned the rights to that recording.
The new album, Amazing Grace, was recorded, mixed, mastered, and pressed in just two months at Bret Alexander's home studio. It features the most diverse array of songwriting and voices, as well as styles and moods, and is testament to a true genius that the band possesses, that had been suppressed in recent years.
If you include the already-finished-but-yet-to-be released Up There, Down Here, Pete Palladino sang lead vocals on 56 of the 58 songs that the Badlees had published since 1990, but of the eleven tracks that made up Amazing Grace, Pete would only be the lead singer on four. But on the flipside, Palladino had no individual songwriting credits on any of those previous recordings, but he did have one on this album, a pop gem which he co-wrote with Mike Naydock titled "A Fever", which contains some pristine, soprano vocals in the hook and is reminiscent to some of the higher quality material put out by Tears For Fears in the 1980s.
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