the most underrated 33 1/3 in history?

Comverting "Black and Blue" vinyl to digital.    Underrated Stones album. 

Sir army suit is very beatlesque and a fun listen.

Yep jack the toad. Playing as I type.

I like Klaatu a lot and yes they had a very Beatlesque sound and approach. The production on their first two albums perhaps even set a new bar at the time in terms of musical ambition and even results for their genre of music.

They also had a knack for writing catchy lightweight pop-friendly tunes, which extended even to their later albums. The song "Hope" from that album, though a bit more substanntive lyrically than many of their pop tunes, is one example of Klaatu at their best.

I agree also that their stuff is highly underrated, largely as a result of the fact that their first album was rumored to be the Beatles.

People listened and heard enough to hang on to that "hope". Then when it became clear they were not, the band was doomed from there on despite the actual merits of their work which is certainly very capable of standing on its own.

Also, there was so much production applied to their first two albums and the soundscapes so ambitious that they sound crappy on all but very good systems, on which you discover that they were actually extremely good.

Audiphiles that are into that kind of pop/rock/prog music should definitely give Klaatu a listen.

I'd love to hear a properly done digital remaster of these albums some day.

"anus of uranus"

I think the actual name of the song was "Hanus of Uranus".

"Anus" is funnier though and seemed to stick!

Jack the toad - savoy brown

I like the entire Klaatu catalog. Yes it is derivative but what music isn't? No one album is top notch end to end, though all are well done. Hope is a concept album and plays best end to end. If I had to pick one, Hope is the one. Love teh album cover art there as well!

As I recall, the hype about them being the Beatles when the first album was released was spontaneous and grew organically but was not initiated by teh group or Capital records. But once it achieved critical mass, capital chose to ride the wave of publicity and not offer up much information to set things straight. I bought the first record as a result of the publicity and wondered myself as did most others.

Then by the time teh second lp Hope came out, which IMHO is a hugely unapprciated or underrated release,cApital and the group suffered the backlash as it became clear this was really not The BEatles. Then Klaatu descended further into obscurity over time as a result despite continuing to produce perhaps some of their most Beatleesque tunes ever on the later albums Sir Army Suit and Endangered Species.

Capital learned their lesson about how to promote new groups in teh shadow of teh BEatles then when "Get The Knack" came out a few years later. Here it was clear the group, also very talented, was not The BEatles though teh album cover was based on the design of "Meet The BEatles" and again teh $$$ signs rolled at very high levels at least for that initial release by The Knack.