For their debut album Ardour, I wrote the following:
Fort Wayne's Ethos were like many bands of Midwest America whose obsession with Yes, Genesis, and Gentle Giant are well documented (at least by me...). These English progressive bands would enjoy regular airplay on the local underground, and very popular, FM stations played throughout the region. Concerts were met with great enthusiasm, and anyone that possessed a great talent for musicianship along with a hyperactive imagination, were quickly assembling together a band and making a go of it for themselves. Most ended up nowhere. Some procured a private release handed out at sparsely attended concerts. And then a few made the "big time". In this scenario, Ethos were one that made it.
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By 1977, Ethos were facing serious headwinds. Disco, punk, and the rest of them were aiming to destroy whatever fragments of progressive rock that had managed to creep into the American landscape. For a regional group with no presence to speak of, it was nigh impossible for the band to gain any kind of foothold. Lucky for us, Ethos paid no mind to current trends and went about releasing one more solid progressive rock outing before calling it a day. Songwriting is front and center, so it's not an obvious gymnastic styled prog, but close listens reveal quite a bit of complexity. Fantastic production and highly original material as well. This is one of those albums that once you buy the premise, the value goes up considerably.
Ownership: LP: 1977 Capitol. Single sleeve with lyric inner. Recent acquisition from Paradise Found Records in Boulder (2023) while up there for business. The first LP I bought was at Wooden Nickel Records, in Fort Wayne appropriately enough (1992 - store is still open!). I let it go a few years ago because it wasn't really in that good of shape. And that's the case with every copy I've found - except this one (and much nicer than these Discogs' stock photos). It's perfect mint. As such I can let go of the Japanese papersleeve CD, which is pretty scarce and remains the only reissue of this fine album. Incidentally there's only one original LP pressing of Open Up, which tells us the album was anticipated to sell poorly - and it did. It's much rarer than you might initially think.
9/23/92; 2009; 7/3/23 (new entry)
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