Chuck Mangione’s Feels So Good album is different from most of the albums of the Academy Days era in that it has traveled with me through all the subsequent eras. Feels So Good has always been there on Stand-By even during the Metal Years. Whenever I wanted to slow down and mellow out, Chuck was the go to man.
The song Feels So Good was getting airplay on the radio and it appealed to me in the way that Love’s Theme from Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra did. In the download a song era, I might have stopped at Feels So Good. I’m so glad that I didn’t have that option.
This album is full of great music. It is a precursor to the New Age music that I would eventually get into in that it is perfect to put on as background while working on a project that requires my attention. It creates a great buffer that insulates me from the background static of life and helps me to focus on my work with the distraction of lyrics of the types of music hooks that promote air-conducting. It simply flows along happy to sit at the edge of my consciosuness.
Adam actually had the album first. My cassette followed soon after. Adam would go on to pick up Love Notes shortly thereafter while I never pursued any more Mangione albums. As with Kansas I’m shocked that for as much as I love Feels So Good, I never considered getting any of his other work. Maybe it is because I feel that this album is so good that I don’t need any others. I’m going to make a point of checking some out though.
And since this album has been in the active rotation for the last 30 years, it doesn’t really harken back to any particular age or memories. That’s OK. I guess Maui-Waui does kind of remind me of my daughter since I made a slide show movie for her high school graduation and used it as the soundtrack but that is getting ahead of the tale.
Feels So Good
Of course this the faster, jazzed up single version of the Feels So Good. Still good but not as good as Feels So Good from the album Feels So Good.
Maui-Waui
Last Dance