Steve Miller "Book of Dreams" [1977]

Inexplicable 70s hit-meister Steve Miller released "Book of Dreams" just in time for most Americans to look the other way from punk and before they traded in their blue jeans for disco leisure suits. Why anyone bought into this obtusely obvious, on-the-nose combination of faux-60s rock-pop and Alan Parsons-style synth-flatulence says plenty about how society could have let such vacuous, idiotic garbage like "Three's Company" become a hit, which was the prime-time TV equivalent of this album. Ahead of its time only in that it buffed all the edge and depth from each and every song the way they all did in the 80s, "Book of Dreams" robbed an entire generation of suburban high school kids the chance to dance to decent music at the prom. Serves a lesson of sorts, though, I suppose: look to the radio for your musical entertainment and you're bound to be swindled. Perhaps people didn't think so at the time, but with tastes having veered to the safe, sterile and soft, everyone was looking for some sort of respite from their fucked-up, tumultuous lives in the mid-late 70s. But all Steve Miller did was let people sleep in until the real bad stuff got here.