Bad Company "Bad Co." [1974]

Here's another piece of evidence that all the sting of major-label rock music was gone by 1974: even though Bad Company emerged to tell the world how dangerous they were -- fresh from smoothing out their edges and firing the actually dangerous (to himself) drunk from their previous band, Free -- it's clear they were as toothless and docile as Alice Cooper by this point, setting the table for even softer fare like Eagles and James Taylor to run the marketplace for the next few years. God, is it any wonder everyone stayed as completely fucked up as possible in that decade? What a bummer to realize contemporary music radio of the Beatles and the Stones from a few short years before had given way to the teddy-bear boogie of Bad Company and, well, the Stones. Not that "Bad Co." didn't have the opportunity to really tear shit up in the studio -- with Led Zep nodding out and funding Swan Song Records on just their royalty checks from "Stairway to Heaven" airplay alone, they likely let Paul Rodgers and the rest of these shmoes do whatever they wanted -- they just chose not to. Thus, in short, pay no attention to their tough-guy swagger; Bad Company put together a debut album suitable to have been performed at Jerry Wexler's niece's bat mitzvah, which it probably was.