Stretch - Forget The Past 1978 VINYL Rip Santana - esque final offering feat. Nicko McBrain

This is the last Stretch album which was released in 1978. Elmer Gantry, by this point was no longer the lead singer and the band now sported Nicko McBrain from the Pat Travers Band on drums. He of course would go on to join Iron Maiden but that is another story. “Forget The Past” is not like any of the previous Stretch albums but should not be dismissed. In its own right it was an excellent recording and worthy of remembering. In places they almost sounded like Santana. Perhaps you won’t agree but check it out …

Ripped from good quality vinyl for your listening pleasure. The vinyl was centralized which means there was absolutely no side to side movement of the tone arm. This is usually the major flaw with vinyl as it causes a "WOWING" effect noticable to most audiophiles. It is caused by the hole not being entirely central and is more annoying than the occasional click in my opinion.

Please re-seed for other music lovers.

About Stretch (pasted info from elsewhere on the net)

Stretch featured the fine vocal talents of one Elmer Gantry (who named himself in honour of the character in the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry). Elmer had previously led an outfit called Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, which released three singles in the late Sixties on the Direction label. They were "Flames", (1967), "Mary Jane", (1968), and "Volcano", (1969), all now collector's items. He also recorded a song called "Psychobabble", featured on an Alan Parsons Project Album "Eye In The Sky". They all helped establish Elmer's reputation as a fine, expressive singer and imaginative composer. Stretch was a much more bluesy kind of band and featured a hot young guitarist, and songwriter simply known as "Kirby". Elmer was the lead vocalist and also played some guitar. They made a strong team, ably backed by Steve Emery (bass guitar), and Jim Russell (drums), who also played with rock'n'roll revival band The Wild Angels. Stretch was augmented on the album by horn players Mike Bailey and Ron Carthy, saxophonists Mick Eve and Chris Mercer, and keyboard player John Cook.

The band had made a promising start and enjoyed the thrill of a hit single, when "Why Did You Do It" (written by Kirby and featured on this CD) got to Number 16 in the U.K. in November 1975. It spent nine weeks in the charts and seemed to signal the start of a hugely successful career. The band followed up Elastique with You Can't Beat Your Brain For Entertainment (1976), and Life Blood (1977), all on Anchor, by which time drummer Jeff Rich had joined the band. The blond-haired young sticksman was later to find job security with Status Quo. The final Stretch record, Forget The Past was released on the Hot Wax label in 1978.
At their peak fans rated Stretch as 'the greatest British blues and boogie band of the era', and many spoke in whispered reverence of the crazed night in 1976, 'when they nearly blew Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow off stage'.
~Chris Welch, London 1995