No Other by Gene Clark

I first became aware of Gene Clark's No Other from the same 2006 '100 Coolest Albums' list that brought Frank Sinatra's collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim to my attention. At the time I had no idea he was a ex-Byrd. Following its release in 1974 it became something of a lost classic after Asylum records, dismayed by the excessive cost of its production and lack of immediate hits, failed to promote it properly. As the Wikipedia entry notes, "[f]urther confounding matters was the album's artwork: the front cover was a collage inspired by 1920s Hollywood glamour, while the back featured a photo of the singer with permed hair and clad in full drag, frolicking at the former estate of [actor] John Barrymore." Modest sales saw it deleted in 1976 and it remained largely unavailable until three tracks appeared on a retrospective of Clark's career, Flying High, released in 1998, with No Other finally seeing re-release in the early 2000s.

In terms of how good the record actually is, Allmusic put it well: "The appearance of No Other on CD in America some 26 years after its release offers the opportunity to hear this record for what it was: a solidly visionary recording that decided to use every available means to illustrate Gene Clark's razor-sharp songwriting that lent itself to open-ended performance and production -- often in the same song (one listen to the title track bears this out in spades)."

As recently as last November, Allan Jones wrote in Uncut about its original release. "When it comes out in the autumn of 1974, Gene Clark's No Other seems to me like an album everybody should hear, nothing short of a masterpiece. I beg for enough space to review it at appropriate length in what used to be Melody Maker, to a wholly unsympathetic response, people regarding me as someone who's taken leave of their senses who should be approached with caution and a very big stick. I'm told to stop my infernal whining and write 100 words on the album, which I do, sulkily, most of them superlatives. The extravagant claims I make on its behalf, however, bestirs few people enough to actually go out and buy the thing. Many more simply ignore the album altogether and it quickly sinks without trace, barely a copy sold...No Other was meant to be the album that returned him to former glories and was lavishly financed by David Geffen's Asylum Records; to the tune, some said, of $100,000. This is a lot of money for only eight completed tracks and an album that could only have sold more poorly if it had remained unreleased. When Clark announces to an appalled Geffen that for a follow-up he intends to record an album of "cosmic Motown", he's introduced to the wooden thing in the wall otherwise known as the door."