Continuing Guilty Pleasures Week with Hudson-Ford, a duo who were sadly underrated and largely ignored by the pop music buying public. Why? Couldn't tell you. Not any particular reason you could put your finger on.

Hudson-Ford were John Ford and Richard Hudson who were founding members of the band The Strawbs (from whom Rick Wakeman, later of Yes, was an alumnus) and departed in the early 70's to pursue a career as a duo. During their time together (as Hudson-Ford) they released three albums and a handful of singles, all to lukewarm response and very little, if any airplay here in the U.S.

Bear in mind this is the mid-1970's, a period rightly or wrongly cited as The Doldrums in Pop music, unless of course you were dabbling in Disco, West Coast (aka: Asylum Records) or Prog-rock, things just weren't all that exciting and the audience was going through a malaise period. So even though Hudson-Ford were a good and competent band, with good song writing skills and good production, they failed to click with an audience who were just getting tired of what was available, certainly in mainstream. And they went quietly unnoticed until they resurfaced again in 1979 as The Monks - but that's another story.

Tonight it's a track off their third album, When World's Collide which was released by A&M worldwide in 1975. Mechanics is the second track off the first side and, listening to it again after almost 35 years, still has a certain hook-drenched snap to it and, at least to these ears, has aged rather well.

But then, all the music magazines I wrote for at the time went out of business - so what do I know?