By 1975, Dr. Hook dropped the longer name -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show -- and went ahead with the shorter name of Dr. Hook. I think that the longer name was better. After all, once they dropped the longer name, the music they made rapidly veered toward the unlistenable. Sometimes You Win, the last record I am familiar with (I use.d to own a copy), was a crime against humanity, despite what the reviewer at Allmusic says
One Christmas season, I picked up a copy of a Dr. Hook record (I can't remember which record) to give to my sister. Oddly, I found it on a rack of records in a local hardware store. We had no record shop at that time, but some stores had a very small collection. I had heard the track Only Sixteen, on the radio, but I had no idea if my sister liked it. It turns out that she loved the record. Later, she went mad, collecting every record from the band she could find. We ever wrote a letter to the Dr. Hook fan club.
Anyway, she gave all of her records away one year, without telling me, including every record that Dr. Hook ever released. I found an excellent copy of this one in a thrift shop years later, and brought it home. I am not a huge fan, but I guess the record brings back some memories. I am not sure that the music has aged well.
My dad was obviously a bit mystified by the band. I think he liked the mellower songs, like Only Sixteen and Sylvia's Mother. I recall him asking, somewhat incredulously, why they couldn't sing more songs like those, and not these other weird tunes, like Penicillin Penny and Freakin' at the Freakers Ball? I guess they liked to mix it up. Personally, I preferred the wordier stuff. In truth, if I ever saw other early Dr. Hoo record for cheap, like, say a dollar, I might be tested to buy them.
Some copies of this record carry the additional title of Revisited.
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