This year, Every Sunday Evening, Album Rock WXYG, The GOAT will be featuring a full album at 8:00 PM from the halcyon musical days of 1976. 1976 was one of the top Years in Album Rock history. Another year of tough choices every week. So many great ones to choose from. After 52 Weeks of featuring so many of the great albums that debuted in 1975, next Sunday we will be moving on to another amazing year of ALBUM ROCK EXCELLENCE, 1976.
We hope you’ll tune in at 8:00 PM, Sunday, January 4, 2026, for “Takin' It to the Streets”, the sixth studio album by The Doobie Brothers.
The album was released on March 19, 1976, by Warner Bros. Records. It was the first to feature Michael McDonald on lead vocals.
The group's first album with Michael McDonald marked a shift to a more self-consciously soulful sound for the Doobies, not all that different from what happened to Steely Dan -- whence McDonald (and Jeff Baxter) had come -- between, say, Can't Buy a Thrill and Pretzel Logic. They showed an ability to expand on the lyricism of Patrick Simmons and Baxter's writing on "Wheels of Fortune," while the title track introduced McDonald's white funk sound cold to their output, successfully. Simmons' "8th Avenue Shuffle" vaguely recalled "Black Water," only with an urban theme and a more self-consciously soul sound (with extraordinarily beautiful choruses and a thick, rippling guitar break). "Rio" and "It Keeps You Runnin'" both manage to sound like Steely Dan tracks -- and that's a compliment -- while Tiran Porter's hauntingly beautiful "For Someone Special" was a pure soul classic right in the midst of all of these higher-energy pieces. Tom Johnston's "Turn It Loose" is a last look back to their earlier sound, while Simmons' "Carry Me Away" shows off the new interplay and sounds that were to carry the group into the 1980s, with gorgeous playing and singing all around.
In addition to the great McDonald songs here, the title cut, the fabulous Losin' End, It Keeps You Running, and Carry Me Away, what is equally remarkable is the maturation of Patrick Simmons and his songwriting. Eighth Avenue Shuffle, Wheels of Fortune, and Rio are as good as anything else on the record. And Tiran Porter offers the sublime For Someone Special with its sophisticated time signatures and trick beats. That someone must have indeed been special. Tom Johnston even added Turn It Loose, a harkening to DBs past. Overall, this record is a display of great songwriting, virtuosic playing, and a production that mesmerizes from start to finish. This record is the height of the McDonald years, perhaps as the band could not rest on its laurels and had to make a superior record like this in an attempt to keep its fan base. What is most unexpected is that they gained a whole new following as well.
Tune In and Turn On Sunday, January 4, 2026, and every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM for The GOAT'S "The Long Play with Al Neff”.
