The Turn Of A Friendly Card Alaska

The Turn Of A Friendly Card

The Alan Parsons Project

Arista Records, 1980

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 03/16/1998

As much as I love some of the music that the Alan ParsonsProject put out when it was together, I've always found itdifficult to uncover the hidden messages of their albums. Eachalbum was based on a theme, with all the songs intertwined tohammer home a point.

It's been a while since I last dusted off one of their albums inthe Pierce Archive. Maybe it was seeing how bad I've been doing inthe staff NCAA pool (special thanks to Kansas for effectivelykilling my chances with their loss on Sunday) that drove me towardstheir 1980 album The Turn Of A Friendly Card. Remembered for two songs, itcontains one of their more confusing and disturbing -- albeit true-- messages about life.

Of course, the theme of this album is chance -- you can guessthat by the image of a stained glass playing card on the cover. Butthe actual theme is well above the notion of gambling. Instead, itappears to be how we look at life, especially the hand we've beendealt, and what chances lie ahead of us if we're willing to takesome risks. The end result might be worse than what we originallyhad, but that's the price we pay for taking such a risk.

In a sense, that's what's disturbing to me about the theme of The Turn Of A Friendly Card -- the fact that this is sotrue. Dennis Miller said it best in a rant about the homeless inAmerica -- we realize that the person we see rummaging through thegarbage can could be us; many of these people have received one toomany bad breaks in their lives. Why them and not us we may neverunderstand.