If there has to be nostalgia for the 1970s (a questionable notion given the low cultural and political ebb of that decade), you might as well acknowledge one of the key figures of the era -- Richard M. Nixon, the president whose ability to polarize the American public knew no bounds and whose administration effectively ended any genuine trust in our elected officials (not that others later on didn't confirm that notion). While Nixon himself never cut an especially good record, comedian
David Frye, who gained fame for his remarkably accurate impression of the 37th president, made a handful of entertaining comedy albums that focused on Nixon's many eccentricities, and his first two albums have finally made their way to CD in this double-disc package from Collectors Choice Music. 1970's I Am the President was made up of a series of skits in which
Frye as Nixon finally made his way to the White House and encountered Lyndon Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Spiro Agnew, Hubert Humphrey, Billy Graham, and William F. Buckley; while it's difficult to attest to the accuracy of his Rockefeller and Agnew impressions today,
Frye's Nixon is still dead-on, and his comic timing matches his skill as a vocal mimic. 1971's Radio Free Nixon is a more complex effort, in which Nixon wakes up, wishes he had his own radio station where he could say whatever he wanted, and suddenly his dream becomes a reality. Radio Free Nixon's satire is more pointed (and often funnier) than on its predecessor, and the surrounding trappings of a typical radio station -- vocal choruses harmonizing "WNIX! 110 percent American! Are youuuu?" and cheesy musical intros to the various shows done on an appropriately shlocky-sounding synthesizer -- are hilariously accurate for the period. Radio Free Nixon closes with the president singing "My Way," and it's hard not to imagine that the paranoid leader would have liked the idea if he thought he could have gotten away with it. If you have to remember the 1970s, this package is as good a way to do it as any -- it manages to recall much that was grim about the decade, and makes it funny without blunting its impact. Shame on Collectors Choice for not including the credits from the original albums in this set, though a fine essay on
Frye by Richie Unterberger does appear. ~ Mark Deming