Osiris

Recorded in 1977 and 1978 and released in 1979, Osiris' debut album, Since Before Our Time, is a perfect example of a solid soul/funk release that fell through the cracks and did very little commercially. One can speculate on the reasons why this little known LP was ignored. Some might argue that Osiris' Sly Stone-influenced material wasn't disco enough for 1979, but then, Maze & Frankie Beverly had no problem going gold in the late '70s without jumping on the disco bandwagon. From a commercial standpoint, the problem with Since Before Our Time isn't a lack of disco, it's the lack of a really strong single. Tunes like "Damn," "Almost (Never Gets There)," and "Consistency" work well on an album, but they're missing the sort of immediacy that a single would have needed to grab a program director's attention. It's quite possible that some programmers at R&B radio heard Since Before Our Time and said, "Interesting album, but where's the single?" Not surprisingly, Warner Bros. dropped Osiris, and it didn't take long for this LP to go out of print and end up in the cutout bins. ~ Alex Henderson, Rovi