Affirmation's Second Album 'Identity Crisis' from 1985

I'm back with the second album from this nice light but inventive fusion outfit from the early 80s.  Most of the music was written by Thom Teresi, keyboardist, and Joe Gaeta the guitarist.  Gotta love the 'Hall and Oates' style sleeveless shirts they are all wearing, combined with proto-mullets and 'staches.  Oh those glory days of long-in-the-back hair!  Is it just me who finds it amazing how truly revolutionary and iconoclastic it would be for someone to prance about in a mullet and 'stache today?  Surely we can agree they will have a difficult time if they ever enter the local bank.  It would be almost as bad as a young attractive woman with completely unshaved armpits and a tanktop, though, to be honest, that is witnessed slightly more commonly on the streets than the former style, at least, in certain buskers festivals perhaps, not necessarily in polite company.  I read with a great deal of amusement recently that in the "China Times" fully 75 percent of young women in China who were surveyed were in favour of shaving their armpits.  While the rest declared it a waste of time.  I don't think there is any hope of diverting fashionable conduct for the female sex in the direction of universal (for all) complete and total removal of all body hair, perhaps within about 20 years.  Will it then make a comeback after that, like that mullet might?  I doubt it, because part of the reason for this odd insistence on depilation is the work involved, which is what it makes it culturally desirable.  I think men's beards exist for the same reason (as hair on women's legs for example), because it became culturally important for men to shave to be part of the same group.  A group that evolved without facial hair would be a problem, not a solution, in this sense.  To insist instead on a lazy do-nothing nonchalance for female beauty simply doesn't accord with evolution: the very work women perform on their own beauty being what is being favoured here.  As I've said before, every time I drive to work in the morning and I see a woman applying makeup in the rear view mirror whilst driving and endangering her life convinces me how important evolution has made this for our species. One can argue that this state of affairs is deplorable for them altogether, but I don't think anyone actually makes the case for this anymore, certainly not on the side of the men, who only care about whether their girlfriends, wives, or the objects of their desire, are taking care of their attractiveness to their eventual approbation.  In any case the pressure on men is equally severe but entirely different in this race for acceptance by the opposite sex.  If anything the stress on men is worse since as we all know, men spend half their time on things they think will somehow make them attractive to some woman or another.  Where does progressive rock fit in this calculus?  Well, nowhere obviously, prog is not only not attractive to females, it is distinctly repulsive to the vast majority of them as I've noted time and time again.  On the other hand, I can still impress the odd young open-minded female by talking about my strange penchant for collecting ancient vinyl and playing LPs on a turntable, though, not having the enormous beard to make me a 'young cool guy', probably detracts, as is the fact I'm old enough that I collected vinyl as a kid, unlike those cool bearded guys who grew up with mp3 players...

Anyhow, a representative track, A1's "Amber Autumn:"




This band reminds me a lot of another US band, "The Fents"-- which see.