I won't lie to you - the first time I bought this album, when I was 16, it was because of the cover. Other kids in school listened to the Beatles and The Police and stuff, I wanted Parliament, Earth Wind and Fire and - The Ohio Players.
When I got home and opened the spread I was .. speechless. What a babe!
But then, as the needle hit those grooves and I turned up the volume, I finally got to know about The Ohio Players.
The cover's photographer is Richard Fegley - of Playboy fame. Here he did a nice variation to the Playboy covers: the monthly where's the bunny search turned into a where's the bee?
My all time favorite ballad is Sweet Sticky Thing.
A great melody, or better two melodies, the slow ballad-like start and then the pushy chorus with those terrific horns; the perfect combination of pushing drums, high chant, sexy horns and ... Satch's amazing sax. Jazzy, seducing, it still amazes me when I listen to it for the tenthousandth time.
Love Rollercoaster (say what?) is a close second. The same pushy drums and chant, but more of a midtempo tune. Or Fopp's hard funk. You need to have this, trust me.
A stomping masterpiece with some of the greatest horns in history (and a great sense of humor)
Oh, and the babe's still good (although a bit small on cd...)

Fire may be their most famous record, but this is the place to start for the Players' brand of dirty sweaty sleazy funk. For one, the funk owns: "Love Rollercoaster" is the essence of cool, piling on the hooks, dance rhythms, loud guitars, and of course that famous scream that may or may not be one of a wide variety of people being murdered. Actually, it's not. That's an urban myth. Sure sounds cool, though. "Fopp" is every bit as good - great booty-shakin' funk - and "Ain't Gonna Give Up No Ground" deserved to be much longer than its minute forty-two. And the ballads are also much better than Fire's. Other than "Let's Love". But the title song? "Sweet Sticky Thing"? The atmospheric closer "Alone"? Hard to get much better than that! This is one great, great album. A funk classic, in my eyes. Maybe not as good as P-Funk records from the same general time period, but still good. Great. Fantastic. Awesome. Etc. Any self-respecting funk fan should have this.

With the right equipment this disc sounds absolutely awesome..powerful bass and great sound quality...DTS everybody has this on DVD player and don"t know it.

Great album to purchase. The scream also has two gun shots before it, not explaining a whole lot. The story I have is the model was returning to the studio to complain to the band manager after getting rashes from the fibreglass she was modeling on. She is met outside by a man that pulls the trigger twice and she screams once bleeding to death.

First of all, the Playas were the personification of smooth funk in the 70s. Honey and Fire were a fantastic mix of the Ramsey Lewis/Herbie Hancock influences of this great era in music, when the American soul music community flexed its considerable creative muscle in a mash-up of rock, funk, jazz and dance.

I heard a slightly amplified version of the Love Rollercoaster scream back in the day. We bought vinyl back then. The size of the LP cover was a palette for some memorable artwork, but never as unforgettable to a [...] lad as that tri-fold inside cover shot of Playboy model Ester Cordet, just an unbelievably beautiful woman. The story goes that the honey they were using for the photo wasn't working well, so they switched to a polymer substance that took a great picture. Unfortunately, it also adhered the lovely Ms. Cordet to the floor, and she found herself in an unextricable situation. She wound up disfiguring herself horribly by having to rip her skin from the floor (apprarently they had no fingernail polish remover on hand), ending her promising career. When she appeared at the studio door during taping for Love Rollercoaster, she demanded millions in payment. The manager for the Playas took care of the issue by killing her with his bare hands; the scream was left in as the schedule wouldn't allow another retake of the song.

Snopes.com does a nice job of explaining it away as one of the lead singers was simply hiutting a bizarre high note during the song, and Love rollercoaster being the ersatz example of funk that it was, the "scream" was left in. The rumor was started by a DC-area DJ, and record sales exploded. OP members were sworn to secrecy as the rumor, in part, fueled LP sales to the top of the charts. Not as sexy of a story, but as a former soul DJ, believable.

One might argue that this was a perfect storm for the Players-- an inspired LP cover, a reason to buy the damn album since you HAD to break the shrink wrap to get inside (you know!), an ethereally tight, sophisticated groove, and finally The Rumor. You couldn't repeat it if you tried. Good times all around.