I've just received one of those WAP Push text messages from an unknown number - the kind that invites you to click on a weblink in order to download a mysterious message which, for whatever reason, can't be conveyed via the normal text system.
Now, I never, ever give my email address or telephone numbers to anybody I don't know personally. Not anybody. Ever. That's official policy - it's the only surefire way to avoid being bombarded with junk texts and messages, and what's more, it actually works. I'm also registered with TPS so that I don't get telemarketing calls either, so thinking laterally, I assumed that whoever had sent the message must have been somebody I knew; maybe it was a colleague or a friend trying to send me a picture message via a web-based system. So I clicked the link. And you really would have thought that someone like me would have known better, wouldn't you...?
What I saw was something called MobileTube - a webpage cunningly crafted to resemble YouTube's official site, something which I should imagine their lawyers should be interested in! The dead giveaway was a copyright statement belonging to W2Mobile and instructions for opting out of the system by calling 0870 609 1795, otherwise I would be charged £1.50 every time I got a text from them.
Temporarily flummoxed, I rang the number, only to be presented with an automated system asking me to enter my mobile number in order to unsubscribe. The distinctive whiff of rats entered the room. There was no way I was going to entrust my mobile number to a computer, so I googled W2mobile and was presented with examples of fellow people being innocently scammed.
Next, I rang T-Mobile in order to ascertain whether I'd been charged, and they told me that this is, in fact perfectly legal; by signing up for a contract phone, I automatically permit my number to be used by anyone for the purposes of scam adverts. That's like walking around with extra big pockets so that thieves can help themselves to the contents!
There is, apparently, an optout, in order to comply with telecommunications law, but T-Mobile don't advertise this, presumably because they might lose revenue.
Having now opted out, I am looking forward to an end to these anonymous texts, and if you value your privacy and the privacy of others, then I plead with you to ask your provider to add you to the optout list, before someone helps themselves to £1.50 of your money whenever they feel like it.
Legal theft! Going on, right under our noses, while we all sit around eating pies. And this with half the world living on less than a dollar a day. How utterly, excrementally disgusting. I'm ashamed to be a member of the human race, sometimes.
More examples of W2's scams:
http://www.screamingwhisper.com/interactive/showthread.php?t=10965
Morgan, amusingly, is exacting revenge by draining bandwidth from W2's site - shame I didn't think of it first:
http://morgansfun.blogspot.com/2007/09/mobile-tube-w2mobile-scam.html
Monday 21 January 2008
Saturday 12 January 2008
1000 Great Albums: The Original Mirrors (1980)
Original Mirrors - Original Mirrors (1980)
Who, then, are Original Mirrors, and why have you never heard of them? And moreover, why should you care?
Primarily, the Original Mirrors will be forever remembered as an early vehicle for the songwriting and producing talents of pop-obsessed Scouse genius Ian Broudie, who later founded the Lightning Seeds. Prior to the Original Mirrors, Broudie had been a member of Big in Japan, along with Frankie Goes to Hollywood frontman Holly Johnson.
The remainder of the band's members had great pedigree too, though; lead vocalist Steve Allen had been in art-punk outfit Deaf School, while drummer Pete Kircher had enjoyed chart success a decade earlier as one-fifth of Honeybus, who are one of my all-time favourite Sixties bands.
The first album from this Liverpool-based quintet disappeared without trace in 1980, despite being championed heavily by the late John Peel. It resurfaced briefly in the mid-90s as a CD reissue (bundled with 1981's follow-up Heart, Twango And Rawbeat). Perhaps it was re-released in order to capitalise on the success of The Lightning Seeds; we shall never know either way because, just like the original albums, it disappeared as quickly as it resurfaced, which is how I came to pay a hefty twenty quid for it on mail order, just to hear a band I'd never heard, solely on the strength of my appreciation of Broudie and Kircher's previous and future efforts. I'm pleased to say, though, that the gamble paid off.
Track one, Sharp Words, starts the album with the band already in fifth gear. It's a punchy little number with some frantic octave bass work and some hypnotic drumming, which serves to introduce us properly to the rhythm section before the rest of the band properly get a look in, and well they might, because they really are one of the best rhythm sections I've ever heard – no-one misses a single beat. Some wilfully angular lyrics add a sense of avant-garde nonsense, although vocalist Steve Allen seems at times like he's taking it all rather too seriously. There's also some 60s organ in there for a bit of vintage flavour, but the overall feel of the track is fresh and invigorating.
The second song starts with some U2-esque delayed guitar and a droning male chorus, in fact it's only when the vocals come in that it you fall in and realise that that it's actually a very clever reinvention of the Supremes' 1967 smash hit Reflections. I think it's the only time I've heard an all-male band cover the Supremes, and it's a brave move that really actually works quite well. The production literally shimmers, although the vocals go a bit OTT in places again. Interestingly enough, the 'beeping' intro from the Supremes version even puts in a cameo in a very subtle nod to the original, and is perhaps one of the earliest examples of sampling in pop music that I can recall. Reflections really should have been the hit of the album, but then all things being fair, the Original Mirrors really should have had a share of the early 80s limelight.
The Boys, The Boys (hey, nice title, lads) picks up where Sharp Words left off, stylistically speaking, although for me things don't really get going until the ska-styled outro, which kicks like a mule and introduces us to Chris Hunter's excellent saxophone work. There's more of the same on the slower, atmospheric Flying, possibly my favourite cut of the whole album, where the vocal slowly transforms into a gorgeous sax solo which reminds me of the lush fadeout on Hazel O'Connor's 'Will You' from the film Breaking Glass.
Side One finishes on another energetic note with Chains Of Love, which, despite some dated keyboard sounds, doesn't drop a single beat and would have actually been quite cutting-edge back in 1980. It would probably have been a hit had Duran Duran recorded it, but maybe Original Mirrors never got the same kind of exposure. Kircher's metronomic drum work is a particular highlight here; when closely examined, it's clear that he doesn't try to dominate proceedings, preferring to scatter his trademark rock-solid beat with some very intricate drum fills.
The galloping Could This Be Heaven, which was released as a single, starts side Two off in a suitably pacey fashion without copying anything we've already heard, but sounds ever-so-slightly camp when viewed through modern eyes; it reminds me of those all-too-energetic unsigned bands you used to see on Summertime Special in the early 80s but could never remember the name of. It's not an unpleasant song, by any means, but the next one, Boys Cry, I found a bit uninspiring. It rips off a number of very familiar rock and roll riffs, and the wolf-whistle in the instrumental break really stinks the place out, but if it's the album's only true low point, then it shouldn't put you off.
Night Of The Angels is possibly the least accessible track on an album otherwise full of instant pop gems, sounding perhaps a bit like the kind of thing Soft Cell would release a couple of years later, but it's an excellent track all the same. Momentum is restored with the penultimate track Panic In The Night, which contains more saxophones and some excellent call-and-response vocals from the band, who all contribute backing vocals elsewhere around the album. The set closer, Feel Like A Train, sounds quite unlike anything else on the album, and may well have sat more comfortably on the second album, and leaves things on a bit of an anti-climax for my personal tastes.
I actually think the Original Mirrors were way ahead of their time, but sadly the album has dated rather badly as a result of employing 1980's cutting-edge technology. Original Mirrors is an excellent debut album, which should have established the group firmly as a fixture in the early 80s, and it's not entirely clear to me why they weren't bigger. It is, however, a difficult piece of work to review! It seems to want to defy categorisation, but then it's probably not fair to try and pigeonhole bands, who – let's face it - spend their lives wanting to be accepted on their own terms.
Certainly, all of the songs possess an infectious energy and are tightly played by a very lean and efficient band where there's absolutely no room for dead weight, even if Allen's vocal delivery sometimes goes a bit 'showbiz' for my liking. For all my occasional complaints about his delivery, he is a very talented vocalist with an interesting style. Broudie's influence reveals a deep love of power-pop, but fans of Three Lions, Change or What If... should not expect an album of lost Lightning Seeds gems.
Who, then, are Original Mirrors, and why have you never heard of them? And moreover, why should you care?
Primarily, the Original Mirrors will be forever remembered as an early vehicle for the songwriting and producing talents of pop-obsessed Scouse genius Ian Broudie, who later founded the Lightning Seeds. Prior to the Original Mirrors, Broudie had been a member of Big in Japan, along with Frankie Goes to Hollywood frontman Holly Johnson.
The remainder of the band's members had great pedigree too, though; lead vocalist Steve Allen had been in art-punk outfit Deaf School, while drummer Pete Kircher had enjoyed chart success a decade earlier as one-fifth of Honeybus, who are one of my all-time favourite Sixties bands.
The first album from this Liverpool-based quintet disappeared without trace in 1980, despite being championed heavily by the late John Peel. It resurfaced briefly in the mid-90s as a CD reissue (bundled with 1981's follow-up Heart, Twango And Rawbeat). Perhaps it was re-released in order to capitalise on the success of The Lightning Seeds; we shall never know either way because, just like the original albums, it disappeared as quickly as it resurfaced, which is how I came to pay a hefty twenty quid for it on mail order, just to hear a band I'd never heard, solely on the strength of my appreciation of Broudie and Kircher's previous and future efforts. I'm pleased to say, though, that the gamble paid off.
Track one, Sharp Words, starts the album with the band already in fifth gear. It's a punchy little number with some frantic octave bass work and some hypnotic drumming, which serves to introduce us properly to the rhythm section before the rest of the band properly get a look in, and well they might, because they really are one of the best rhythm sections I've ever heard – no-one misses a single beat. Some wilfully angular lyrics add a sense of avant-garde nonsense, although vocalist Steve Allen seems at times like he's taking it all rather too seriously. There's also some 60s organ in there for a bit of vintage flavour, but the overall feel of the track is fresh and invigorating.
The second song starts with some U2-esque delayed guitar and a droning male chorus, in fact it's only when the vocals come in that it you fall in and realise that that it's actually a very clever reinvention of the Supremes' 1967 smash hit Reflections. I think it's the only time I've heard an all-male band cover the Supremes, and it's a brave move that really actually works quite well. The production literally shimmers, although the vocals go a bit OTT in places again. Interestingly enough, the 'beeping' intro from the Supremes version even puts in a cameo in a very subtle nod to the original, and is perhaps one of the earliest examples of sampling in pop music that I can recall. Reflections really should have been the hit of the album, but then all things being fair, the Original Mirrors really should have had a share of the early 80s limelight.
The Boys, The Boys (hey, nice title, lads) picks up where Sharp Words left off, stylistically speaking, although for me things don't really get going until the ska-styled outro, which kicks like a mule and introduces us to Chris Hunter's excellent saxophone work. There's more of the same on the slower, atmospheric Flying, possibly my favourite cut of the whole album, where the vocal slowly transforms into a gorgeous sax solo which reminds me of the lush fadeout on Hazel O'Connor's 'Will You' from the film Breaking Glass.
Side One finishes on another energetic note with Chains Of Love, which, despite some dated keyboard sounds, doesn't drop a single beat and would have actually been quite cutting-edge back in 1980. It would probably have been a hit had Duran Duran recorded it, but maybe Original Mirrors never got the same kind of exposure. Kircher's metronomic drum work is a particular highlight here; when closely examined, it's clear that he doesn't try to dominate proceedings, preferring to scatter his trademark rock-solid beat with some very intricate drum fills.
The galloping Could This Be Heaven, which was released as a single, starts side Two off in a suitably pacey fashion without copying anything we've already heard, but sounds ever-so-slightly camp when viewed through modern eyes; it reminds me of those all-too-energetic unsigned bands you used to see on Summertime Special in the early 80s but could never remember the name of. It's not an unpleasant song, by any means, but the next one, Boys Cry, I found a bit uninspiring. It rips off a number of very familiar rock and roll riffs, and the wolf-whistle in the instrumental break really stinks the place out, but if it's the album's only true low point, then it shouldn't put you off.
Night Of The Angels is possibly the least accessible track on an album otherwise full of instant pop gems, sounding perhaps a bit like the kind of thing Soft Cell would release a couple of years later, but it's an excellent track all the same. Momentum is restored with the penultimate track Panic In The Night, which contains more saxophones and some excellent call-and-response vocals from the band, who all contribute backing vocals elsewhere around the album. The set closer, Feel Like A Train, sounds quite unlike anything else on the album, and may well have sat more comfortably on the second album, and leaves things on a bit of an anti-climax for my personal tastes.
I actually think the Original Mirrors were way ahead of their time, but sadly the album has dated rather badly as a result of employing 1980's cutting-edge technology. Original Mirrors is an excellent debut album, which should have established the group firmly as a fixture in the early 80s, and it's not entirely clear to me why they weren't bigger. It is, however, a difficult piece of work to review! It seems to want to defy categorisation, but then it's probably not fair to try and pigeonhole bands, who – let's face it - spend their lives wanting to be accepted on their own terms.
Certainly, all of the songs possess an infectious energy and are tightly played by a very lean and efficient band where there's absolutely no room for dead weight, even if Allen's vocal delivery sometimes goes a bit 'showbiz' for my liking. For all my occasional complaints about his delivery, he is a very talented vocalist with an interesting style. Broudie's influence reveals a deep love of power-pop, but fans of Three Lions, Change or What If... should not expect an album of lost Lightning Seeds gems.
1000 Great Albums: Status Quo: Quo (1974)
I read once that Alan Lancaster (the principal founder member of Status Quo, despite what revisionists might say) walked out on the recording sessions for 1983's "Marguerita Time" because to put it mildly, he didn't like the style of the song. Complaining that he wouldn't be able to show his face in public if his beloved band had gone 'all soft', he is alleged to have walked out with the words 'But I'm a rocker!'
The stuff of Spinal Tap legend, made real; any resemblance to a diminutive, moustachioed bass player called Derek Smalls is purely coincidental. Marguerita Time went on to be a smash hit that Christmas, while Lancaster refused to tour, flew to Australia and sulked. But what if, with hindsight, he might have had a point after all?
Let's rewind to 1974. Status Quo, psychedelic one-hit wonders of the late 60s, have reinvented themselves as denim-clad masters of the three-chord shuffle, and after a lean period during which their albums sold rather poorly, have signed to the mighty Vertigo label. It's an imperial phase for Quo - from the early to the mid-70s the classic 'frantic four' lineup really couldn't put a foot wrong. The band have just returned from a mammoth world tour with Slade, and enter the studio to record the follow-up album to Hello, their first to go to Number One and which has yielded two classic hits in Caroline and Roll Over Lay Down.
This period is generally considered to be Status Quo's golden era; the space, say, between 1972's frantic Paper Plane and 1976's, er, frantic Mystery Song. Later, the band would produce unashamedly commercial fayre in order to try and crack America (Rockin' All Over The World, Red Sky), experiments with disco (don't believe me? Listen to 1978's god-awful Accident Prone) and then, when we didn't think they could sink any lower, they went all 80s on us with a pointless cover of a minor hit for Dutch duo Rob and Ferdi Bolland, 'In The Army Now'.
But for many years in the 70s, Quo were truly and deservedly at the top of their game, and smack-bang in the middle of this golden era is the album Quo, boasting a mere eight tracks and a ludicrously high-concept sleeve depicting the band as a mighty four-headed creature which looks like the love child of an ancient oak tree and Mount Rushmore.
The epic opener, Backwater, starts with the kind of extended loud-quiet-loud intro that Quo would later turn to classic effect on Whatever You Want. It starts with Rossi and Parfitt playing a simple duelling guitar melody, their trademark Telecasters buzzing away harmonically. Unlike previous albums which were recorded more or less 'as live', some attempt was made during the sessions to keep the instruments separate without losing the overall character of the music, as was the case with 1977's Rocking All Over The World album, which lacked atmosphere, despite boasting some of their strongest songs. The result is a big, bold guitar riff which gives way to a calming bridge, filling time until the rest of the band come thundering in, Rossi providing the classic Quo hammer-on riff in the left speaker while Parfitt bangs out brutal machine-like chops on the off beat in the right channel. It's a potent rocker which never disappoints and doesn't sound overpretentious or flawed. Three verses and an epic guitar solo later, Backwater climaxes under the weight of one of John Coghlan's best ever drum solos, a grand symphony for tom rack which may just have been the template for Cozy Powell's 'Dance With The Devil'. This serves to segue seamlessly into the thunderous Just Take Me, which finds Parfitt picking a fight with an old Bo Diddley riff and turning it into one of Quo's hardest ever rockers.
Backwater could have been a great single, but the record company had other ideas, reasoning that Francis Rossi was the lead vocalist of Quo and that to let anyone else sing lead on a single would confuse the public, and thus it came to pass that the album's third cut, Break The Rules, a rare group composition which essentially is a rewrite of Down The Dustpipe with added honky-tonk piano, was released as a single. BTR always sounds great on compilation albums, and it's always welcome at parties (well, most parties) but listened to in isolation, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when bookended either side by two of Lancaster's heavier contributions; Drifting Away, a fast-paced rocker probably best listened to when speeding up the M1 on a Harley, closes Side One, and Lancaster's final contribution Don't Think It Matters (a slow, drawling, more bluesy cousin of Roll Over Lay Down) opens Side Two, which on the whole shows a more diverse side to the band than the unrelenting, piledriving rock of Side One.
Next up is Fine Fine Fine, a gentle country rocker of very little consequence written by Francis Rossi and Bob Young, the songwriting duo responsible for most of Quo's classic hits. It's a welcome antidote to the unrelenting barrage of boogie we've been listening to, but certainly not one of the duo's strongest tracks. However the penultimate track, Lonely Man, is one of Parfitt's best songs, built around a gentle rhythm guitar riff rather than that lumpen, chunky stuff he usually plays, and like his later Living On An Island, almost succeeds in being heartbreaking thanks to some sensitive lyrics.
The final track, Slow Train, rewards us with a grand finale that contains everything bar the kitchen sink. It's another seven-minute epic, which, unusually for Quo (but for the second time on this album) has a narrative lyric, telling the story of the writer leaving home and having to 'jump a ride on a cattle trucking slow train'. The song is made up of several different parts - perhaps they were fragments of different uncompleted songs. Quo would, quite rightly, be scorned in later years for their ludicrous Stars On 45-style live medleys (such as the Doors' Roadhouse Blues mixed with the Mexican Hat Dance, an unholy marriage culturally akin to welding a Great Dane's head onto the body of a kitten) - but Slow Train stands as a magnificent example of what Quo used to be good at, and are now terrible at: segueing melodies without resorting to cheesiness.
Drummer John Coghlan leads the band through several changes of time signature, from the template headbanging riff at the start, through a military two-step during which you expect Max Wall to burst in; and a Celtic reel which once again sees Parfitt and Rossi's guitars duelling just as they did at the start of the album. And then comes The Almighty Drum Solo, followed by a grand reprise. Coghlan, for once, sounds like he's enjoying himself, and it's possibly his finest moment with Quo, in fact possibly Quo's finest moment, period.
Quo really is Lancaster's album insofar as he contributes over half the songs, in fact Francis Rossi's nasal noodlings only put in an appearance on three of the album's tracks, and the result is a harder-edged and less 'pop' sound than its predecessor. Weighing in at just under 40 minutes, Quo is not a taxing listen, and may even shatter some people's perception of what classic Status Quo sounds like.
The latest reissue includes a remaster of the original B-side to Break The Rules, Lonely Night, previously a rarity which doesn't feature on any other album, and again shows a syncopation between Rossi and Parfitt that is as natural and as perfectly timed as the mechanisms on a grandfather clock. As I listened to it the other day, I suddenly realized where I'd heard the pitter-patter drum track before. It's Buddy Holly and the Crickets, of all people.
Maybe Lancaster was a rocker, after all. I'm no fan of Lancaster's solo work, but if the rest of the band had only listened to him back in 1983, they might not have unleashed some of those later aberrations on us.
The stuff of Spinal Tap legend, made real; any resemblance to a diminutive, moustachioed bass player called Derek Smalls is purely coincidental. Marguerita Time went on to be a smash hit that Christmas, while Lancaster refused to tour, flew to Australia and sulked. But what if, with hindsight, he might have had a point after all?
Let's rewind to 1974. Status Quo, psychedelic one-hit wonders of the late 60s, have reinvented themselves as denim-clad masters of the three-chord shuffle, and after a lean period during which their albums sold rather poorly, have signed to the mighty Vertigo label. It's an imperial phase for Quo - from the early to the mid-70s the classic 'frantic four' lineup really couldn't put a foot wrong. The band have just returned from a mammoth world tour with Slade, and enter the studio to record the follow-up album to Hello, their first to go to Number One and which has yielded two classic hits in Caroline and Roll Over Lay Down.
This period is generally considered to be Status Quo's golden era; the space, say, between 1972's frantic Paper Plane and 1976's, er, frantic Mystery Song. Later, the band would produce unashamedly commercial fayre in order to try and crack America (Rockin' All Over The World, Red Sky), experiments with disco (don't believe me? Listen to 1978's god-awful Accident Prone) and then, when we didn't think they could sink any lower, they went all 80s on us with a pointless cover of a minor hit for Dutch duo Rob and Ferdi Bolland, 'In The Army Now'.
But for many years in the 70s, Quo were truly and deservedly at the top of their game, and smack-bang in the middle of this golden era is the album Quo, boasting a mere eight tracks and a ludicrously high-concept sleeve depicting the band as a mighty four-headed creature which looks like the love child of an ancient oak tree and Mount Rushmore.
The epic opener, Backwater, starts with the kind of extended loud-quiet-loud intro that Quo would later turn to classic effect on Whatever You Want. It starts with Rossi and Parfitt playing a simple duelling guitar melody, their trademark Telecasters buzzing away harmonically. Unlike previous albums which were recorded more or less 'as live', some attempt was made during the sessions to keep the instruments separate without losing the overall character of the music, as was the case with 1977's Rocking All Over The World album, which lacked atmosphere, despite boasting some of their strongest songs. The result is a big, bold guitar riff which gives way to a calming bridge, filling time until the rest of the band come thundering in, Rossi providing the classic Quo hammer-on riff in the left speaker while Parfitt bangs out brutal machine-like chops on the off beat in the right channel. It's a potent rocker which never disappoints and doesn't sound overpretentious or flawed. Three verses and an epic guitar solo later, Backwater climaxes under the weight of one of John Coghlan's best ever drum solos, a grand symphony for tom rack which may just have been the template for Cozy Powell's 'Dance With The Devil'. This serves to segue seamlessly into the thunderous Just Take Me, which finds Parfitt picking a fight with an old Bo Diddley riff and turning it into one of Quo's hardest ever rockers.
Backwater could have been a great single, but the record company had other ideas, reasoning that Francis Rossi was the lead vocalist of Quo and that to let anyone else sing lead on a single would confuse the public, and thus it came to pass that the album's third cut, Break The Rules, a rare group composition which essentially is a rewrite of Down The Dustpipe with added honky-tonk piano, was released as a single. BTR always sounds great on compilation albums, and it's always welcome at parties (well, most parties) but listened to in isolation, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when bookended either side by two of Lancaster's heavier contributions; Drifting Away, a fast-paced rocker probably best listened to when speeding up the M1 on a Harley, closes Side One, and Lancaster's final contribution Don't Think It Matters (a slow, drawling, more bluesy cousin of Roll Over Lay Down) opens Side Two, which on the whole shows a more diverse side to the band than the unrelenting, piledriving rock of Side One.
Next up is Fine Fine Fine, a gentle country rocker of very little consequence written by Francis Rossi and Bob Young, the songwriting duo responsible for most of Quo's classic hits. It's a welcome antidote to the unrelenting barrage of boogie we've been listening to, but certainly not one of the duo's strongest tracks. However the penultimate track, Lonely Man, is one of Parfitt's best songs, built around a gentle rhythm guitar riff rather than that lumpen, chunky stuff he usually plays, and like his later Living On An Island, almost succeeds in being heartbreaking thanks to some sensitive lyrics.
The final track, Slow Train, rewards us with a grand finale that contains everything bar the kitchen sink. It's another seven-minute epic, which, unusually for Quo (but for the second time on this album) has a narrative lyric, telling the story of the writer leaving home and having to 'jump a ride on a cattle trucking slow train'. The song is made up of several different parts - perhaps they were fragments of different uncompleted songs. Quo would, quite rightly, be scorned in later years for their ludicrous Stars On 45-style live medleys (such as the Doors' Roadhouse Blues mixed with the Mexican Hat Dance, an unholy marriage culturally akin to welding a Great Dane's head onto the body of a kitten) - but Slow Train stands as a magnificent example of what Quo used to be good at, and are now terrible at: segueing melodies without resorting to cheesiness.
Drummer John Coghlan leads the band through several changes of time signature, from the template headbanging riff at the start, through a military two-step during which you expect Max Wall to burst in; and a Celtic reel which once again sees Parfitt and Rossi's guitars duelling just as they did at the start of the album. And then comes The Almighty Drum Solo, followed by a grand reprise. Coghlan, for once, sounds like he's enjoying himself, and it's possibly his finest moment with Quo, in fact possibly Quo's finest moment, period.
Quo really is Lancaster's album insofar as he contributes over half the songs, in fact Francis Rossi's nasal noodlings only put in an appearance on three of the album's tracks, and the result is a harder-edged and less 'pop' sound than its predecessor. Weighing in at just under 40 minutes, Quo is not a taxing listen, and may even shatter some people's perception of what classic Status Quo sounds like.
The latest reissue includes a remaster of the original B-side to Break The Rules, Lonely Night, previously a rarity which doesn't feature on any other album, and again shows a syncopation between Rossi and Parfitt that is as natural and as perfectly timed as the mechanisms on a grandfather clock. As I listened to it the other day, I suddenly realized where I'd heard the pitter-patter drum track before. It's Buddy Holly and the Crickets, of all people.
Maybe Lancaster was a rocker, after all. I'm no fan of Lancaster's solo work, but if the rest of the band had only listened to him back in 1983, they might not have unleashed some of those later aberrations on us.
1000 Great Albums: Jeff Lynne: Armchair Theatre (1990)
Six degrees of separation, as defined on Wikipedia, is the idea that if you are one "step" away from each person you know, then you are two "steps" away from each person who is known by one of the people you know, and therefore you are no more than six "steps" away from each person on Earth.
Strange but true? Well, my music collection certainly seems to bear out the theory, because it's probably true that every piece of music ever made is, culturally speaking, just six steps away from being connected in some way to the great Jeff Lynne, the Beatle-obsessed, bubblepermed, aviator sunglasses-wearing Brummie genius who masterminded the success of ELO throughout the 70s.
Lynne tragically found that being in one of the world's most successful bands ceased to be any fun anymore at a point when he still owed Epic three albums, which he grudgingly released in the 1980s. The last of these, Balance Of Power (1986), found the once-mighty 'Orchestra' reduced to three members, with all those once lushly-arranged string sections replaced with 80s synths and Lynne singing as disinterestedly as the guy who does the safety announcements on my morning train.
Turning his back on the road, Lynne called time on the band in order to produce records made by his heroes, people such as Tom Petty (whose Full Moon Fever he co-wrote and produced in 1989), Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and of course George Harrison, whose Got My Mind Set On You was a massive hit and invigorated both Harrison's and Lynne's fortunes, and thus his new career as a producer to the stars hit the ground running. Arguably, the high point of this period was the formation of the Traveling Wilburys, a kind of cross between the Rat Pack and the Monday afternoon Crown Green Bowling team.
The affable Lynne must have received thousands of credits on album sleeves, for everything from production and songwriting through to playing tambourine and, for all I know, making the tea, but it's actually nothing short of astonishing that he has only ever officially released one solo album (released between the two Wilburys albums) and, even more criminally, it remains out of print 17 years after it was released.
Armchair Theatre is one of my favourite albums, but while it lacks the inventive genius of ex-partner Roy Wood's debut solo album 'Boulders', its widescreen production and warm, rich sound make it a joy to listen to time and time again, in fact along with ELO's 1977 masterpiece Out Of The Blue, it's one of my favourite Sunday morning albums.
The opening song Every Little Thing is a pacey little number which starts with an in-yer-face section of chorussed saxophones (all of which are played by the aptly-named Jim Horn) that, despite honking away excitedly like a gaggle of distressed geese, wouldn't have sounded out of place on an Art Of Noise album. Make no mistake - it's definitely a Jeff Lynne production - the heavily-gated snare sound is a dead giveaway for starters - but the impeccably-arranged vocals echo classic ELO in a way that Lynne hadn't managed to do since the band's popularity began to wane in the late 1970s.
Rocking up like it was made by Elvis Presley's backing band in 1956, Don't Let Go, the second track, is a delicious piece of rock and roll pastiche that wouldn't actually sound of place on a Wilburys album, and demonstrates clearly Jeff Lynne's passion for his heroes' music. The saxophones return in a brief but joyful solo that recalls the best of Lord Rockingham's XI, and the stop-start chorus of multi-tracked 'ooo-eee's and 'ah shucks'es are simply gorgeous.
Lift Me Up is a soaring ballad which reminds me of World Party, which when you think about it is an incredible feat indeed, considering that Karl Wallinger built his whole sound around his own self-confessed obsession with ELO! The same could, in fact, also be applied to the soulful ballad What Would It Take, with an amazing chorus which could have been arranged by the Mamas and the Papas, and even more so the final track Save Me Now, which, like World Party's own Bang! (1991) takes environmental destruction as its main lyrical theme, though for some reason Lynne chooses to sing it in the style of Bob Dylan, which completely defies explanation.
At times, Armchair Theatre features lush string arrangements that recall the timeless sound of 1930s Hollywood productions, and never less so than on some tasteful reinterpretations of the standards September Song and Stormy Weather (recorded in tribute to his recently-deceased mother) as well as his own Don't Say Goodbye. Stormy Weather, in particular, boasts some fine slide guitar from – ooh, surprise surprise – George Harrison, as well as some cheeky lifts from Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. In this respect Lynne displays a real love and respect for this era's classic romantic sound. September Song also takes the unusual step of using recorded footsteps as a percussive element, a trick he first tried in 1977's album cut 'Jungle' (and which Roy Wood had used in 'Wake Up' as early as 1969!) However, if you're talking production techniques, Now You're Gone, perhaps my own favourite cut after What Would It Take, is another affectionate pastiche, all swirling Indian strings and tablas, and if, as I suspect, Lynne is using a varispeed to impersonate the female Indian vocals, then his skills are better than I have ever given him credit for.
Was there a follow-up album? Well, Armchair Theatre received some good reviews but failed to sell in any kind of quantity. In the late 80s, Lynne had fallen out with Bev Bevan over the use of the ELO brand name, creating an acrimonious rift between the two musicians and resulting in Bevan forming the inferior ELO Part Two, who continue to this day under the name 'The Orchestra' without the involvement of Lynne or Bevan.
Lynne released an album in 2001 under the ELO name called 'Zoom', which could be considered a close relative of Armchair Theatre, but not by any means an ELO album - after all, the only other classic ELO member present on the album was keyboardist Richard Tandy, and with contributions from George Harrison and – ack! – Ringo Starr, it was probably more of an exercise in getting the surviving Beatles back together. The set lacks the atmosphere of Armchair Theatre, and while I wouldn't dismiss it as a complete failure, the fact it was released as ELO probably reflects the record company's lack of faith in Lynne to sell records under his own name.
But to give credit where it's due, Armchair Theatre is definitely a masterpiece in its own way. It's easily the second greatest thing Jeff Lynne's ever recorded, after ELO's Out Of The Blue, and a great companion piece to the solo albums he recorded with Tom Petty and George Harrison at the time.
Strange but true? Well, my music collection certainly seems to bear out the theory, because it's probably true that every piece of music ever made is, culturally speaking, just six steps away from being connected in some way to the great Jeff Lynne, the Beatle-obsessed, bubblepermed, aviator sunglasses-wearing Brummie genius who masterminded the success of ELO throughout the 70s.
Lynne tragically found that being in one of the world's most successful bands ceased to be any fun anymore at a point when he still owed Epic three albums, which he grudgingly released in the 1980s. The last of these, Balance Of Power (1986), found the once-mighty 'Orchestra' reduced to three members, with all those once lushly-arranged string sections replaced with 80s synths and Lynne singing as disinterestedly as the guy who does the safety announcements on my morning train.
Turning his back on the road, Lynne called time on the band in order to produce records made by his heroes, people such as Tom Petty (whose Full Moon Fever he co-wrote and produced in 1989), Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and of course George Harrison, whose Got My Mind Set On You was a massive hit and invigorated both Harrison's and Lynne's fortunes, and thus his new career as a producer to the stars hit the ground running. Arguably, the high point of this period was the formation of the Traveling Wilburys, a kind of cross between the Rat Pack and the Monday afternoon Crown Green Bowling team.
The affable Lynne must have received thousands of credits on album sleeves, for everything from production and songwriting through to playing tambourine and, for all I know, making the tea, but it's actually nothing short of astonishing that he has only ever officially released one solo album (released between the two Wilburys albums) and, even more criminally, it remains out of print 17 years after it was released.
Armchair Theatre is one of my favourite albums, but while it lacks the inventive genius of ex-partner Roy Wood's debut solo album 'Boulders', its widescreen production and warm, rich sound make it a joy to listen to time and time again, in fact along with ELO's 1977 masterpiece Out Of The Blue, it's one of my favourite Sunday morning albums.
The opening song Every Little Thing is a pacey little number which starts with an in-yer-face section of chorussed saxophones (all of which are played by the aptly-named Jim Horn) that, despite honking away excitedly like a gaggle of distressed geese, wouldn't have sounded out of place on an Art Of Noise album. Make no mistake - it's definitely a Jeff Lynne production - the heavily-gated snare sound is a dead giveaway for starters - but the impeccably-arranged vocals echo classic ELO in a way that Lynne hadn't managed to do since the band's popularity began to wane in the late 1970s.
Rocking up like it was made by Elvis Presley's backing band in 1956, Don't Let Go, the second track, is a delicious piece of rock and roll pastiche that wouldn't actually sound of place on a Wilburys album, and demonstrates clearly Jeff Lynne's passion for his heroes' music. The saxophones return in a brief but joyful solo that recalls the best of Lord Rockingham's XI, and the stop-start chorus of multi-tracked 'ooo-eee's and 'ah shucks'es are simply gorgeous.
Lift Me Up is a soaring ballad which reminds me of World Party, which when you think about it is an incredible feat indeed, considering that Karl Wallinger built his whole sound around his own self-confessed obsession with ELO! The same could, in fact, also be applied to the soulful ballad What Would It Take, with an amazing chorus which could have been arranged by the Mamas and the Papas, and even more so the final track Save Me Now, which, like World Party's own Bang! (1991) takes environmental destruction as its main lyrical theme, though for some reason Lynne chooses to sing it in the style of Bob Dylan, which completely defies explanation.
At times, Armchair Theatre features lush string arrangements that recall the timeless sound of 1930s Hollywood productions, and never less so than on some tasteful reinterpretations of the standards September Song and Stormy Weather (recorded in tribute to his recently-deceased mother) as well as his own Don't Say Goodbye. Stormy Weather, in particular, boasts some fine slide guitar from – ooh, surprise surprise – George Harrison, as well as some cheeky lifts from Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. In this respect Lynne displays a real love and respect for this era's classic romantic sound. September Song also takes the unusual step of using recorded footsteps as a percussive element, a trick he first tried in 1977's album cut 'Jungle' (and which Roy Wood had used in 'Wake Up' as early as 1969!) However, if you're talking production techniques, Now You're Gone, perhaps my own favourite cut after What Would It Take, is another affectionate pastiche, all swirling Indian strings and tablas, and if, as I suspect, Lynne is using a varispeed to impersonate the female Indian vocals, then his skills are better than I have ever given him credit for.
Was there a follow-up album? Well, Armchair Theatre received some good reviews but failed to sell in any kind of quantity. In the late 80s, Lynne had fallen out with Bev Bevan over the use of the ELO brand name, creating an acrimonious rift between the two musicians and resulting in Bevan forming the inferior ELO Part Two, who continue to this day under the name 'The Orchestra' without the involvement of Lynne or Bevan.
Lynne released an album in 2001 under the ELO name called 'Zoom', which could be considered a close relative of Armchair Theatre, but not by any means an ELO album - after all, the only other classic ELO member present on the album was keyboardist Richard Tandy, and with contributions from George Harrison and – ack! – Ringo Starr, it was probably more of an exercise in getting the surviving Beatles back together. The set lacks the atmosphere of Armchair Theatre, and while I wouldn't dismiss it as a complete failure, the fact it was released as ELO probably reflects the record company's lack of faith in Lynne to sell records under his own name.
But to give credit where it's due, Armchair Theatre is definitely a masterpiece in its own way. It's easily the second greatest thing Jeff Lynne's ever recorded, after ELO's Out Of The Blue, and a great companion piece to the solo albums he recorded with Tom Petty and George Harrison at the time.
1000 Great Albums: Fleetwood Mac: Tusk
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (the world's favourite album until Michael Jackson released Thriller) occupies a special place in everyone's record collection. It seems to mean something special, personal and different to everyone who owns it, and so to me, Rumours will always be synonymous with long red February sunsets over the French Alps, where I spent a week some years ago, learning how not to snowboard.
Like my other chalet-mates, I had grabbed a random selection of CDs before leaving home, and although I had owned and cherished a copy of Rumours for years, I hadn't appreciated quite what a magnificent album it was until I heard it one afternoon while taking in those spectacular Alpine views. To this day I still can't explain why; hearing it in the right place at the right time, perhaps, but the album took on a miraculous new significance for me, instantly becoming one of my all-time favourites, and my friends universally agreed that it was a good choice of album to take away on holiday.
I probably would never have heard Fleetwood Mac's follow-up album, Tusk, had it not been for the recommendation of one of our chalet-mates, a Yorkshire lass called Jane, who told me she thought Tusk was an infinitely better album than Rumours, adding enigmatically that I wouldn't know why until I heard it. Well, I do love a challenge, and so it was that I vowed to buy a copy as soon as I returned home.
Tusk reputedly cost millions to make, and although it wasn't a total commercial failure, by all accounts the returns weren't anything like Warner Brothers had anticipated. More or less everyone concerned blamed this on Lindsey Buckingham, the man who had single-handedly saved Fleetwood Mac (now, there's gratitude) some years earlier from drowning in mediocrity by reinventing the tired blues band as über-gods of FM radio, drenched in California sunshine and killer harmonies. Co-producer Buckingham decided he wanted something really different from its million-selling predecessor, and, taking inspiration from the Punk and New Wave movements, set about deconstructing the Fleetwood Mac sound.
The record company were dismayed by what they were presented with; a self-indulgent double album of strikingly different musical styles, lacking in the velvety texture and continuity that Rumours had, and lacking in its predecessor's obvious commercial potential. The good that came out of this was that Buckingham's often startling studio experiments led to many fantastic and eclectic solo albums, and turned an already awesome guitarist into someone untouchable in his own field. Fleetwood Mac, however, required Buckingham's Midas touch to be successful, and so it was that his solo career never really took off while Mac would never enjoy another success like Rumours.
Tusk starts with the haunting Over and Over, which just gives me the shivers every time I hear it. It's a slow and tender Christine McVie composition that sounds as smooth as anything on Rumours, although the backing is kept sparse to the point of being skeletal. Occasional bursts of slide guitar and spectral backing vocals add texture, while McVie's honeyed vocals sound every bit as delicate as her fractured emotions as she lays her soul bare ("All you have to do / Is speak out my name / And I would come running, anyway"). The result is a song which could easily move me to tears, thanks largely to Lindsey Buckingham's slick production, and that same bluesy, soulful feel returns later in Never Make Me Cry, a vintage Mac cut from what is otherwise a very unpredictable album for the first-time listener.
Track two is Buckingham's own The Ledge, which sets out his stall for the rest of the album. It's completely unlike anything you've ever heard before from anyone, let alone Fleetwood Mac, apparently arranged using rubber bands for guitar strings and biscuit tins as drums, and that doesn't mean it's a bad track: it just sounds, well, different. The whole thing is a breath of fresh air: pure, primitive and honest rock and roll. It enters your head, messes about a bit (listen on headphones and you'll know what I mean) and leaves via the other ear before it outstays its welcome. It's also one of the most enduringly charming songs on the album, and its close cousin That's Enough For Me does the same job to a slightly diminished extent.
Before we've had time to come up for air, we're straight into McVie's next composition, Think About Me, a bright and breezy slice of radio-friendly FM pop which seems quite out of place next to The Ledge. I would imagine it was strategically put there by a record company boss to give us something familiar three tracks in, but it's a welcome dose of the usual solid fare to compliment Buckingham's musical whims.
One of Fleetwood Mac's great strengths was that the three-way songwriting partnership allowed for great diversity. The first of Stevie Nicks' compositions, Sara, is bland and overlong, but Storms is quite entrancing, while she is at the peak of her mystical best on the moody epic Sisters Of The Moon. By the halfway mark, it starts to appear to be the case that Tusk is actually three solo albums in one: the madcap experiments of Buckingham's, Nicks' mystical ramblings and those ice-cool bluesy offerings from Christine McVie.
It should be noted here that the majority of songs on Tusk were written by Lindsey Buckingham, many of them just as original as The Ledge if occasionally slightly flawed. Save Me A Place could almost be the Beach Boys, with its flawless gospel-tinged harmonies, and the lush That's All For Everyone finds a tired and emotional Buckingham yearning for creative freedom. One of the weaker tracks, What Makes You Think You're The One, sounds like a half-baked jam session which somehow made it onto the album, as does the catchy-but-insubstantial Not That Funny, where he vents his spleen at something or other. Even one of McVie's weaker moments, Honey Hi, sounds like an incomplete demo, but hey, that kind of thing was never supposed to matter in New Wave's DIY ethic, and it's a pleasant enough way to while away three minutes.
Tusk's title track is the complete opposite, however, and Buckingham's great centrepiece of the album. Drawing inspiration (allegedly) from Buckingham's jealousy of Nicks' (alleged) affair with Mick Fleetwood, it's a slow burner which begins with Mick Fleetwood's excellent jungle drum beat and slowly unfolds to reveal a simple but enormously effective bassline, an impassioned vocal, and reaches a crescendo with a 100-piece marching band and the repeated refrain of 'Don't say that you love me! Tusk!' (allegedly, Tusk is the nickname Fleetwood assigned to his male member. What, you mean yours doesn't have a name?) Heady stuff indeed.
Tusk's followup, Mirage (1982), suffered from trying too hard to replicate the success of Rumours, while Buckingham's solo debut, released two years after Tusk, is worth a listen only if you've really enjoyed Tusk's more extreme experiments, although its successor Go Insane (1984) is far more polished. I reckon Tusk is a masterpiece of an album, so if you're reading this, Jane from Yorkshire, thanks, because my world is a far better place for your recommendation. That said, it is not an album which will automatically appeal to casual Fleetwood Mac fans. Try it. You'll either love it or you'll hate it, but at least you'll have listened to it.
As an interesting footnote, US college rock band Camper Van Beethoven covered Tusk note-for-note in 1987 whilst snowed in on a skiing holiday with an injured drummer. The tapes were remastered and released in 2004, and if you enjoyed the original Tusk as much as I did, then you'll be interested in CVB's tribute, a highly irreverent but affectionate tribute which matches Buckingham's spirit of musical adventure.
Like my other chalet-mates, I had grabbed a random selection of CDs before leaving home, and although I had owned and cherished a copy of Rumours for years, I hadn't appreciated quite what a magnificent album it was until I heard it one afternoon while taking in those spectacular Alpine views. To this day I still can't explain why; hearing it in the right place at the right time, perhaps, but the album took on a miraculous new significance for me, instantly becoming one of my all-time favourites, and my friends universally agreed that it was a good choice of album to take away on holiday.
I probably would never have heard Fleetwood Mac's follow-up album, Tusk, had it not been for the recommendation of one of our chalet-mates, a Yorkshire lass called Jane, who told me she thought Tusk was an infinitely better album than Rumours, adding enigmatically that I wouldn't know why until I heard it. Well, I do love a challenge, and so it was that I vowed to buy a copy as soon as I returned home.
Tusk reputedly cost millions to make, and although it wasn't a total commercial failure, by all accounts the returns weren't anything like Warner Brothers had anticipated. More or less everyone concerned blamed this on Lindsey Buckingham, the man who had single-handedly saved Fleetwood Mac (now, there's gratitude) some years earlier from drowning in mediocrity by reinventing the tired blues band as über-gods of FM radio, drenched in California sunshine and killer harmonies. Co-producer Buckingham decided he wanted something really different from its million-selling predecessor, and, taking inspiration from the Punk and New Wave movements, set about deconstructing the Fleetwood Mac sound.
The record company were dismayed by what they were presented with; a self-indulgent double album of strikingly different musical styles, lacking in the velvety texture and continuity that Rumours had, and lacking in its predecessor's obvious commercial potential. The good that came out of this was that Buckingham's often startling studio experiments led to many fantastic and eclectic solo albums, and turned an already awesome guitarist into someone untouchable in his own field. Fleetwood Mac, however, required Buckingham's Midas touch to be successful, and so it was that his solo career never really took off while Mac would never enjoy another success like Rumours.
Tusk starts with the haunting Over and Over, which just gives me the shivers every time I hear it. It's a slow and tender Christine McVie composition that sounds as smooth as anything on Rumours, although the backing is kept sparse to the point of being skeletal. Occasional bursts of slide guitar and spectral backing vocals add texture, while McVie's honeyed vocals sound every bit as delicate as her fractured emotions as she lays her soul bare ("All you have to do / Is speak out my name / And I would come running, anyway"). The result is a song which could easily move me to tears, thanks largely to Lindsey Buckingham's slick production, and that same bluesy, soulful feel returns later in Never Make Me Cry, a vintage Mac cut from what is otherwise a very unpredictable album for the first-time listener.
Track two is Buckingham's own The Ledge, which sets out his stall for the rest of the album. It's completely unlike anything you've ever heard before from anyone, let alone Fleetwood Mac, apparently arranged using rubber bands for guitar strings and biscuit tins as drums, and that doesn't mean it's a bad track: it just sounds, well, different. The whole thing is a breath of fresh air: pure, primitive and honest rock and roll. It enters your head, messes about a bit (listen on headphones and you'll know what I mean) and leaves via the other ear before it outstays its welcome. It's also one of the most enduringly charming songs on the album, and its close cousin That's Enough For Me does the same job to a slightly diminished extent.
Before we've had time to come up for air, we're straight into McVie's next composition, Think About Me, a bright and breezy slice of radio-friendly FM pop which seems quite out of place next to The Ledge. I would imagine it was strategically put there by a record company boss to give us something familiar three tracks in, but it's a welcome dose of the usual solid fare to compliment Buckingham's musical whims.
One of Fleetwood Mac's great strengths was that the three-way songwriting partnership allowed for great diversity. The first of Stevie Nicks' compositions, Sara, is bland and overlong, but Storms is quite entrancing, while she is at the peak of her mystical best on the moody epic Sisters Of The Moon. By the halfway mark, it starts to appear to be the case that Tusk is actually three solo albums in one: the madcap experiments of Buckingham's, Nicks' mystical ramblings and those ice-cool bluesy offerings from Christine McVie.
It should be noted here that the majority of songs on Tusk were written by Lindsey Buckingham, many of them just as original as The Ledge if occasionally slightly flawed. Save Me A Place could almost be the Beach Boys, with its flawless gospel-tinged harmonies, and the lush That's All For Everyone finds a tired and emotional Buckingham yearning for creative freedom. One of the weaker tracks, What Makes You Think You're The One, sounds like a half-baked jam session which somehow made it onto the album, as does the catchy-but-insubstantial Not That Funny, where he vents his spleen at something or other. Even one of McVie's weaker moments, Honey Hi, sounds like an incomplete demo, but hey, that kind of thing was never supposed to matter in New Wave's DIY ethic, and it's a pleasant enough way to while away three minutes.
Tusk's title track is the complete opposite, however, and Buckingham's great centrepiece of the album. Drawing inspiration (allegedly) from Buckingham's jealousy of Nicks' (alleged) affair with Mick Fleetwood, it's a slow burner which begins with Mick Fleetwood's excellent jungle drum beat and slowly unfolds to reveal a simple but enormously effective bassline, an impassioned vocal, and reaches a crescendo with a 100-piece marching band and the repeated refrain of 'Don't say that you love me! Tusk!' (allegedly, Tusk is the nickname Fleetwood assigned to his male member. What, you mean yours doesn't have a name?) Heady stuff indeed.
Tusk's followup, Mirage (1982), suffered from trying too hard to replicate the success of Rumours, while Buckingham's solo debut, released two years after Tusk, is worth a listen only if you've really enjoyed Tusk's more extreme experiments, although its successor Go Insane (1984) is far more polished. I reckon Tusk is a masterpiece of an album, so if you're reading this, Jane from Yorkshire, thanks, because my world is a far better place for your recommendation. That said, it is not an album which will automatically appeal to casual Fleetwood Mac fans. Try it. You'll either love it or you'll hate it, but at least you'll have listened to it.
As an interesting footnote, US college rock band Camper Van Beethoven covered Tusk note-for-note in 1987 whilst snowed in on a skiing holiday with an injured drummer. The tapes were remastered and released in 2004, and if you enjoyed the original Tusk as much as I did, then you'll be interested in CVB's tribute, a highly irreverent but affectionate tribute which matches Buckingham's spirit of musical adventure.
1000 Great Albums: The Move: Looking On (1970)
Whilst Looking On is possibly my least favourite Move album, it was released at a pivotal time in the band's career and is therefore worthy of appraisal in my book, not least because it marks the joining together of two of my favourite rock musicians of all time, Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, as songwriters, and marks the formation of one of pop's most underrated, and tragically, shortest, partnerships.
Under the management of the late Peter Walsh, a great man whom I was fortunate enough to get to know personally during his 1990s career as a health insurance salesman, the band's output at the turn of the Seventies was largely a game of two halves.
Impresario Peter was booking the band into cabaret venues, a world away from their early shows on the credible underground circuit where an earlier incarnation of the band gained notoriety for smashing up television sets onstage. Singer Carl Wayne had left to pursue a solo career in cabaret, leaving Roy Wood to helm the ship until the arrival of a young Jeff Lynne, who was drafted in following a successful stint in The Idle Race, having just produced their second album. Lynne's arrival came with one proviso: that the Move would evolve into a new band, Electric Light Orchestra, the earliest stirrings of which can be traced back to this album.
The Move's singles around this time varied in style from radio-friendly pop such as the lightweight 'Curly' and the irressistibly upbeat 'Tonight' to 'Brontosaurus', often credited as one of the earliest heavy metal singles. The Move's albums, however, were essays in experimentation which bore little similarity to the act seen in the hit parade. Here, new ideas could be tried out away from the cut and thrust world of the pop charts.
1970 saw The Move at their creative peak. With the songwriting burden lightened by Lynne's arrival, the band's main songwriter Roy Wood was busy completing a solo album 'Boulders', a wondrous confection on which he would write, sing and play every note himself and which would not see the light of day until 1973. With the band slimmed down to four members, and a plethora of songwriting talent waiting to be mined, it was time to re-evaluate things.
Looking On starts with the title track, a heavy metal dirge with Lynne's sweeping piano flourishes which lyrically looks forward from the band's television-smashing days ('TV looking down, I'm just looking on') and which dissolves into an extended jam around a descending chord sequence with every instrument in the studio thrown at it: sitars, Arabic pipes, wah wah guitar and a hulking great drum solo. And why not? Roy Wood could play practically any instrument he was given. It's a passable enough opener, but not the band's best song by a long chalk.
More coherent altogether is the Bev Bevan-written Turkish Tram Conductor Blues, which employs a basic rigid 12-bar structure and the same heavy metal sound with a parping coda on those Arabic pipes again. The enigmatic 'What' closes side one, and is Jeff Lynne's first composition and lead vocal on the album. It's rather long, very morose and wouldn't sound out of place on ELO's second album. Which isn't to say it's a bad song at all, in fact Roy Wood's production saves the day with a suitably doomy choir effect.
When Alice Comes Back To The Farm is something of a curio. Released as the first single after the chart topping Blackberry Way, it failed to create any impression whatsoever in the commercial world, which is something of a surprise, as the melody is certainly quite accessible, if not as catchy as its predecessor. It's followed by 'Open Up Said The World At The Door', a more uptempo Lynne composition with some great boogie-woogie piano and another blistering bin-bashing solo from Bevan, although the slow funereal coda always puts an end to my enjoyment of this track, sounding like some kind of terrifying film score and in fact quite out of place not only on this album but in Jeff Lynne's overall body of work, as it's my considered view that Jeff's best songs are the upbeat ones.
After the aforementioned 'Brontosaurus', a Lennon-esque rocker with a great bass sound best played at full volume, the album closes with 'Feel Too Good', a progressive number which, unlike the other extended tracks on this album, doesn't outstay its welcome and even throws in a couple of false endings in the form of a doo-wop masterclass (pure Wood) and a hilarious cockney pastiche with barrel piano and a lusty refrain about lettuce (pure Lynne) not to mention a choir of vocals in a repeated refrain of 'what can you do?' which sounds uncannily like Dusty Springfield.
So were the Move treading water with their third album?
Well, as a Move devotee, I think the Wood-Lynne partnership needed time to cement, because to me, Looking On lacks direction and discipline. It would only be a few months before the release of two delightful but much more mature non-album tracks in the form of 'Tonight' and 'Chinatown', followed in 1971 by the band's swansong album 'Message From The Country'. Had the Move bowed out here, they would have gone out on a real low; it's fortunate that they stuck around and made another proper album before they called it a day, because by the end of 1972 this beautiful partnership would be no more.
Under the management of the late Peter Walsh, a great man whom I was fortunate enough to get to know personally during his 1990s career as a health insurance salesman, the band's output at the turn of the Seventies was largely a game of two halves.
Impresario Peter was booking the band into cabaret venues, a world away from their early shows on the credible underground circuit where an earlier incarnation of the band gained notoriety for smashing up television sets onstage. Singer Carl Wayne had left to pursue a solo career in cabaret, leaving Roy Wood to helm the ship until the arrival of a young Jeff Lynne, who was drafted in following a successful stint in The Idle Race, having just produced their second album. Lynne's arrival came with one proviso: that the Move would evolve into a new band, Electric Light Orchestra, the earliest stirrings of which can be traced back to this album.
The Move's singles around this time varied in style from radio-friendly pop such as the lightweight 'Curly' and the irressistibly upbeat 'Tonight' to 'Brontosaurus', often credited as one of the earliest heavy metal singles. The Move's albums, however, were essays in experimentation which bore little similarity to the act seen in the hit parade. Here, new ideas could be tried out away from the cut and thrust world of the pop charts.
1970 saw The Move at their creative peak. With the songwriting burden lightened by Lynne's arrival, the band's main songwriter Roy Wood was busy completing a solo album 'Boulders', a wondrous confection on which he would write, sing and play every note himself and which would not see the light of day until 1973. With the band slimmed down to four members, and a plethora of songwriting talent waiting to be mined, it was time to re-evaluate things.
Looking On starts with the title track, a heavy metal dirge with Lynne's sweeping piano flourishes which lyrically looks forward from the band's television-smashing days ('TV looking down, I'm just looking on') and which dissolves into an extended jam around a descending chord sequence with every instrument in the studio thrown at it: sitars, Arabic pipes, wah wah guitar and a hulking great drum solo. And why not? Roy Wood could play practically any instrument he was given. It's a passable enough opener, but not the band's best song by a long chalk.
More coherent altogether is the Bev Bevan-written Turkish Tram Conductor Blues, which employs a basic rigid 12-bar structure and the same heavy metal sound with a parping coda on those Arabic pipes again. The enigmatic 'What' closes side one, and is Jeff Lynne's first composition and lead vocal on the album. It's rather long, very morose and wouldn't sound out of place on ELO's second album. Which isn't to say it's a bad song at all, in fact Roy Wood's production saves the day with a suitably doomy choir effect.
When Alice Comes Back To The Farm is something of a curio. Released as the first single after the chart topping Blackberry Way, it failed to create any impression whatsoever in the commercial world, which is something of a surprise, as the melody is certainly quite accessible, if not as catchy as its predecessor. It's followed by 'Open Up Said The World At The Door', a more uptempo Lynne composition with some great boogie-woogie piano and another blistering bin-bashing solo from Bevan, although the slow funereal coda always puts an end to my enjoyment of this track, sounding like some kind of terrifying film score and in fact quite out of place not only on this album but in Jeff Lynne's overall body of work, as it's my considered view that Jeff's best songs are the upbeat ones.
After the aforementioned 'Brontosaurus', a Lennon-esque rocker with a great bass sound best played at full volume, the album closes with 'Feel Too Good', a progressive number which, unlike the other extended tracks on this album, doesn't outstay its welcome and even throws in a couple of false endings in the form of a doo-wop masterclass (pure Wood) and a hilarious cockney pastiche with barrel piano and a lusty refrain about lettuce (pure Lynne) not to mention a choir of vocals in a repeated refrain of 'what can you do?' which sounds uncannily like Dusty Springfield.
So were the Move treading water with their third album?
Well, as a Move devotee, I think the Wood-Lynne partnership needed time to cement, because to me, Looking On lacks direction and discipline. It would only be a few months before the release of two delightful but much more mature non-album tracks in the form of 'Tonight' and 'Chinatown', followed in 1971 by the band's swansong album 'Message From The Country'. Had the Move bowed out here, they would have gone out on a real low; it's fortunate that they stuck around and made another proper album before they called it a day, because by the end of 1972 this beautiful partnership would be no more.
1000 Great Albums: The Clash: Sandinista! (1980)
It is often said of the Clash's fourth album, Sandinista! (1980), that it is four sides too long (the original vinyl was a triple album, priced, at the band's insistence, at the same level as a single album.) It weighs in at around 2½ hours, and, listened to in one mammoth session, would test the patience of a saint.
But, when all is said and done, it's 36 tracks for the price of 12, so what did you expect? Funny, isn't it, how nobody ever dares to suggest castrating the previous year's double album London Calling, because it is Officially A Revered Classic Album and therefore above such criticism, despite containing total dross like Jimmy Jazz and Lost In The Supermarket among otherwise indisputable moments of greatness.
That's not to say that Sandinista! isn't unashamedly self-indulgent. Recorded in just three weeks in London, Manchester, New York and Jamaica, Sandinista! is brimming with diverse musical styles and experiments, a daring avant-garde piece which invites comparison with The Beatles' White Album. If you don't like a track, don't worry: something completely different will be along within minutes.
The set kicks off with "The Magnificent Seven", the first track from a new, mature Clash which sees Strummer polemicising over - of all things - a funky white rap which grooves along nicely, thanks largely to Paul Simonon's superb bassline which pins the whole sound together, even if the scattershot lyrics are a little patchy. After five minutes, Joe Strummer proclaims 'fucking long, innit?' and the track starts to fade out, after which we are spirited into the Motown-styled "Hitsville UK", a paean to the DIY punk music ethic with an all-female vocal line. Your ears might be telling you that this sounds nothing like the Clash, but just take a look at the lyric sheet. There's no mistaking the real thing. Sandinista! is something of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The album can at times seem both disorientating and exhilarating with its musical changes of turn. Looking at Disc One alone, there's the delightful dub-flavoured "Junco Partner", a brass band-led "Something About England", the woozy, parping "Rebel Waltz" and even freeform jazz on Mose Allison's also-ran "Look Here". In fact, the casual listener won't hear anything that sounds remotely like classic Clash until the second half of Side Two, when "Somebody Got Murdered" rewards the listener's patience with a typically heroic anthem.
The first of the three discs ends with another flawed excursion into dub, "One More Time", which doesn't really go anywhere, is interminably long, and frankly, if you're not into reggae, you'll be delighted by the next track, which is... er, the same track all over again, remixed with a studio flange effect used with all the enthusiasm of a teenage guitarist trying out his first effects pedal. Perhaps not the most obvious note on which to end Disc One, but there are bigger and bolder surprises to come.
Disc Two starts reasonably enough with Joe Strummer's stuttering "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)", a funked-up ode to life in New York. "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)" mines the classic Clash sound once more, but the album moves back into more eclectic territories with the calypso-flavoured "Let's Go Crazy", which all at once spirits up the sound and the atmosphere of a Notting Hill carnival. The third side even closes with a surreal gospel pastiche ("The Sound of the Sinners"). Another cover, Eddy Grant's "Police on My Back", opens Side Four, reinvented here as a pacey punk number, neatly subverting the album's trick of making punk sound like reggae.
But it is Disc Three that will trouble your record player the least. For starters, the opening track to Side Five, "Lose This Skin", isn't even the Clash at all, more a selection of Clash members backing Joe Strummer's old busking mate Tymon Dogg, who plays violin throughout. It's actually quite a catchy melody if you can stand Dogg's vocal - I still swear blind it's Toyah Willcox singing and, I kid you not, there's even bloody bagpipes at the end of the song.
If Sandinista! is the Clash's White Album, then its "Revolution 9" is surely the unlistenable sound collage "Mensforth Hill". There's even a "Good Night" moment just before the end in the form of a reworking of "Career Opportunities", reinvented here as a children's classroom singalong, just in case the point was a bit too subtle the first time round.
Sandinista! does, in fact, sound way ahead of its time, mixing genres as fluidly as any of Joe Strummer's solo work with the Mescaleroes. The band (with producer Mikey Dread) clearly had a glut of ideas and wanted to try something totally different. The results can sometimes sound a little disjointed, perhaps even chaotic at times, but hey, that's punk for you, and if you miss the point, then maybe you're not as punk as you thought you were. The album is certainly a less commercial effort than London Calling, and maybe that's why it palls on the ears of those with less sophisticated tastes, people who were expecting nosebleed White Riot-era punk or those who bought "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" on the back of that jeans advert.
Sandinista! takes the curveball of styles thrown by its predecessor and runs away with them, and as such it takes some patience to appreciate. If you get the joke, Sandinista! is a wonderful album indeed, but just like a good Stilton, you'll appreciate this rich musical offering at its best when it's broken up into smaller chunks.
But, when all is said and done, it's 36 tracks for the price of 12, so what did you expect? Funny, isn't it, how nobody ever dares to suggest castrating the previous year's double album London Calling, because it is Officially A Revered Classic Album and therefore above such criticism, despite containing total dross like Jimmy Jazz and Lost In The Supermarket among otherwise indisputable moments of greatness.
That's not to say that Sandinista! isn't unashamedly self-indulgent. Recorded in just three weeks in London, Manchester, New York and Jamaica, Sandinista! is brimming with diverse musical styles and experiments, a daring avant-garde piece which invites comparison with The Beatles' White Album. If you don't like a track, don't worry: something completely different will be along within minutes.
The set kicks off with "The Magnificent Seven", the first track from a new, mature Clash which sees Strummer polemicising over - of all things - a funky white rap which grooves along nicely, thanks largely to Paul Simonon's superb bassline which pins the whole sound together, even if the scattershot lyrics are a little patchy. After five minutes, Joe Strummer proclaims 'fucking long, innit?' and the track starts to fade out, after which we are spirited into the Motown-styled "Hitsville UK", a paean to the DIY punk music ethic with an all-female vocal line. Your ears might be telling you that this sounds nothing like the Clash, but just take a look at the lyric sheet. There's no mistaking the real thing. Sandinista! is something of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The album can at times seem both disorientating and exhilarating with its musical changes of turn. Looking at Disc One alone, there's the delightful dub-flavoured "Junco Partner", a brass band-led "Something About England", the woozy, parping "Rebel Waltz" and even freeform jazz on Mose Allison's also-ran "Look Here". In fact, the casual listener won't hear anything that sounds remotely like classic Clash until the second half of Side Two, when "Somebody Got Murdered" rewards the listener's patience with a typically heroic anthem.
The first of the three discs ends with another flawed excursion into dub, "One More Time", which doesn't really go anywhere, is interminably long, and frankly, if you're not into reggae, you'll be delighted by the next track, which is... er, the same track all over again, remixed with a studio flange effect used with all the enthusiasm of a teenage guitarist trying out his first effects pedal. Perhaps not the most obvious note on which to end Disc One, but there are bigger and bolder surprises to come.
Disc Two starts reasonably enough with Joe Strummer's stuttering "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)", a funked-up ode to life in New York. "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)" mines the classic Clash sound once more, but the album moves back into more eclectic territories with the calypso-flavoured "Let's Go Crazy", which all at once spirits up the sound and the atmosphere of a Notting Hill carnival. The third side even closes with a surreal gospel pastiche ("The Sound of the Sinners"). Another cover, Eddy Grant's "Police on My Back", opens Side Four, reinvented here as a pacey punk number, neatly subverting the album's trick of making punk sound like reggae.
But it is Disc Three that will trouble your record player the least. For starters, the opening track to Side Five, "Lose This Skin", isn't even the Clash at all, more a selection of Clash members backing Joe Strummer's old busking mate Tymon Dogg, who plays violin throughout. It's actually quite a catchy melody if you can stand Dogg's vocal - I still swear blind it's Toyah Willcox singing and, I kid you not, there's even bloody bagpipes at the end of the song.
If Sandinista! is the Clash's White Album, then its "Revolution 9" is surely the unlistenable sound collage "Mensforth Hill". There's even a "Good Night" moment just before the end in the form of a reworking of "Career Opportunities", reinvented here as a children's classroom singalong, just in case the point was a bit too subtle the first time round.
Sandinista! does, in fact, sound way ahead of its time, mixing genres as fluidly as any of Joe Strummer's solo work with the Mescaleroes. The band (with producer Mikey Dread) clearly had a glut of ideas and wanted to try something totally different. The results can sometimes sound a little disjointed, perhaps even chaotic at times, but hey, that's punk for you, and if you miss the point, then maybe you're not as punk as you thought you were. The album is certainly a less commercial effort than London Calling, and maybe that's why it palls on the ears of those with less sophisticated tastes, people who were expecting nosebleed White Riot-era punk or those who bought "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" on the back of that jeans advert.
Sandinista! takes the curveball of styles thrown by its predecessor and runs away with them, and as such it takes some patience to appreciate. If you get the joke, Sandinista! is a wonderful album indeed, but just like a good Stilton, you'll appreciate this rich musical offering at its best when it's broken up into smaller chunks.
1000 Great Albums: Status Quo: Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon
Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in 1970 by Pye Records.
It completely broke the mould that had made Status Quo a household name with their debut hit, the plastic-psychedelic "Pictures Of Matchstick Men", two years earlier, in fact this third album would be quite unlike any of Quo's output to date, except perhaps for an uncharacteristically hard-rocking cover of the Everly Brothers 'Price Of Love' which was issued in late 1969.
This is a not an album that wants to impress its audience with over-produced cod-psychedelia and frilly shirts like its two predecessors. The blueprint for the new decade was gritty, down-to-earth boogie, and the album cover says it all; a gingham-checked waitress looking twenty years older than she probably is stares from behind the counter of an eponymous "greasy spoon" café typical of its era, looking bored and positively reeking of vinegar, stale tobacco and cheap instant coffee. Piles of washing-up fester in the foreground. This warts-and-all cover is the neatest possible metaphor for the music itself, recorded as it is with minimal overdubs and production errors left in for good measure.
Ma Kelly is a refreshingly honest and unpretentious work. The moment you launch into the opening "Spinning Wheel Blues", you can smell the grease, the sweat, the faded denim. It sounds raw, perhaps like it was recorded in the back room above a pub: a twelve-bar blues that doesn't even call upon the services of a fourth chord, and Francis Rossi hasn't even bothered rhyming his lyrics! The song just chugs along nicely, doing its own thing, and by the time the guitar solo kicks in you're already hooked, and tapping your foot if not nodding your head.
Track 2, "Daughter", which bears some traces of the band's psychedelic history, is the one that will get you nodding your head. Rick Parfitt's guitar goes all baggy - you can even hear the strings rattling about, and Rossi's lazy drawl of a hookline is totally irresistible in its simplicity.
The band throw in a further surprise in the tender acoustic ballad "Everything", sung by Parfitt, with cello and acoustic guitars all the way, before totally letting rip with "Shy Fly", which, along with "(April) Spring, Summer and Wednesdays" and "Lakky Lady" sound way too cool to be Quo songs, which isn't to say they're not fantastic rock songs in their own right - they just don't sound like typical 12-bar Quo because the band dare to push the envelope out a little, something at which Quo would eventually become rather adept, even if it did mean releasing atypical tracks like 1983's "Marguerita Time". "Shy Fly" could almost be a Canned Heat track, and the funky "Lakky Lady" boasts the best lead solo on an album where Francis Rossi is still clearly finding his feet.
Apart from that, it's chugging Quo boogie all the way, with perhaps only one seriously weak link in the form of "Lazy Poker Blues". Highlights include a cover of Steamhammer's "Junior's Wailing", played with far more feeling than the original, and the album closer "Is It Really Me?/Gotta Go Home", which repeats a thundering great headbanging riff for nine - count them - nine and a half minutes. Quo apparently used to stretch the song out live for half an hour at a time, and to be honest you could probably sit there, shaking your head to it for a full half hour without getting completely bored, even if the melody doesn't really go anywhere.
"Ma Kelly's" is the template that Quo built their career on, and if, like many people I know, you think Quo are a bunch of one-trick ponies, then take a listen to this. Quo were at their most credible in the early 1970s, and this album is the perfect snapshot of a band at the peak of their powers.
It completely broke the mould that had made Status Quo a household name with their debut hit, the plastic-psychedelic "Pictures Of Matchstick Men", two years earlier, in fact this third album would be quite unlike any of Quo's output to date, except perhaps for an uncharacteristically hard-rocking cover of the Everly Brothers 'Price Of Love' which was issued in late 1969.
This is a not an album that wants to impress its audience with over-produced cod-psychedelia and frilly shirts like its two predecessors. The blueprint for the new decade was gritty, down-to-earth boogie, and the album cover says it all; a gingham-checked waitress looking twenty years older than she probably is stares from behind the counter of an eponymous "greasy spoon" café typical of its era, looking bored and positively reeking of vinegar, stale tobacco and cheap instant coffee. Piles of washing-up fester in the foreground. This warts-and-all cover is the neatest possible metaphor for the music itself, recorded as it is with minimal overdubs and production errors left in for good measure.
Ma Kelly is a refreshingly honest and unpretentious work. The moment you launch into the opening "Spinning Wheel Blues", you can smell the grease, the sweat, the faded denim. It sounds raw, perhaps like it was recorded in the back room above a pub: a twelve-bar blues that doesn't even call upon the services of a fourth chord, and Francis Rossi hasn't even bothered rhyming his lyrics! The song just chugs along nicely, doing its own thing, and by the time the guitar solo kicks in you're already hooked, and tapping your foot if not nodding your head.
Track 2, "Daughter", which bears some traces of the band's psychedelic history, is the one that will get you nodding your head. Rick Parfitt's guitar goes all baggy - you can even hear the strings rattling about, and Rossi's lazy drawl of a hookline is totally irresistible in its simplicity.
The band throw in a further surprise in the tender acoustic ballad "Everything", sung by Parfitt, with cello and acoustic guitars all the way, before totally letting rip with "Shy Fly", which, along with "(April) Spring, Summer and Wednesdays" and "Lakky Lady" sound way too cool to be Quo songs, which isn't to say they're not fantastic rock songs in their own right - they just don't sound like typical 12-bar Quo because the band dare to push the envelope out a little, something at which Quo would eventually become rather adept, even if it did mean releasing atypical tracks like 1983's "Marguerita Time". "Shy Fly" could almost be a Canned Heat track, and the funky "Lakky Lady" boasts the best lead solo on an album where Francis Rossi is still clearly finding his feet.
Apart from that, it's chugging Quo boogie all the way, with perhaps only one seriously weak link in the form of "Lazy Poker Blues". Highlights include a cover of Steamhammer's "Junior's Wailing", played with far more feeling than the original, and the album closer "Is It Really Me?/Gotta Go Home", which repeats a thundering great headbanging riff for nine - count them - nine and a half minutes. Quo apparently used to stretch the song out live for half an hour at a time, and to be honest you could probably sit there, shaking your head to it for a full half hour without getting completely bored, even if the melody doesn't really go anywhere.
"Ma Kelly's" is the template that Quo built their career on, and if, like many people I know, you think Quo are a bunch of one-trick ponies, then take a listen to this. Quo were at their most credible in the early 1970s, and this album is the perfect snapshot of a band at the peak of their powers.
1000 Great Albums: Honeybus – Story (1970)
This may well take a lifetime to finish: here's the first of my own personal reviews of 1,000 albums which, in my opinion, are great for one reason or another.
When I once lent a friend a copy of my beloved Story (an album I had first become acquainted with in 1992), he quipped that it sounded almost like a Beatles album from the 1960s that had somehow escaped release. I had for some time lacked just the right phrase to describe the album, and here it was; my friend had completely summed up my feelings about one of rock music's true lost treasures in one neat soundbite.
Not that it's an entirely accurate description. Certainly, track 2, "Black Mourning Band" could easily be an out-take from Revolver - only the Scouse accents are missing - but to compare Ringo Starr's metronome drumming with the upbeat drum sounds created by Pete Kircher, awash with crisp snares and smart fills, is to liken mud to diamonds; the overall production in fact sounds a bit cleaner than George Martin's in my opinion. (Ooh, that might sound a little sacreligious!) However, the songwriting compares favourably with Lennon and McCartney's finest, so without drawing any further comparisons, let's look at the album on its own merits.
Story is a folk-influenced album from a fine rock band. The production brings to mind the sound of swinging London, with its parping brass, flawless vocal harmonies and melodies that wouldn't have sounded out of place in the ad breaks on Radio Caroline ("Fresher Than The Sweetness In Water".) Perhaps surprisingly, Story was released long after London had stopped swinging, hitting the record shops in 1970 to rave reviews and mass public indifference, though not, it should be noted, because it was a bad album - Honeybus don't have so much as a single bad song in their oeuvre - but because the record company and the band seemed to have completely lost interest.
As early as 1966, Honeybus had released "Delighted To See You", as great a single as any they released, but it was in 1968 that they truly hit the big time with the One Everyone Remembers, "I Can't Let Maggie Go", which later found fame as the soundtrack to the Nimble Bread advert. "Maggie" hit the number eight spot, but band leader and chief songwriter Pete Dello decided to quit the band while they were at the top, having had had enough of life on the road during the early 60's. The remaining members, plus some new ones, recorded Story in 1969, but without an active band to promote it, the album sank without a trace, and so a classic was born.
The album opens with the melancholic title track, with a string quartet and a searing guitar solo. The melody lifts into a major key, introducing us to an appealing vocal harmony style to which the first-time listener will become instantly hooked.
The aforementioned second track gives way all too quickly to be replaced by the gentle "Scarlet Lady", the first of many compositions by Colin Hare, a talented guitarist who resurfaces singing lead vocal on the "She's Out There", awash with cute guitar noodlings, and a masterclass in vocal harmony and arrangement. Colin also recorded one of the most amazing solo albums I've ever heard, which I will review here someday.
He Was Columbus, track 5, adds some nice mellotron into the mix, and side one closes with Ceilings No.1, which sounds a bit like a retreading of Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changing, only with some wonderfully surreal lyrics. Side two starts with Under The Silent Tree, which, vocally, sounds a little like the Alan Price Set and is one of the album's hardest rockers. My favourite track is probably the sublime How Long, a group composition with some impassioned vocal performances.
I really couldn't live without having Story to listen to every few months. Its chirpy and upbeat tone can bring sunshine to the dullest of days, and though the melodies are uncomplicated and therefore make for some pleasantly easy listening, this is adult pop at its most sophisticated.
When I once lent a friend a copy of my beloved Story (an album I had first become acquainted with in 1992), he quipped that it sounded almost like a Beatles album from the 1960s that had somehow escaped release. I had for some time lacked just the right phrase to describe the album, and here it was; my friend had completely summed up my feelings about one of rock music's true lost treasures in one neat soundbite.
Not that it's an entirely accurate description. Certainly, track 2, "Black Mourning Band" could easily be an out-take from Revolver - only the Scouse accents are missing - but to compare Ringo Starr's metronome drumming with the upbeat drum sounds created by Pete Kircher, awash with crisp snares and smart fills, is to liken mud to diamonds; the overall production in fact sounds a bit cleaner than George Martin's in my opinion. (Ooh, that might sound a little sacreligious!) However, the songwriting compares favourably with Lennon and McCartney's finest, so without drawing any further comparisons, let's look at the album on its own merits.
Story is a folk-influenced album from a fine rock band. The production brings to mind the sound of swinging London, with its parping brass, flawless vocal harmonies and melodies that wouldn't have sounded out of place in the ad breaks on Radio Caroline ("Fresher Than The Sweetness In Water".) Perhaps surprisingly, Story was released long after London had stopped swinging, hitting the record shops in 1970 to rave reviews and mass public indifference, though not, it should be noted, because it was a bad album - Honeybus don't have so much as a single bad song in their oeuvre - but because the record company and the band seemed to have completely lost interest.
As early as 1966, Honeybus had released "Delighted To See You", as great a single as any they released, but it was in 1968 that they truly hit the big time with the One Everyone Remembers, "I Can't Let Maggie Go", which later found fame as the soundtrack to the Nimble Bread advert. "Maggie" hit the number eight spot, but band leader and chief songwriter Pete Dello decided to quit the band while they were at the top, having had had enough of life on the road during the early 60's. The remaining members, plus some new ones, recorded Story in 1969, but without an active band to promote it, the album sank without a trace, and so a classic was born.
The album opens with the melancholic title track, with a string quartet and a searing guitar solo. The melody lifts into a major key, introducing us to an appealing vocal harmony style to which the first-time listener will become instantly hooked.
The aforementioned second track gives way all too quickly to be replaced by the gentle "Scarlet Lady", the first of many compositions by Colin Hare, a talented guitarist who resurfaces singing lead vocal on the "She's Out There", awash with cute guitar noodlings, and a masterclass in vocal harmony and arrangement. Colin also recorded one of the most amazing solo albums I've ever heard, which I will review here someday.
He Was Columbus, track 5, adds some nice mellotron into the mix, and side one closes with Ceilings No.1, which sounds a bit like a retreading of Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changing, only with some wonderfully surreal lyrics. Side two starts with Under The Silent Tree, which, vocally, sounds a little like the Alan Price Set and is one of the album's hardest rockers. My favourite track is probably the sublime How Long, a group composition with some impassioned vocal performances.
I really couldn't live without having Story to listen to every few months. Its chirpy and upbeat tone can bring sunshine to the dullest of days, and though the melodies are uncomplicated and therefore make for some pleasantly easy listening, this is adult pop at its most sophisticated.
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