Andrew Leigh – Magician

September 20th, 2011

Truth be told, no album is ever going to match the expectations kindled by a cover like the one that graces Andrew Leigh’s Magician (Bo Hansson’s Magician’s Hat and Heron’s Twice as Nice & Half the Price being two other salient examples).

andrew leigh - magician album cover

That said, this 1970 release by the sometime Spooky Tooth bassist and future Matthews’ Southern Comfort member, does attempt to scale the heights of anticipation its somewhat wonderful artwork inspires… for the first two tracks anyway.

Dog Soldier

April 19th, 2011

One of the great unanswered questions that immediately springs to mind when considering the career of Keef Hartley, is thus: During the 1970s, was there a Cheyenne Indian wandering the rugged plains of South Dakota, dressed as a drummer from Preston?

dog soldier album cover

We may never know. If any of the Native American fraternity happen to be reading this and can shed some light on the matter, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. It has been known to keep me awake at night.

Which brings us to Dog Soldier, the short-lived outfit formed in the wake of the Keef Hartley Band’s collapse, and their 1975 self-titled album. The artwork maintains the American Indian look that Hartley sported in previous incarnations and during live performances, albeit with a futuristic slant, as was the vogue for album covers in the mid-70s, particularly among prog and some AOR acts.

Dog Soldier largely falls under the spell of the second of those musical pigeonholes, which, in my laziness, I am wont to crowbar in at every given opportunity. Those that stay the course, however, through this journey into the innocuous reaches of 1970’s American FM radio, are in for a reet royal treat at its close. One that rewards the perseverance of the less-than-inclined with 11 minutes of loveliness.

Prior to that it’s a festival of mid-Atlantic country/blues rock, occasionally rugged around the edges, whose sun-kissed Californian complexion revisits the likes of Steely Dan, The Eagles and The Band, courtesy of a bloke from the murkier climes of Lancashire.

Tony McPhee – The Two Sides of Tony (T.S.) McPhee

April 14th, 2011

During the early 1970s, when other bands were following the lead of Traffic and “getting it together in the country”, Groundhog Tony McPhee was holed up in his own pastoral setting, licking his wounds following a particularly bitter divorce.

The Two Sides of Tony (T.S.) McPhee album cover

Bad news for McPhee, good news for us. For it explicitly informs at least one track on his 1973 solo effort, The Two Sides of Tony (T.S.) McPhee, as well as dictating the prevalent mood of the remainder.

Taking its title at face value, The Two Sides… offers just that. Two wildly differing styles, separated by the flip of a platter.

Side 1, as it would’ve been in the days of vinyl, shoots from the hip, with a collection of extremely raw, largely acoustic blues numbers that hark back to McPhee’s salad days as a blues guitarist in the earlier part of the 1960s. It also delivers the musical equivalent of a bloody nose to his ex-wife. Side 2 is given over to a single, nineteen minute progressive piece entitled ‘The Hunt’. More of which, in a moment.

album reviews, blues rock, prog rock

Graham Bond – Love is the Law & Mighty Grahame Bond

February 23rd, 2011

The Mighty Graham Bond express pulled into town in a variety of guises throughout the late 1960s. As a member of Alexis Korner’s Blues Inc. and titular host of the Graham Bond Organisation – a group that also included such luminaries as Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Dick Heckstall-Smith – his imposing frame sat at the forefront of the Brit-Blues explosion, playing a major part in revolutionising that sound with his incorporation of jazz influences.

graham bond - love is the law album cover

Psychedelia beckoned and being both an early adopter of the Hammond organ and the first man in Britain to introduce audiences to the wonders of the Mellotron, the underground rock scene was ripe for a dose of Graham Bond exuberance.

A diet of heroin, the occult, depression and his eventual suicide in 1974, meant the creative flame that burned early in his career never really reignited and certainly didn’t rekindle the audience interest previously enjoyed. Love is the Law and Mighty Grahame Bond were recorded and released solely in America during 1968 and 1969 respectively, at a time when personal demons were taking a hold, the money was running out and the offer from a US label seemed hard to turn down. He never received a penny in royalties for either album.

Despite what was going on behind the scenes, neither Love is the Law nor Mighty Grahame Bond sound as bad as such turbulent circumstances might portend.

Peter Bardens – The Answer

January 27th, 2011

Reading the liner notes of this recent reissue of Peter Bardens’ 1970 debut The Answer, reveals a prolific artist kept busy prior to his finding fame as the keyboardist with progressive rock group Camel. Aside from the psychedelic Ladbroke Grove act, The Village, he played in a whole host of bands during the British “Blues Boom” of the mid-sixties, alongside future household names such as Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green and Premier League rogerer, Sir Rodney of Stewart.

peter bardens - the answer album cover

And there’s an element of blues rock bubbling away beneath the psychedelic/progressive mix that forms The Answer, particularly with regards to Bardens’ vocal delivery, which is a full-bodied blues drawl and, on occasion, remarkably similar in sound to another royal lady-roisterer, a certain Michael Jagger.

The title-track, first up on the album, is awash with energetic blues guitar licks, in this case provided by an uncredited Peter Green, which is bolstered throughout by Bardens’ elaborate organ artistry and pseudo-philosophical lyricism, popular in progressive and underground rock circles of this era.

Juicy Lucy

November 18th, 2010

A fruity name and an even fruitier album cover isn’t enough to prepare the unsuspecting for the balls-to-the-wall brand of heavy blues-rock that resides on 1969′s Juicy Lucy, the debut album by the band of the same name.

juicy lucy album cover

Centred around the scorching riffs of steel guitar legend Glenn Ross Campbell, previously of US psychedelic rock band The Misunderstood, Juicy Lucy was a band earthier than Percy Thrower’s potting shed.

Juicy Lucy features the unique vocal drawl of Ray Owen and a solid contingent of British musicians, knocking out raucous and weighty, blues-seared rock numbers that reach their rasping zenith with the Bo Diddley cover ‘Who Do You Love?’, the single release of which would break the UK Top 20 in 1970.

With song titles such as ‘Mississippi Woman’ and ‘Chicago North-Western’, Juicy Lucy don’t stray far from the Honky-Tonk blueprint they’ve set themselves and although nothing surpasses the superb ‘Who Do You Love?’, Juicy Lucy still makes for a decent listen.

album reviews, blues rock

Broken Barricades: Procol Harum Week

October 5th, 2009

In 1971, when Procol Harum’s Broken Barricades was first released, the band that has been through a massive 23 different line-ups was only on their third, the same quartet responsible for the previous album Home.

procol harum - broken barricades album cover

There was Chris Copping doubling up on bass and organ, alongside BJ Wilson and Robin Trower from the classic era, on drums and guitar respectively. Then, of course, there was the one constant factor in Procol Harum’s lifespan: Gary Brooker, singer, pianist and songwriting partner to the band’s lyricist, the ever-present Keith Reid.

Home had seen the psychedelia of A Whiter Shade of Pale, and the earlier albums, shown the door in favour of a harder rock sound that kept the progressive edge and cemented Procol Harum’s reputation as one of the most innovative acts doing the rounds.

Broken Barrricades saw them continue along this road, paring back the symphonics that had really come to the fore on A Salty Dog and Home’s ‘Whaling Stories’, to produce an album that’s still chock full of ideas, despite seeing them in their rawest form.

album reviews, blues rock, prog rock

The Idle Hands – All Night Sinnin

September 1st, 2009

All Night Sinnin’, the fifth album release from Chesterfield’s The Idle Hands, does what you’d expect from a modern-day blues rock combo without straying onto the path of mundane pedestrianism that often waylays lesser acts in a musical genre nowadays championed by greying men old enough to remember the original Brit blues invasion of the sixties.

idle hands - all night sinnin album cover

The Idle Hands deliver the goods, firing on all cylinders to produce an album worthy of a band who enjoy a formidable reputation as a live act, injecting it with the same passion that I’m sure also stokes their stage shows.

album reviews, blues rock, classic rock