Steve Swindells’ 1974 album Messages is as far removed from the grinding, out of this world spaciness of Hawkwind reincarnation The Hawklords – with whom he played keyboards – as it’s possible to get.

For the most part it’s a straightforward rock album that incorporates some of the flourishes associated with prog rock, retaining a steadily pleasant ambience right up until the final track ‘Messages from Heaven’, which beams us skyward into the more HFoS-friendly stratospheres of space-flavoured progressive rock and leaves all that went before it back on planet Earth, struggling for elevation.

Read more…

classic rock, prog rock

In 1975, the question among a great many of those circumnavigating the spheres of post-psychedelic, progressive rock fandom, might well have been: “is Procol Harum still relevant?”

Unlike other bands that had blossomed out of late-1960s psychedelic Britain, only to fall dramatically by the wayside, Procol Harum had left the paisley shirts behind and continued to produce strong albums, clocking up number eight with the previous year’s Exotic Birds and Fruit. Even if, through all this, the spectre of the perennial ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ conspired to deny them wholesale global success.

This, the aptly titled Procol’s Ninth, arrived with a new production team and a straightforward, no-frills album cover, signalling a change in – if not the direction that Procol Harum were taking – the sound they were producing.

Read more…

album reviews, classic rock, prog rock

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.

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.

Read more…

album reviews, blues rock, classic rock

The story behind the rather radio-unfriendly Rolling Stones song, ‘Cocksucker Blues’ – sometimes referred to as ‘Schoolboy Blues’ – is slightly more interesting than the purposely offensive curio itself.

In 1970, between the releases of Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones, looking to go it alone and handle their own business affairs, finished with both their record company Decca and their manager Allen Klein. The contract with Decca required the band to deliver one more single.

‘Cocksucker Blues’ was the result.

Read more…

classic rock, song reviews, the blues

The Rolling Stones were long over their brief psychedelic phase when they released Sticky Fingers in 1971. And what more can be said other than it’s singularly the greatest album ever written, recorded or released by any musical act this side of hell. Does anything need adding to that?

Oh well, I suppose if needs must.

Sticky Fingers represents the pinnacle of the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership and a band at the peak of their musical prowess, narrowly shaving Exile On Main Street to steal the hard-contested honour. It also came at a time when they could do no wrong. You have Their Satanic Majesties Request (much maligned, but loved for its psychedelic goodness by this reviewer), followed by Beggar’s Banquet, followed by Let It Bleed, then Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, and Goats Head Soup. Just one of those albums would be enough to cement the name of any lesser band in the halls of music immortality. But indeed, ‘the hardest working band in rock ‘n’ roll’ pumped them out in a space of five years and were never quite the same again.

Read more…

album reviews, classic rock