The Move’s Debut Album
This is where it all started for Roy Wood and The Move, with their debut album simply titled, The Move, recorded on and off over a 14 month period and finally released in 1968.
Okay, it might seem unfair to single out Roy Wood, as The Move were – at the time of recording, at least – Carl Wayne, Bev Bevan, Trevor Burton and Chris ‘Ace’ Kefford, but being the creative whirlwind responsible for the lion’s share of their songs, the two are, and always will be, inextricably linked. Even if nowadays you are more likely to think of Christmas at the mention of his name.
But back to the album, here presented in another expanded, digipack reissue by Fly Records. This one’s a lavish two-disc affair with the usual, informative booklet, and featuring on disc one the original mono album as it was released in April 1968, complete with bonus tracks of the single A and B-sides that didn’t feature. Disc two is called ‘New Movement’ and is a newly created stereo mix of the original album with a slightly different track listing and a couple of alternate versions.
Well that’s all well and good, but is it any cop?
Of course it is! It’s The Move and any regular visitor to these hallowed shores of musical goodness will be fully aware that Head Full of Snow loves The Move. Granted, it has to be said that in my humble opinion this is their weakest album but that only illustrates the fact of how good Shazam, Looking On and Message From the Country are. I mean, it’s baffling how Roy Wood’s songwriting talents have largely been forgotten with the passage of time? Everybody remembers Lennon and McCartney; Mick and Keef; Ray Davies; Pete Townsend; but not Roy Wood. Maybe it’s a regional bias against the bearded Brummy or the fact that The Move never broke America or even the fact that his long career in the music business has somehow been overshadowed by a certain Christmas song.
As I said, The Move was recorded over a period of 14 months and it shows. The change in musical styles is evident, from the early rock ‘n’ roll vibe of ‘Weekend’ to the full-blown psych-tinged pop of the perennial ‘Flowers in the Rain’, but even upon its release times had changed with psychedelic-pop giving way to psychedelic and progressive rock, and ’singles’ artists now eager to be considered more serious ‘album’ artists. This would be remedied with The Move’s follow-up, Shazam, which set them on the progressive road to E.L.O.
The original album kicks off with ‘Yellow Rainbow’, delivering a warning to a world on the brink of apocalypse amidst a fuzzy haze of phasing and psychedelic goodness. From then on in it’s a non-stop ride of pop and psych-pop mastery, taking in the glorious sights of ‘Flowers in the Rain’, ‘Fire Brigade’, ‘Mist on a Monday Morning’ and ‘Cherry Blossom Clinic’ on the way. The five bonus tracks include ‘Night of Fear’ and ‘I Can Hear the Grass Grow’.
Of the 18 tracks that make up disc one of this remastered reissue, 15 are written by Roy Wood. The remaining three are covers, Eddie Cochran’s ‘Weekend’, Moby Grape’s slightly dull ‘Hey Grandma’ and the Coasters’ ‘Zing Went the Strings of my Heart’, featuring the dulcet, double-bass tones of Bev Bevan.
Roy Wood ’s often bizarre, often cheeky lyrics are no better exemplified than on ‘(Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree’, which would go on to be covered by fellow Brummies, psychedelic popsters and home of future Move member, Jeff Lynne: The Idle Race. This is a brand of psychedelic pop unique to the British with its tongue-in-cheek, whimsical lyrics about, in Roy’s own words, “a nut-case bird”. The psychedelic feel throughout stems from Roy Wood’s love for writing children’s stories and not from illicit substances, or as Bev Bevan says in the excellent booklet, “Once in a while, we’d lock him in a hotel room with a bottle of vodka and say, ‘Write a new single!’ But that’s the nearest he ever got to getting blasted.”
The Move is another handsome reissue from Fly Records and a cracking album to boot. The second ‘New Movement’ stereo-mixed disc is probably my preferred listening as it does away with the aforementioned ‘Hey Grandma’ (I don’t like the Moby Grape original either) and the equally lacklustre ‘Wave the Flag and Stop the Train’. Saying that it also misses off the excellent ‘Yellow Rainbow’, ‘Disturbance’ and ‘I Can Hear the Grass Grow’, so alternating is the wisest move.
This is The Move in their original, rawest form, one they’d never entertain again. By the time the album was released ‘Ace’ Kefford had already left because of drug problems and Trevor Burton was also to depart before the release of their follow-up, Shazam. The pop sound is one that would quickly disappear too as Roy Wood shifted the band towards the more experimental and satisfactory realms of psychedelic and progressive rock.
The Move (Deluxe 2-CD Expanded Edition) is reissued on Fly Records and available from Amazon.co.uk
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