ALL TOGETHER NOW

Argent return with heads held high

Argent came of age with this album, thanks in no small part to the huge hit single "Hold your head up". The version on the album differs from the single edit by including a fine organ solo by Rod Argent

The band had decided to give this album more of a rock feel than previous more eclectic outings, and many of the tracks have a solid beat behind them. Russ Ballard contributes some of his finest songs, the best of which are "Tragedy" and "He's a dynamo", the latter being a tribute to Rod Argent. "I am the dance of ages" is a slower but very powerful song, with soaring choruses and a heavy plodding backbeat. The song was destined to become a great live track, as witnessed by the band's "Encore" album.

The closing track "Pure love" is in four parts, and lasts over 10 minutes. It's very much a Rod Argent suite, being heavy on the keyboards and with Argent taking the lead vocal. I find it to be something of a disappointment for a feature track, the four sections not really flowing well together, and the long third section (the only one with vocals) meandering and appearing unfocussed. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad track, but it not up to the standard of the rest of the album.

"Pure love" aside though, an excellent album with a relentless pace, which sees the band taking a major stride forward from their previous albums.

After the encouraging second album where clearly their prog potential was starting to ooze out of their pores, the band's third album All Together Now became a huge success with the amazing (but not very complicated) Hold Your Head Up single (although it was abridged compared with the 6-min album version). While the bland gatefold artwork was nothing to warn fans that the group was indeed taking a prog turn, the group was indeed maturing, but they were definitely not finished the metamorphose.

Past the opening huge organ-drenched Hold Your Head Up, came a full-out Rock And Roll track, which would also become a live favourite. Another superb track is the slow-paced Dance Of The Age, full of drama and filled with inspired lyrics! This song was to be yet another live milestone in their concert receiving superb elongated versions lasting up to triple its original length. Ballard comes through with Tragedy, the slightly too long Be My Lover and Dynamo, but while Russ would one day write Argent's most enduring hit single, he's not yet reached top form here, even if Tragedy does hold its own. But most of the flipside is held by the four-part 13-min Pure Love mini-suite. And unfortunately I must say that the promises that this was proposing are not really held. Heavy on the organ and light on everything else, there is not much substance in this failed experiment. The one thing that became apparent is that while a good songwriter, Rod's virtuoso qualities being un-denied, his inspiration is a little too obvious and unfortunately he appears derivative (avoiding to say the next step upwards on this scale).

Definitely not yet at cruising speed, but well on the way there, Argent's ATN is the first of the classic album, but I wouldn't call it essential just yet.

With "ALL TOGETHER NOW" I discovered ARGENT. This collection has some magic and mistery i still can not explain. It has a perfect combination of two completely opposite talents: ROD ARGENT vs RUSS BALLARD. One is the progresive master and the other one, favored rock. It is an inteligent combination and you can feel there were two bands inside ARGENT, This situation was similar only with THE WHO. John Entwistle s' songs were different in text and sound to Pete Tounwshend s' or the other members tastes (Keith Monn flavored surf music and Roger Daltrey, R&B). Also similar were The Kinks, a band with two brothers as song writers. Also the Beatles...and so on. "ALL TOGETHER NOW" is simply a great album with great songs. There is a version with Russ Ballard, "Closer to Heaven", the Stones flavored "B" side to Hold Your Head Up.

Centered round the former Zombies Keyboardist Rod Argent and strengthened with the talents of Russ Ballard on guitar and vocals, Bob Henrit on drums, and Jim Rodford on bass, Argent establishes themselves as a band with this album. Great mainly Rock and Roll album, with great keyboard solo's running through the album, (fabulous, but not excuberant) on a firm classic rock foundation.

Hold Your head Up, Be My Love, Be My Friend and Pure Love are for me the best songs on the album, but the rest is very good rock and roll as well.

A great album if you like classic rock, combined with blues rock and fabulous organ/piano solo's. and good singing. I'm indesicive whether I should give three or four stars, Pure Love is the only song on the album I regard as trully progressive, but it's a great song worthy of universal recognition on this site, but the rest is fabulous rock and roll, with only hints of progressiveness. 3,5 stars, with a recomendation for Pure Love.

PEACE OUT

After some ups (their debut) and downs ("Ring of Hands"), "Argent" comes back with another good album.

The highlight is of course their excellent hit "Hold Your Head Up", which features a fantastic and heavy keyboards solo which is just fabulous. This extended version is on par with the greatest "Heep" or "Atomic Rooster" ones.

The funky rhythms are back with "Tragedy": it could have been featured on their second opus. Great bass and organ play, but vocals are quite annoying. It is a pity because if you'd take "I Am The Dance Of Ages" vocals here are quite decent and the hypnotic beat is a real killer. One of my fave.

Of course, some songs from a band like "Argent" were just milk and honey for me, since I was quite keen on such music (and alike) in those days. The band had of course much less exposure than the big ones (or legendary ones), but it is really worth investigating for younger generations. If you enjoy these heavy organ sounds, "Argent" is for you (as "Atomic Rooster" of course).

Good old rock'n'roll is not forgotten. No less than two revival tracks are available: "Keep On Rollin" (indeed) and "He's A Dynamo". Maybe not the best songs from the album though.

The central part of this work is the epic "Pure Love". Some imposing church oriented keys to start with, more bombastic ones to follow. The world of Emerson is wide opened. But Rod Argent is rather alone to entertain us. I would have hoped some more contribution from his band mates. This prog intro is followed with some bluesy and vocal parts later on during the "Pure love" section which sounds rather flat to be honest.

Even if he wasn't a member of "Argent" (he used to play in "The Zombies"), the work of Chris White is truly fundamental in the song writing: five out of seven tracks are co-written with Rod Argent (he is also mostly influent on other "Argent" releases).

The last CD version (1997) features no less than seven bonus tracks (good for thirty minutes of music). Some tracks being from earlier releases ("Celebration" or "Rejoice") other ones being released later on ("God Gave Rock'n'Roll" or "Christmas For Free").

Some unreleased studio album tracks like the psychedelic "Kingdom", the profoundly "Free" oriented "Closer To Heaven" (written by Ballard) or the second part of "It's Only Money" are worthwhile and welcome. They don't raise the level of this album which I would rate with three stars. A solid heavy rock album.

It's very difficult to choose the best album of this band. All of their LPs (especially from classic period 1971-1974) include fantastic prog gems, but also some amount of pop/ (pseudo) hard rock stinkers usually composed by Russ Ballard. However if I had to pick up one, particular record from their discography it would be "All Together Now":

1. "Hold Your Head Up" - album starts with this real classic of heavy prog genre. Organ drenched tune with memorable rythm and melody (but not popish!) makes this composition a fantastic opener and one of the best song in Argent's catalog. Organ solo in the middle is perfectly long and truly splendid in the best tradiditon of Jon Lord or Vincent Crane.

2. "Keep On Rollin'" - first awful filler of this record. Piano-oriented woogie-boogie. Avoid as a plague!

3. "Tragedy" - after miserable previous track Argent serves as another classic heavy rock tune. Very good, catchy - almost heavy metal-like -screaming vocals and of course lots of roaring Hammonds delivered by master Rod including another perfect solo.

4. "I Am the Dance of Ages" - definitely one of my favorite song of this band. Really hypnotizing melody which give me shivers everytime I listen to it. And this monotonous (but at the same time very captivating!) march/funeral-like drums... Organ "noodling" in the middle of the song build great atmosphere. This song has less than 4 minutes, but when you listen to this, it sounds like 10+ minutes epic ! (of course it's a compliment for progheads like me :-).

5. "Be My Lover, Be My Friend" - mainly straightforward hard rock composition which can't be distinguish from so many similar songs played in 70' by classic rock bands. However this track includes one of the best organ solos from band's leader which saves it from medicority. (BTW it's quite typical situation for Argent. The same phenomena you can observe in such songs as "Cast Your Spell Uranus" or "Pleasure" from their previous album "Ring of Hands").

6. "He's a Dynamo" - second serious bump of the album. Stupid rock'n'roll song with simple piano, which would be a filler even in some early 60' R&B record.

7. "Pure Love (Fantasia/Prelude/Pure Love/Finale)" - after previous horrible (but fortunately short) stinker Argent presents us my favorite composition: 13 minutes, 4 parts suite "Pure Love" which sounds like a beatiful hommage to all great organ players. This epic starts with fabulous section of dreamy church-like organ playing (but I suppose it's still Hammond organ, maybe without Leslie cabinet this time?). Seems to be tribute to J.S. Bach! However after 5 minutes drums join and music turns into The Nice/ELP/Triumvirat direction. Perfect! "Pure Love" sequence seems to be out of place here with it's more simple rock'n'roll attitude. But hey, I still like it here. Mixing more straightforward rock patterns with symphonic prog is a trademark of this band after all! Anyway "Finale" ends the suite with another magnificent, powerful organ performence. Real gem of this album and this band's discography in general.

To summarize: 3rd Argent's album contains 4 fantastic tracks, 1 good but not essential hard rock song with phenomenal organ solo and 2 absolutely horrible farts. (Anyway still big improvement after "Ring of Hands" which had much bigger amount of medicore songs and only few really prog tracks.)

By the way, it's a must-have album for Hammond organ lovers! 4,5 stars for me.

Argent is hardly new to me, although I am way too young to caught them when they existed as I was born in 1972, I first remembered hearing "Hold Your Head Up" in 1988 when I was 15 and loving it, but it took me a year later to get some info on this group (at the same time I knew of the Zombies, so I figured Argent was Rod Argent's post-Zombie project). It took me until quite recently to buy any Argent albums because I knew they had to be very inconsistent, and from listening to All Together Now, which includes the famous hit, I was proven right, it is very inconsistent. A lot of blame goes between the division of Russ Ballard and Rod Argent with Chris White, with the more adventurous and often proggy material going to Argent and White. The album starts off with the famous hit, which isn't Russ Ballard (a couple websites credited this song to Ballard, which is incorrect), but Argent and White, which isn't too surprising, this song is just too proggy for anything Ballard to come up with. A wonderful piece of prog rock that became an FM rock classic. I especially dig those extended organ solos, which was the same way I felt at 15 years old (at that time I didn't know what progressive rock was, but turned out a lot of the music I liked, even then, was progressive rock, just didn't realized that until a little later on).

The rest of the album, well, it's all over the place. "Keep On Rollin'" is just plain awful, '50s style rock and roll boogie is just so out of place on an album, especially since the previous song was a prog rock masterpiece. Strangely it was Argent and White responsible for this disaster, so it's a big surprise that Ballard gives us a great rock piece, "Tragedy". Might not be prog, but still a great rock number. The prog tendencies are kept to a minimum, since this is Ballard's song. A great piece of heavy rock. Argent and White gives us "I Am the Dance of Ages", which is a sorta heavy prog number, but Ballard's "He's a Dynamo" is as bad as it sounds. When people speak of bad Argent songs, Ballard is often to blame, and this song (to me) is one of them (after hearing my share of Argent albums, I've come to the conclusion there are Argent/White songs I like and those I don't, and same goes for Russ Ballard, who gets little love in the prog community). "Pure Love" is a prog suite, which is obvious who wrote it (Argent/White), which is how not to do a prog suite. It starts off actually quite good, with great organ passages, but it seemed they wimped out towards the end when the vocals kick in, instead of doing something grand or simply mindblowing to end it. At least Argent did a much better suite on Nexus with "The Coming of Kohoutek", even if were disguised as three separate songs (and surprisingly, it was a full-blown symphonic prog piece).

Argent has certainly done better albums than this, like their debut (very good, even if it's not particularly progressive) or Nexus ("The Coming of Kohoutek" suite is full-on symphonic prog, something Argent never done before, with lots of great Moog, organ, and Mellotron), so you'd probably should try those albums first. As for All Together Now, it gave them commercial success they never had before, but not a favorite, but still has good material to warrant three stars.

"Man, what a drag!" as I recall my brother's reaction after hearing the album All Together Now by ex Zombie leader Rod Argent's namesake band for first time back in 1972.

Was it really that bad? Let's listen again and see. Mmm...the album starts off with that killer song "Hold Your Head Up" that features a blistering organ solo from Mr. Argent in it's six minute album form. So far, so good, but the second cut "Keep On Rolling" with it's boogie woogie piano sounds like filler. Ok, maybe the third track "Tragedy" will bring the album back into focus as it features more heavy bass and organ. No, it just doesn't quite come together as the vocals are annoying. I think you're starting to get the picture without my having to describe the shortcomings of the following songs "Dance of Ages", "Be My Lover, Be My Friend" and "Dynamo." However, the album does end with a semi prog four song instrumental suite titled "Pure Love", which, while very good, can't save the album. A pity as All Together Now is recorded with a loud live sounding in your face sound mix.

Rod Argent was a hit songwriter and knew a world wide smash when he wrote one. Just as he did when he wrote "Time Of The Season" for the Zombies a few years earlier. And hit songs, or even just one hit song, sells albums. Millions of albums in the seventies, especially in the US.

So, with only one really significant standout song, All Together Now really is a drag.

Amen, brother.

Hold your head up woman!

After the uneven if occasionally brilliant Ring Of Hands, Argent enter their imperial phase with the much heavier and more consistent All Together Now album. This was their most commercially successful album ever no doubt helped by the massively successful and much covered opening track "Hold Your Head Up". The album version is nearly twice as long and contains a superb keyboard solo.No two ways about it -this track is a stone cold Classic. "Tragedy" is another excellent rocker with a funky rhythm and another excellent solo."I am the Dance of Ages" with its slow pounding rhythm is another great track absolutely drenched in atmosphere.It is probably the closest thing to pure Prog on the album. Unfortunately side one is let down slightly by the track "Keep On Rolling" which is a basic piano boogie led track.There is nothing wrong with it -it is just that it seems a bit out of place adjacent to "Hold Your Head Up" and "Tragedy" and just goes on too long for such a lightweight number. Side two i a bit of a mixed bag."Be My Lover,Be My Friend" is another classy riff driven rocker."He's a Dynamo" is a bit poppy for my tastes but it is OK.The rest of side two is taken up with the lengthy "Pure Love" suite It starts of with a very lengthy unaccompanied church organ solo followed by a very energetic but all to brief jazzy work out slightly reminiscent of ELP. The third part of the suite is a bluesy song which is quite enjoyable and this lead to a brief reprise of the opening part.It is avery satisfying way to round off the album In retrospect it is easy to see why this album proved so popular. It is a very solid rock album with with some nice prog touches no real filler unless you really do not like boogie woogie.

4 stars

Argent's third album "All Together Now" is one of the classic prog albums of all time. For some reason I never see this album getting the love it deserves but, nevertheless this album is wonderful. After their more eclectic/proggy sophomore album, "Ring of Hands," they turned to a more rock approach. This album still holds a lot of their progressive tendencies though, and I am actually a little confused about why Argent is considered crossover prog on this website. I think they are and completely sound like classic symphonic prog.

The album begins with the prog classic "Hold You Head Up," which was also the band's greatest hit, charting high in the US and UK. The version on the album is 10 times better than the single version though, because of Rod Argent's organ solo, which is one of the best ever played in my opinion. Rick Wakeman has even been quoted saying that the organ solo is the greatest of all time. An amazing opener, and sets the tone for the album. "Keep On Rollin" is by far the worst tune on here. This track is literally a complete filler track, similar to "Jeremy Bender" by ELP but much longer. It feels like a carbon copy of every blues song ever (namely "Run Run Rudolph").

"Tragedy" is the second hit on this album. I absolutely love this cut mostly because of the really great Russ Ballard vocal performance, with another great organ solo from Rod Argent as well. After the very weak "Keep on Rollin" this track saves the course of the album by delivering one of Argent's best tracks. "I Am The Dance Of Ages" is another amazing song off of this album. With a monotonous funeral march drum beat, organ-led chord progression, and thoughtful lyrics, this song could've easily been a 10 minutes+ prog epic, yet it is only a little under 4 minutes.

"Be, My Lover, Be my Friend" opens with a grand organ riff, which is then completely thrown out the window and replaced with a heavier Russ Ballard tune. Ballard sings some nice harmonies on this track and it does feature a nice chord progression when it branches off from the main rock theme, as well as another spectacular Hammond Organ solo from Rod Argent, which is its saving grace. "He's a Dynamo" is another very boogie-woogie-esque track similar to that of "Keep on Rollin." I'm not a huge fan of it either, just pretty mediocre.

"Pure Love" is the album's epic masterpiece. Clocking in at 13:00 minutes, it consists of 4 parts (Fantasia, Prelude, Pure Love, and Finale). It opens with one of the all-time classic organ intros, up there with "The Three Fates" by ELP. After the 5-minute solo (!!!!) the song enters a very good organ-led passage. The song weakens a little bit when the vocals enter. I feel as if the vocals throughout the album are overly bluesy and take away from some of the more complex sections.

Overall this is a great album, containing some of the greatest organ work of all time from Rod Argent. This was Argent's most popular album and had 4 songs that charted internationally. As much as I enjoy Ballard as a vocalist, his compositions on the album tend to be a bit lackluster compared to those of Rod Argent. After this LP, Argent would go on to release their magnum opus, "In Deep" in 1973. Highly recomend to all prog fans!