Prog Britannia - Album Reviews

 

 

Album Review #71:- BABE RUTH were a Jazzy Blues-Rock band who hailed from England, despite naming themselves after an American baseball legend. Although the band managed to reach first base in their native England, it was in North America where the band hit a home run and achieved commercial success when their first album achieved gold. They first emerged in the leafy town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire in 1971 and released their aptly-titled "First Base" album in 1972. They followed it up with four more album releases throughout the 1970's:- "Amar Caballero" (1973); "Babe Ruth" (1975); "Stealin' Home" (1975); and "Kid's Stuff" (1976). The band decided to call it quits after their fifth album in 1976, but they got together again thirty years later to record the long-awaited comeback album "Que Pasa" (2007). It's time now to strike out for a home run with Babe Ruth's "First Base" album. The baseball-themed fantasy artwork for the album cover was designed by Roger Dean, who also designed many YES album covers.

The album gets off to a rip-roaring start with "Wells Fargo", a song you can bank on to deliver some hard-drivin' Blues-Rock with vocalist Janita "Jennie" Haan having the same raw and earthy edge to her voice as blues legend Janis Joplin. The song gallops along at a tremendous pace with the lively horn section sounding like they're having a real blast here. The saxophonist probably needed to lie down in a darkened room just to catch his breath after his energetic non-stop performance in this 6-minute opener. There's a far more sedate pace to "The Runaways" with Jennie Haan sounding far more restrained here. It's a sensual piano piece featuring an oboe and cello in symphonic accompaniment. This rousing classically-inspired music gradually builds up in intensity, emerging into a sonorous crescendo of sound for the spectacular finale, in a bass-heavy song that's very reminiscent of some of Renaissance's epic masterpieces. This is quite possibly the best song that Renaissance *never* recorded. It's time now to go ape-crazy for "King Kong", a cover version of the old Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention song. This is one heck of a crazy jam session, with the band given free rein to improvise away to their heart's content. This is the kind of fast and furious, Jazzy improvisational free-for-all that couldn't possibly be written down formally as musical notation, regardless of whether or not you know your crotchets from your quavers.

"Black Dog" opens Side Two, although it's nothing to do with the classic Led Zep song of the same name. No, this is more of a laid-back Blues-Rock piano number, at least to begin with. The song might sound moody and mellow in the opening, but it's really a wolf in sheep's clothing, because there's a rompin' stompin' Hard Rock song just waiting to get out. Beware, this is a mean "Black Dog" with sharp teeth that might just leap up and bite, so watch out! If the next song "The Mexican" sounds familiar, that's because it's a Jazzed-up version of the spaghetti western music of Ennio Morricone. Hola amigo! It's perfect music for listening to whilst watching "gringo" Clint Eastwood despatching some more Mexican banditos with his trusty six- gun after they've insulted his mule. It's a return to some heavy Blues-Rock for the final song on the album "The Joker", where vocalist Jennie Haan is in mean and moody, bad mama mode again. It's the kind of good old American Pie Southern Rock song you could listen to whilst driving your chevy down to the levee, even if the levee was dry. Sometimes, it's hard to believe Babe Ruth are really as English as a chip buttie, or a vindaloo curry.

"First Base" is a good old-fashioned American Southern Rock album - from the leafy suburbs of Hatfield in England! Babe Ruth may not have hit a home run with this album in their native England, but it's easy to see why they were much more popular with our American cousins. Obvious comparisons can be drawn with the Blues-Rock of Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company. Babe Ruth sound as American as Billy Bob Thornton or Randy California eating blueberry pie and wearing a Stetson hat and cowboy boots.

 

 

Album Review #73:- JAN DUKES DE GREY sounds like a French nobleman, but they were actually a short-lived Prog/Psych-Folk band from Leeds in northern England. Their first album "Sorcerers" (1970) passed by virtually unnoticed at the time of its release, but their second album "Mice and Rats in the Loft" (1971) will be much more familiar to Prog/Psych-Folk fans. Both albums have since become real collectors items. They recorded a third album "Strange Terrain" in 1977, but that long-lost album wouldn't see the light of day until 2010/11. The "Mice and Rats in the Loft" album reviewed here, consists of three extended songs of improvisational acid-drenched Folk:- 1. "Sun Symphonica" (18:58); 2. "Call of the Wild" (12:48); & 3. "Mice and Rats in the Loft" (8:19).

The outlook for "Sun Symphonica" is for bright and sunny spells of long pastoral flute passages with occasional outbreaks of classically-inspired orchestral showers. Just as the song title implies, "Sun Symphonica" is a radiant sunburst symphony of sound, featuring flutes, clarinets, saxophones, harmonicas, violins and hyperactive percussion in abundance. It's very bold and brassy, but it's also very sophisticated and classy, mainly due to the ornate chamber music from the orchestra. Some of the exotic musical passages sound faintly middle eastern, conjuring up bizarre images of a Turkish bazaar where one is expected to haggle over the price of a carpet, whilst the vendor puffs away calmly on a hookah pipe. The music is a veritable potpourri of musical styles, combining pleasant strolls through golden meadows of woodwinds amidst glorious showers of lush strings and vibrant percussion. The song as a whole is a very pleasant confection that's as sweet and exotic as a box of Turkish Delights.

The next song "Call of the Wild" is nothing to do with wolves barking at the moon. No, this is more of a call of the wild in human terms with the lyrics apparently advocating free love and a freeing of the spirit:- "I will be free to sleep where I want and with who and what I will." ..... If the promiscuous lyrics are anything to go by, the northern town of Leeds in the seventies was just as footloose and fancy free as proverbial swinging London in the sixties, so maybe it's not so grim up north after all. The music is pretty wild and swinging too, consisting mainly of lively bursts of infectious fluty Folk blended together with a liberal dose of saxophonic jazz in a musical tour de force. Think of Jethro Tull combined with Soft Machine, and that's the kind of Jazzy Psych-Folk you have here.

And now we come to the title track: "Mice and Rats in the Loft". If you really DO have mice in the loft, here's a handy hint: mice absolutely love chocolate, far more than cheese, so if you want to catch mice humanely, just bait the walk-in trap with some hot chocolate powder and they'll be queuing up to get into the trap and the trapdoor will close behind them. You can then let them out later in a rodents version of the "Catch and Release" program. Anyway, back to the music after that brief digression. This is where the musicians really get to let their hair down and go off on an improvisational free-for-all. The wacky over-the-top singer sounds like he's on a mad LSD trip here and the weird psychedelic Jazz sounds as wild and crazy as bats in the belfry, or mice and rats scampering about in the loft.

Jan Dukes de Grey appear to have invented a whole new genre of music with their unique "Mice and Rats in the Loft" album. The music can best be described as Psychedelic Jazz-Folk. Sometimes, the music is rousing and spectacular, and sometimes it's pleasant and pastoral, and maybe it's even weird and wonderfully zany at times too, but it's NEVER dull.

Okay, thanks for letting me know. In the meantime, I'm cherry-picking my way through your list of underground bands. I've unearthed some real treasures there.

One track....

and this band...

Lol this is so classic.

 

The full "Mighty Baby" album isn't currently available on YouTube, so I've posted this extended psychedelic jam session instead, titled "Now You Don't"

 

 

Album Review #76:- MIGHTY BABY were a two-album Psychedelic Rock band from London, England, who were previously known as The Action. Their first album "Mighty Baby" (1969) was firmly rooted in American Psychedelic Rock. They had a change of direction with their second album "A Jug of Love" (1971), which had more of a laid-back spiritual feel to it, due to several members of the band taking up the Sufi faith in the interim period between the two albums. Let's take a mighty leap now into the psychedelic world of Mighty Baby's eponymously-titled first album.

We're in Raiders of the Lost Ark territory for the glorious opening number, "Egyptian Tomb". It's a trippy acid-drenched song that perfectly captures the American West Coast sound of the late 1960's, emulating such bands of the time as Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane, only with a saxophone providing some additional flawless flourishes. The music brings to mind exotic images of pharaohs, sphinxes and pyramids, and camel rides across the desert beneath a burning red sun. Just watch out for those nasty scorpions and huge camel spiders though. There's more sunny psychedelia on the way with "A Friend You Know But Never See", another full-blooded blast of Psychedelic Rock with a powerful driving rhythm and some magnificent fuzzy guitar soloing. This is a perfect sunburst of rainbow-coloured psychedelia for listening to in a free-and- easy hippy commune on a sunshiny day in Southern California, or failing that, listening to at night with the lights off where you're free to do some California Dreamin' of sun, sand, sea and surfing, regardless of whether all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey, on a winter's day. There's a pleasant change of pace for "I've Been Down So Long", which begins as a nicely laid-back groove to put you in a mellow mood, but this is only a prelude as the dazzling guitarist has his amp turned up to eleven and he's more than ready to deliver another scorching hot guitar solo in a magnificent crescendo of sound. We're continuing the wild ride with more psychedelic red-hot vibes in "Same Way From the Sun", a footloose and fancy-free fuzz- toned guitar freak-out from beginning to end.

Opening Side Two is a "House Without Windows" which must be a very dark house indeed. The music is as bright as a sparkling crystal though, featuring six uninterrupted minutes of musical magic in another groovy psychedelic jam session. There's no let-up in the incredible pace with "Trials of a City", a bluesy psychedelic jam which barrels along at full-speed ahead. These London guys have really nailed it when it comes to playing American Psychedelic Rock. They sound like they were born and raised within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, instead of the sprawling suburbs of London. We're slowing things down a bit now with "I'm From the Country", a pleasantly countrified, mellow diversion amongst the heavy Psychedelic Rock numbers. This is the kind of laid-back West Coast sound we're accustomed to hearing from any number of U.S. Country Rock bands, although it's rare to hear it played so authentically by a London-based band, where there's not a lot of sea and surfers to be seen. The final song "At a Point Between Fate and Destiny" has a somewhat solemn and spiritual air to it, which opens to the sound of a beautiful church organ. The music sounds mystical and hauntingly atmospheric and represents the real highlight of the album. It's a charming and blissful melody floating amidst a sea full of psychedelic rockers surfing on Californian waves of sun-drenched late-1960's music.

"Mighty Baby" is a mighty fine album for all of the psychedelic rockers out there who lived through the "Summer of Love" year of 1967 and want to rekindle those bygone, flower-power free-love days. You can re-live those halcyon days at any time of the year and travel back in time whenever you listen to this evergreen album of sparklingly effervescent psychedelia.

Julians Treatment

There's a part 2 called 'Waiters On The Dance'....by Savarin.

 

 

Album Review #77:- ANTHONY PHILLIPS (born 1951) is best-known as the original guitarist with GENESIS. He appeared on their first two albums "From Genesis to Revelation" (1969) and "Trespass" (1970), but decided to quit the band due to crippling bouts of stage fright when performing live. He took a long hiatus from recording music and studied classical music for awhile until 1977 when he embarked on his long and illustrious solo career with the release of "The Geese and the Ghost" album. Three further albums followed at the tail-end of the 1970's:- "Wise After the Event" (1978); "Private Parts & Pieces" (1978); and "Sides" (1979). Altogether, Anthony Phillips has recorded an incredible thirty-one albums, including eleven volumes of "Private Parts & Pieces" and four volumes of "Missing Links", consisting primarily of demos, out-takes, and previously unreleased material from his vast library of music recordings. He still continues to record to this day with his latest album "Strings of Light" released as recently as 2019. Anthony Phillips' first album "The Geese and the Ghost" is notable for including his Genesis bandmates Mike Rutherford on bass and Phil Collins on vocals on a couple of tracks, and Steve Hackett's brother John Hackett on flute. Ant Phillips played all of the guitar and keyboard parts on the album. The 2008 CD reissue included a bonus disc of unused material from the album.

The album opens with the brief prelude "Wind-Tales", featuring a light breeze of keyboards floating past the listener like a zephyr in a mellow wave of calming pastoral sound, which leads us into "Which Way the Wind Blows". This song is a gorgeous slice of melodic prog with the familiar voice of Phil Collins reminding us that this song would have fitted very nicely onto a classic Genesis album, although the music is altogether gentler and mellower than anything Genesis have ever recorded. We're travelling back in time to the royal court of Henry VIII now with "Henry: Portraits from Tudor Times", in the first of two long suites on the album. The six-piece "Henry" suite is a glorious 12-minute-long combination of gentle acoustic passages and marching battle themes and it also features a tremendously rousing chorus for the grand finale. The dynamic contrast between Ant Phillip's gentle acoustic guitar combined with his sonorous outbursts from the almighty keyboards are what really sets this long suite of music alight with passionate and powerful intensity. It's dramatic symphonic music imbued with all of the regal power and magnificent majesty of a King upon his throne. Phil Collins returns to vocal duties in a lovely duet with Vivienne McAuliffe for "God If I Saw Her Now". It's another beautiful piece of gentle melodic prog in an album that's positively overflowing with charming and enchanting English tunes.

Opening Side Two is "Chinese Mushroom Cloud" which sounds just as dramatic and doom-laden as the song title suggests. It's a short prelude featuring the rousing and resonant deep rumble of a cello, conjuring up a portentous and disturbing image of some cataclysmic disaster. This leads us into the two-part suite and title track "The Geese and the Ghost". Running at nearly sixteen minutes long, it's an epic masterpiece, combining orchestral, pastoral folk and proggy themes in a timeless timbre of tuneful melodies, which also includes some rousing grand symphonic keyboard flourishes too for our delectation and delight. We get to hear Anthony Phillip's voice for the first time on "Collections", and a very fine singer he is too. The music is a gorgeous flute and guitar melody floating on a sea of sensational strings. The final piece of music "Sleepfall: The Geese Fly West" is as gentle and peaceful as the gentlest of lullabies and it's a perfect dream-like melody to bring a marvellous and masterful album to a close.

"The Geese and the Ghost" is a timeless album full of reverberant refrains and mellifluous melodies combined together in a magnificent melange of pastoral folk, classical compositions and melodic prog symphonies. It's a superb album that should appeal equally to Genesis fans and non-Genesis fans alike. The music has been described as sounding like a "mixture of Vaughan Williams and Mike Oldfield" which sums it up rather well I think.