FIRST BASE

Babe Ruth's first album, First Base, is in my opinion a must-have album for any Hard- Rock/Prog fan. It cannot be considered as full progressive music but it is a great mix of Hard driving rock (Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple) and early experimental prog. The album consist of six stunning pieces exploring differents styles and moods.

Wells Fargo is a strong opening song with powerful guitar riffs, simple bass lines, great power vocals, saxes and oboe solos that bring a different tone to the song and complex guitar solo. In my opinion, not a progressive song, but a Hard Rock song.

The Album plays next song, The Runaways, and the mood changes to something more bluesy, melodic and symphonic in which we can more appreciate Jennie Haan voice along with soft cello playing. In my opinion, the greatest song on the album, The Runaways starts slowly as we hear Haan's singing and builds up to reach a peak of intensity by the end of the song.

Third song is a prog remake of Frank Zappa's King Kong. Recorded "straight" (as said on the album back), it generates a feeling of power, prog and even psychedelia at some point. The feel is supported by keyboard and guitars works, grooving bass and drums and a great evolution of the sound.

Side two kicks off with Black Dog, a great progressive composition, a melting pot of melody, softness, intensity and emotion. It is the perfect example of Hard Rock mixed with progressive sound. The second half of the song is simply stunning on intensity evolving. Great guitar, good keyboards and nice lyrics sang perfectly by Haan's jazzy, but still powerful voice, mix up to present you a nearly perfect piece.

Follows The Mexican, Babe Ruth's most known song. The key of the song sits in the very complex guitar riffs by Alan Shacklock and again Haan's singing. Closing piece, Joker, joins Folk, Hard Rock and prog altogether to create a good grooving song with lots of bass and slow guitar riffs.

In conclusion, First Base is an good mixed-style album composed of incredible guitars riffs and solos, staggering vocalist, poor bass lines, good but not more than good drums and excentric keyboard solos reminding me of Jon Lord and maybe Keith Emerson. I own the Vinyl (or Vynil, I never know) and it been three days since I listened to something than First Base. I can tell the song I appreciate the most is The Runaways after three days but that's still an opinion. Great addition to any collection of music. It would have been masterpiece in his own music style, but not prog though it contains lot of early prog sound.