SHINE ON BRIGHTLY

The highly-touted home source of one of prog's first true epic song productions: Side Two's "In Held 'Twas I," the rest of the album is to my ears fairly standard blues-rock.

1. "Quite Rightly So" (3:40) standard British blues rock nicely rendered. I can see how/why this was a failure as a 45 rpm single release. (8.75/10)

2. "Shine On Brightly" (3:32) a slightly better rendering of fairly standard British blues rock; the bouncing piano and slowly tremoloed guitar notes with background and relatively-sedate bass and drums provides a solid foundation for Gary Brooker's professionally-protracted vocal performance. (8.875/10)

3. "Skip Softly (My Moonbeams)" (3:47) demanding a little more theatricity from vocalist Gary Brooker, this song uses another fairly standard rock format, BUT there is more complexity presented here with the different motif used for the chorus and the wide-open sprawl provided for the instrumental passage--which all of the band members take full (awesome) advantage of. The beer-barrel polka finish is a bit bizarre. (8.875/10)

4. "Wish Me Well" (3:18) HENDRIX/CREAM/JOE COCKER-like rendition of a blues rock standard here sung by the duo of Brooker and Trower and jammed over by Trower's most dirty blues guitar playing. Interesting and entertaining but ultimately forgettable. (8.75/10)

5. "Rambling On" (4:31) listening to this for the first time I kept having to check to make sure I wasn't listening to a version by the American band COUNTING CROWS. Very VAN MORRISON-like. (8.66667/10)

6. "Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)" (2:50) piano, organ, and military snare drum play support this monotonous dirge. (8.5/10)

7. "In Held Twas in I" (17:31) having just been revealed the mystery between the oddly-worded title (the incorporation of the first word of each stanza of each of the song's five movements--something called an "acrostic"), I am much better equipped to appreciate and enjoy this true epic. The band gave great credit to engineer Glyn Johns for pulling all of it together the way it is. (30.625/35): - a) "Glimpses of Nirvana" (4:30) There is a reverent, almost religious nature to the feel of this portion of the epic in which spoken poetry is delivered in an almost-whisper. - b) "'Twas Tea Time at the Circus" (1:19) a brief and rowdy excursion into pub-like ribaldry. - c) "In the Autumn of My Madness" (3:03) a BEATLES-like song that changes when the organ joins but only amplifies it's connection to the Fab Four with all of the silly musique concrète additions going on beneath the vocal and within the music. - d) "Look to Your Soul" (5:06) a two-part song, in the first part the organ and electric guitar get ramped up in a circus-like music instrumental. Then, in the second half, Gary Brooker gives a theatric vocal performance (that must have been quite inspiring and liberating to young PETER GABRIEL) over a simple harpsichord-dominated, "tuba"-bass-accented anachronistic sound palette. - e) "Grand Finale" (3:41) processional music with piano opening and, later, organ supporting an impassioned rock guitar solo from Mr. Trower. The wordless choir vocals give it quite the regal touch.

Total Time 39:09

I have to admit that I've never been much of a fan of singing voices like the one possessed/commanded by Gary Brooker (which is, to my ears, like Counting Crows' singer Adam Duritz, a Van Morrison sound-alike), which already puts the music of this band at somewhat of a disadvantage.

B/four stars; despite the landmark presence of one of rock music's first prog epics, I would consider this album as a whole merely an excellent contribution of proto-prog, nowhere near the Earth-shattering, mind-blowing music of next year's In the Court of the Crimson King or The Nice's soon-to-be-released Ars Longa Vita Brevis.