HONEYMAN, LIVE 1973

Should you want to avoid Tim's last two studio albums Sefronia and Fool (they're still good, but definitely lack the edge and the urgency of Tim's previous albums), but still want something from his later days, you might want to check this live album. Honeyman is a fairly accurate rendition of Tim's later days concerts, to hear the excitement and power the group developed contrasting heavily with his almost absent enthusiasm of the studio releases. It's as if Tim while being forced back into the mainstream was reluctantly going through the motions in the studio, while far away from his management and label, on the road, he let it roar releasing the steam, even though he was on his best behaviour, trying to get friendly with a returning audience and still having to cope with whatever few Starsailor fans that were now yelling "sell-out" to Tim, which was probably seething, wishing he could storm into a Nobody Walkin or something of that kind.

So Tim had reluctantly come back to the mainstream (or else face a complete bankruptcy), he most likely dealt with the situation with a vengeance and chose to become a loud rocker, than a quiet singer/songwriter. And indeed Honeyman is a loud thing, incredibly loud, powerful, fast, angry, bang-in- your-face recording, proposing some older material (Buzzin' Fly) and some brand new songs, avoiding the Lorca/Starsailor period, much to the proghead's deception. While Tim's band was completely new and he was working in confidence with Falcia (guitarist that had replaced Chapman and his "stick"), Tim was happy to recruit former bassist Fielder back into the group, which probably gave him confidence.

Most of the Live tracks present here are generally more exciting than their studio version, more powerful too. The only flaw is that the speed at which the tracks and their musical content just follow one another without much change, make sitting through the whole disc in one sitting rather difficult, so it's best to listen to only half the album, than a few days later the second half. While not essential, Honeyman is a very worthy album showing Tim's later days. Should you only own one past Greetings, this should be it.