IMPRESSIONS OF A CITY

Busker is one of the many obscure bands that emerged from mid '70's progressive rock realm from Canada. They had quite enough albums released over the years but with all that they remain quite unknown to larger public. I had hard time finding some of their work, e\anything but the last album, released on CD, the rest were impossible to find until 3 month ago when I resieved a copy of this second album from 1979 named Impressions of a city. I was very glad because their albums are rare in any format. So, Busker is a symphonic prog band formed by Steve McCann / Keyboards, Bass, Guitars, Vocals and Percussion and Randy Dawdy / Drums, Congas, Tympani, Vocals and Percussion in early to mid '70's in Ontario, Canada. The music offerd on this album is pleasent, not very complex from quite good symphonic prog with lots of keybords arrangements to jazzy interplay and here and there some more mainstrem rock aproch, not bad in the end, a soup that goes quite well to my ears. The voice is pleasent and all instrumental passages are ok, nothing grounbreaking or very original but pleasent most of the time, the music has that special american feel, even they are canadians. So, a good album , very hard to find, but if you get the chance to take a listen worth some spins. 3 stars, I like it even is far from being an essential listning. Similar at some point with Carnegie, but less keybord orientated.

The duo of Steve McCann and Randy Dawdy moved on to a second album in 1979 with the title ''Impressions Of A City''.They recorded the album in their own studio and this was actually dedicated to their hometown home town of London, Ontario.

The whole opening side of the LP consists of the eponymous 19-min. prog suite, divided in six parts, where finally the duo offers some decent musicianship.A good Symphonic Rock composition with strong E.L.P. influences and multiple keyboard arrangements as well as some cool guitar parts.The vocals remain a bit cheesy and the production is unfortunately of a basement level, hurting the diverse keyboard work of McCann, still this tracks contains plenty of fine instrumental themes with strong harsichord parts, jazzy piano lines and nervous synths.

The flipside is unfortunately disastrous.The quality drops significantly and Busker show again their horrible, cheesy side with tons of dull moments offered in a mix of light Prog, Pop Rock and Soul-Funk.Tracks like ''Mexico'', ''Copacabana'' or ''Tell Me You Love Me'' sound absolutely childish with awful brass sections, amateur keyboard parts and cliche, syrupy choruses of the worst quality.

A very uneven album of minor interest, still a bit better than their bad debut due to the decent performances on the long opening prog suite.Recommended only for die-hard fans of Symphonic Rock.