THIRD TIME AROUND: AN INTRODUCTION TO RARE BIRD

I love all Rare Bird music and if this CD had included Peace of Mind ,Lonely Street and More and More it would have got five stars from me.Whether it can be classed as Progressive rock is debatable.Ofcourse the first two Rare Bird albums 'Rare Bird'and' As Your Mind Flies By' are classic ground breaking progressive rock,they had a unique keyboard sound all of their own, which i loved.There are many fine tracks on this cd but my favorites are the two excellent live songs All that i Need and Third Time Around.

Rare bird???....is this rare Rare Bird????....I for one miss,Mr.Graham Field....he's on the picture.....but not on the record????...Who puts a great artist,on a record,he's no way near???....The name is Polydor.....trying,I suppose,to make money.Shame on them. So now we have one of best artist in the prog historys ,hanging out there. Rare Bird,one of the best progbands,in the history of music.Mostly,in my humble opinion,thanks to Graham Field.The 2 first records they made are top class.Mayby the best,to come out of 1969/70.Listen to ''Iceberg''-''Beautifull scarlett''-''Gun of war'' & sure; ''Symphaty''.... I do feel a little confused that they have released this record/cd.....I place all my trust in Polydor to make things right..... Do the rigth thing;Remove Mr.Graham Field/Mark Ashton, from the cover....play your cards right.....so we,the listener,can have faith in the the industry & in Polydor......again..... I for one bought this out of the picture,on the cd.Big was my surprice,that my fav.progartist,was no where to be found.......I'm still waiting....Polydor.....do it right.... So my advise to you all; AVOID....AVOID....THIS CD....UNTIL POLYDOR REMOVE MR.GRAHAM FIELD.... Dont get me wrong......it's a nice cd.....but sometimes,we could all make a difference.......and help....in this case; Graham Field & Mark Ashton.....against Polydor.

If you are a first line-up of Rare Bird fan, this compilation album can only deceive you because it is a condensé of their Polydor years/albums and excludes their first two Charisma albums (there is a compilation called Sympathy for those first two albums). Deceived as a proghead, that is because as Graham Field and another member departed, they got replaced by a guitarist breaking, thus their double KB attack and their sound was dramatically changed , grew closer to funky rock as each new album arrived even though the remaining Kafinetti and singer Gould retained the writing ends of most of the tracks. Epic Forest is present with three tracks and its follow-up Somebody has six or seven but I am not sure the best tracks are present here with the exception of Dollar. This compilation does reflect, though, well enough the new musical directions chosen by the band, hence two stars (the odd good tracks on the latter albums are not worth hunting the vinyls down. For those interested, you should hear Nic Potter's (ex-VdGG) bass on a few tracks, and I believe John Wetton might have also helped in the later days of the band. No matter how you read this compilation or the albums it's making references at, Rare Bird were out for some bland music that was just lost in the tons of radio-friendly music it had to compete with.

I have not seen the original albums of this second line-up released on Cd yet (but I have not looked them up specifically either), but I suppose Esoteric Records will someday remedy to this situation