IN THE USA

It is not often that an album comes out which causes me to have a total rethink of an artist's back catalogue, but that is what we have here, as I can see I need to go back and play the early Flash albums again, which I have probably not listened to in more than 30 years. In my head all I thought of Flash was they were the band featuring Peter Banks after he left Yes and honestly had not realised they were one of the most vibrant and exciting progressive bands of the early Seventies, yet this release demonstrates just that. When I was offered this to review by the PR company, my initial reaction was to do so because of Peter, yet everyone in the band combines to create something very special indeed. The purpose here was to gather whatever was available from American tours undertaken in 72/73, from whatever source, then clean then up as much as possible and make them available with a 32-page booklet as a 3-CD set. What this means is that some of these are fan recordings with associated audience chatter, some rough soundboard, so the quality is that of a good audience bootleg, nothing more. Also, as the shows all appear to be support slots there is not much variety in the actual songs, so we get many double ups, with their hit single "Small Beginnings" and others appearing four times for example. Some of the edits at the end of the songs is a little ropey at times, so we get the same song announcement at the end of one and again at the beginning of the next.

But the sheer brilliance of Colin Carter (lead vocals), Peter Banks (lead guitar, vocals), Ray Bennett (bass, vocals), and Mike Hough (drums, percussion) more than outweighs all of that. One must wonder why Flash are not spoken about in the same reverential tone as the other bands of that era, as they had great material, wonderful musicianship and harmony vocals to die for. Somewhere in my collection I know I have both 'Flash' and 'In The Can' and when I am home next I am going to be digging them out, as this set displays individua virtuosity, multi-layered and multi-sectioned songs, while they were also incredibly tight and consistent. Take "Black and White" for example, one of their longest songs at nearly 13 minutes in length. Here we have four different versions recorded in the space of more than a year, yet there is only 10 seconds difference between the shortest and the longest takes.

Each of the quartet is on the top of their game, with incredibly impressive performances throughout. Highly complex and complicated yet also with powerful hooks, this is an essential addition to any proghead's collection and one which will be getting a lot of play by me.