SONGS FROM THE BEGINNING

3.5 stars. Alain Blesing was the guitarist for ESKATON playing lead on their first two albums. He has played on a lot of records as a guest plus he has some solo albums including this album of covers. These are songs that had an impact on his career and life and we get eight musicians helping out plus John Greaves on vocals. Of the eight musicians I only know Hugh Hopper but we get keyboards, horns, flute, drums, guitar and bass providing the music while along with Greaves voice we also get texts spoken by Pip Pyle, Peter Blegved, William Burroughs and Dylan Thomas. And the spoken words certainly make this a little different than most cover albums and I like them for the most part. Alain mentions in the liner notes "The audience cheerful acclaimed the first gigs and since that, I know the emotion is far from any nostalgia."

So we get seven tracks worth 67 1/2 minutes of music as he stretches these out with texts and improvisations. There's only two songs that I'm really not into including "Leaving California" originally by LED ZEPPELIN and "Behind Blue Eyes" originally by THE WHO. I like the originals but John's vocals don't add but take away from the enjoyment of them here. Now "Slightly All The Time" originally by SOFT MACHINE, "Mumps(extracts)" originally by HATFIELD AND THE NORTH and "Fracture" originally by KING CRIMSON are all outstanding and have me wanting to give this 4 stars.

The other two songs are also excellent including "1983" originally done by Jimi Hendrix and "Beautiful As The Moon" originally done by HENRY COW. I really like the Hendrix cover. By the way we get two playing clarinet along with tenor sax and soprano sax and they really do add a lot on this record. Hearing horns late on "Fracture" is cool but also that it opens with narration not music.

So familiar songs given the Alain Blesing makeover and I'm quite impressed overall. Essential? Hardly, but worth keeping around for the entertainment value.