Any Nucleus fans?

Whoops....I stand corrected. I shall enter a plea of 'guilty as sin' your honor.

I own 'Elastic Rock' and understand that this was one of the very first UK fusion albums ever released ?
Anyway, having loved this album for a long time, it's always struck me that fusion thereafter never fulfilled its great promise and seemed to get sidetracked into a very bland game of musical pushups with the listeners invariably the losers ? (Yep, I know that's in danger of being a gross generalization)

'Elastic Rock' has an inimitable english inflected accent that I have yet to hear expounded upon and wonder if some of the more expert 'fusioneers' on PA can shed any light on this ?

Most of the fusion I have heard seems to take the rhythms from rock and the harmonies from jazz ?
(Shouldn't it be the other way round ?)

Apart from Nucleus Live - recorded at my alma mater Loughborough University, when I was on their ENT Committee - suggest you check out Mike Westbrook's early 70's recordings,which jazz critic Stuart Nicholson reckons were the best jazz rock fusion recorded in the UK at that time, e.g. Solid Gold Cadillac, (available as a twoforoneCD with Brain Damage) and Citadel/Room315 - all albums also released on BGO Records.

Edited by Dick Heath - June 26 2008 at 11:57

Sean Trane wrote: an excellent one I am still having trouble to find a copy of Alleycats except for the double BGO release where it is coupled with Direct Hits (this sounds like a best of album , but coming off Nucleus, it would be surprising What can you tell me about Direct Hits ?

Yeah, Direct Hits is definitely a compilation, but I haven't heard it myself.

I have "Elastic Rock"/"We'll Talk About It Later" on one CD, "Solar Plexus", "Belladonna", "Under The Sun"/"Snakehips Etcetera" on one CD and "In Flagrante Delicto" (one of their best).

Excellent jazz-rock/fusion band!!!

Jimbo wrote: I was thinking about getting Live In Bremen next. Is it any good?

Smokin'.  Buy it immediately.

Trotsky wrote: Well, I've got hold of Elastic Rock since the thread enjoyed its first run ... so far it's enjoyable, but not necessarily mind-blowing ... I do enjoy the feel of it compared to Soft Machine's Fourth & Fifth (which are two latest Soft Machine albums I've heard) ...

The thing about 4 and 5, is that they are very cold in feeling musically

Try out Nucleus's second album We'll talk about it later which is stupendous

Chris Spedding (yes, mr Mortorcycle mama of punk fame in 77) is absolutely brilliant on that album

Spedding also made a very rare album called Songs Without Words which is phenominally good jazz rock and not far away from Nucleus, but still quite different.

an excellent one

I am still having trouble to find a copy of Alleycats except for the double BGO release where it is coupled with Direct Hits (this sounds like a best of album , but coming off Nucleus, it would be surprising

What can you tell me about Direct Hits ?

peskypesky wrote: So far, I really dig everything I've heard from Nucleus. I, too, discovered them through the Soft Machine connection. Being a big fan of Soft Machine, Mahavishnu, Miles Davis and the like, my ears and brain like what Nucleus was laying down.

What albums have you heard?

DEzerov wrote: FYI to all Nucleus Fans, Ian Carr is a contributor to The Rough Guide to Jazz (ed. 3). I have an earlier edition and it's wonderful.

Ian Carr writes and is published a lot nowadays - he provided the jazz pages/editorial to the BBC Radio 3 Music magazine for many years. He wrote a definitive Miles Davis biography, where you get a better idea  by what Mr Davis meant when he used the term m*th*rf****r extensively within his own autobiography, (i.e. whether Davis was being derogatory or heaping praise). And a favourite source of info: Jazz: The Essential Companion by Ian Carr, Brian Priestley, Digby Fairweather, which is a who's who of jazz at about 1990. Most of the jazzmen/women alive at the time listed there, wrote their own biographies. However, a missed opportunity(and IMHO a serious omission):  while Soft Machine is regularly referred to in a number of mini-biogs and in the index of the book, these pundits deemed the band was not worthy of a separate entry.