ALL OVER THE SHOW

Every now and then there's a thread in the forum about progressive punk, does such thing exist? and who's playing it? well I always give this album as one of the best and fitting examples. Here & Now must be one of the most interesting and intriguing bands I have come to know, while the band's core style, which is psychedelic/space rock, is always present, the overall shape of the music can be very different and change pretty drastically by each year of their playing, their persistence on evolving and changing is very admirable. 1977 saw them collaborating with Daevid Allen on the legendary Floating Anarchy album and releasing their debut album Give & Take in the following year. Their style was mainly a mix between Daevid Allen's Gong and more long psychedelic improvisations with tasty synths and guitar playing, reminding me of how Ozric Tentacles would have sound if they had been recording in the 70's, this style is captured by many live albums released from that year. 1979 saw the band taking in pure punk and reggae influences while still keeping their space rock trademark, this can be seen in their singles released that year "Dog In Hell" and "End Of The Beginning". "All Over The Show" is one of the very few striking documents of their punkish influences from that period.

Their sound is not as slick and smooth like before but very distorted, powerful, raw and heavy (this is also due to the raw sound quality of the recording itself), I guess some would not appreciate how this recording sounds, but I myself have grown to like it, there are shows recorded when you can't hear the guitars or the vocals, but here the problem is that you can hear everyone, too much!! so the outcome is a little chaotic. The songs have taken a turn and now are relatively short, gone are the long improvisations (almost) and in comes very powerful outbursts of punkish space rock. Because of not releasing any material except for one album and two singles, like always is the case with Here & Now concerts, most of the show contains material that was never recorded or was improvised, only two songs were released before. The album starts with a bang, "Think For Yourself" is like beginning from the middle of the song, with everyone plus vocals bursting out from the speakers uncontrollably, it's a hard rocking punk song featuring a second guitarist playing with a slide, a very good addition actually, the slide guitar and synth really prevents from this song being too straight forward. "Open Door" is another exploding punk rocker with some ass biting guitars both from Bernie Elliott and Ol' Steffie. "70's Youth" is the only song appearing from their debut, and was massively overahauled, this rendition is a more ballsy short version of that trippy song. "Surgeon's Knife" is I guess the main piece here and of course the longest, clocking at over 11 minutes, it can single handedly sum up this show. The first half contains a relentless synth line over the pounding rhythm and it is quite straight forward but nice, it then calms down and changes to the best moment on this album I guess, a spacey long improvisation which evokes the first version of the band. This part really cooks with tasty synths from Da Blitz and some excellent guitars from Steffy, later on it picks up and becomes more hard rocking, Damn I like this one! The flip side is just a little progier, "Only Way" is a beautiful atmospheric and calm tune with excellent singing, which gives you a nice break from the pounding rhythms. The simply titled "Jam" is no more than an old fashioned powerful and upbeat jam, more hard rocking than spacey with very nice solos as expected from them. Very enjoyable.

I wouldn't recommend this album to anyone who's looking for a full on prog rock album, since the punk influences kinda keep it closer to the ground, but still I believe after a few spins the progressive features are starting to become clearer, because they are there. But I think any fan of the band might find this document very interesting in the overall evolvement of the band. 3.5 stars really but not enough to be rounded up to 4.

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