NIGHTINGALES & BOMBERS

What a nice rebound in my book to the lacklustre The Good Earth. This proved to be the last album with the original EARTH BAND lineup of Mann (keyboards), Mick Rogers (vocals, guitars), Colin Pattenden (bass), and Chris Slade (drums). For the first time, they covered a Bruce SPRINGSTEEN song, in this case, "Spirits in the Night" (which appeared on the Greeting From Asbury Park, NJ album). For some strange reason, the EARTH BAND decided to re-record that song in 1977 with Chris Thompson handling the vocals (and was included in later prints of The Roaring Silence). For some reason, the band went for a somewhat more bluesy direction, as "Quite Your Low Down Ways" demonstrates. There are a couple of nice instrumentals from MANN demonstrating his talents on Moog. "Fat Nelly" features that same choppy organ sound that would be revisited on their version of SPRINGSTEEN's "Blinded by the Light". It's nice to see the EARTH BAND rebound like this, but unfortunately my interest in the band stops here.