ACT ONE

I have Pathfinder and Waters of Change, which I've owned for years, but I never got around to owning Act One, their debut, until now. I can see why. Too much of this album is focused on classical. They were an obvious ripoff of The Nice (I don't notice the Purple influence so much, except maybe in Ricky Gardiners guitar playing), but they took a more aggressive approach here. I guess I'd be less bothered if it weren't for their taste in classical. "Light Calvery" is that example and by far the worst offender on this album. How on Earth did I never hear of Franz von Suppe until now? Yet I've heard his "Light Calvery" constantly, it is severely overdone, heard constantly on Saturday morning cartoons. Beggars Opera giving it the rock treatment don't help change my opinion of this song. "Raymond's Road" I like much better, these guys really played like there was no tomorrow. Alan Park's organ and Ricky Gardiner's guitar playing is just off-the-charts wild and insane. You'd never knew they could play like this if hearing Waters of Change. "Memory" is much more original, and I think the band realized it would be better going on in this direction (as proved with Waters of Change). It's by far my favorite, but I wished I wasn't so short, or the band concentrated on original material on the rest of the album. "Poet and Painter" and "Passacaglia" are much like most of the album, mainly focusing on rocked-out-versions of classical. I guess the music on this album, for the most part, is no worse than Ekseption, except you don't have to deal with cheesy horns, and it's much more intense and aggressive. Imagine if the band stuck with strictly original material and went for that same no holds barred approach or perhaps focus on more obscure and less mainstream classical, I'd rate this as a masterpiece, but as it is, their choice in mainstream wasn't the best idea. It's no wonder the band ditched copying The Nice for something more original after this album. "Sarabande" and "Think" are bonus cuts from various CD reissues and comes from a non-album single they released in 1971. Let me tell you this is an improvement; they ditched copying the Nice and go for something more in the line of "Memory" here and it works! So, Act One is not a terrible album but you'd be advised to go check out Waters of Change first, then Pathfinder, then this one (the rest of their catalog apparently isn't worth investigating).

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