Plain and Fancy: 07/01/24

Monday, July 1, 2024

Blodwyn Pig - The Basement Tapes (1969/74/96 uk, awesome blues brass rock, 2000 release)

If pure talent was the only requirement to guarantee massive popularity, then Mick Abrahams would be as well known as Eric Clapton. The fact that he is not is due to a combination of bad luck and bad decisions, but rarely bad music, as this CD clearly demonstrates. Abrahams played a very big part in launching rock giants Jethro Tull to mega-star status, but when musical and personal differences with Ian Anderson came to a head at the end of 1968, Mick left that band and formed Blodwyn Pig, carrying on in the jazz/blues style of early Tull whilst Anderson & Co. veered off into more idiosyncratic musical dimensions. Andy Pyle (bass) and Ron Berg (drums) provided the solid rhythm section, and the sax and particularly flute of Jack Lancaster echoed the early Jethro Tull sound, to the extent that an instrumental track from the first Blodwyn Pig album turned up on a Jethro Tull bootleg listed as "untitled instrumental".

Blodwyn Pig (named by a musician friend of Mick's on his return from several years exile as a Buddhist monk!) was an instant success, both musically and commercially, with two UK top 10 albums in '69 and '70. But whilst Mick was clearly the group leader he somehow managed to get himself fired from his own band, and the Pig folded completely weeks after his departure.

Mick carried on his quest for great music and bizarre band names with "Wommet" before launching the more soberly named Mick Abrahams Band in 1971. They made two albums, but failed to match the success of Blodwyn Pig, and, disillusioned, Mick temporarily quit the music business.

It was a short break, as he came back with a revamped Blodwyn Pig in 1974, with Andy Pyle and Jack Lancaster back in the fold, plus Clive Bunker, drummer and fellow Jethro Tull founder. It was a very short lived return lasting for only half a dozen gigs, but they did manage a BBC session for John Peel and an "In Concert" (both featured on this CD) before calling it quits once more. A guitar tutorial album, a few recording sessions and the occasional gig kept Mick in touch with music, but he considered himself retired from the music business, getting "a proper job" and religion simultaneously.

That was almost the end of the story, but thankfully The Blods were resurrected yet again for a 'one-off' charity gig in Luton in 1988. Mick, Andy Pyle and Clive Bunker were joined by Bruce Boardman and the legendary sax man Dick Heckstall-Smith in the new line up, and both audience and band were so delighted with the gig that they decided to carry on - and they are still there, albeit with countless personnel changes since.

The return to recording in 1991 with the Mick Abrahams album All Said And Done" and then the 1993 Blodwyn Pig album "Lies" heralded the rebirth in earnest, and all four of the early albums were issued on CD. In the last few years the recorded output of Mick Abrahams and Blodwyn Pig has bordered on meteoric; four studio albums have highlighted the quality of Abrahams' song writing and amazing guitar technique, and no less than five (count 'em!) live CDs have offered a taste of the excitement generated by the various versions of his bands throughout the years - even if the sound quality on some of them leaves a lot to be desired.

Thankfully Hux Records now bring us a quality reminder of the greatness of Mick Abrahams and Blodwyn Pig, rescuing from the BBC archives tapes that had long been thought lost for ever. The live and session tracks from '69, '71 and '74 are augmented by two tracks recorded during the sessions for the most recent (to date) studio album "Pig In The Middle", released at the end of 1996. This album serves as a handy guide through the Blodwyn Pig story, showing the full range of acoustic blues, heavy rock and progressive blues/rock that endeared them to real music lovers in the 70's, and still excites the fans in the 90's. And on "Mr Green's Blues" we get a sample of Mick's irreverent humour that punctuates every Blodwyn Pig gig.

In many ways Mick is now more involved in music than ever before; in 1998 he put together the This Was Band, touring the UK recreating the sound of the Jethro Tull he had played with some thirty years earlier, and a live album from the tour was released. He was also heavily involved in an all-star line-up on the Jackie Lynton album "Pin-board Wizards", which also featured erstwhile Jethro Tull colleagues Ian Anderson and Clive Bunker, along with Martin Barre who replaced Mick in the Tull ranks and is still there today. In 1999 he started work on a new album in his newly built home studio. The resulting CD "See My Way", was released by A New Day Records in March 2000, featuring guest appearances by Elliott Randall, Geoff Whitehorn and fellow Pig founder, Andy Pyle, who joined Mick for a great new working of the classic title track. There is also talk of another acoustic solo album following the success of "One" in 1996, on which he was joined by Ian Anderson, and another project pending is a collaboration with Jackie Lynton on what promises to be a musical version of Derek & Clive! The mind boggles!

All this activity bodes well for the future, and anybody with an ear for great guitar playing should be grateful for that! Here's to much more from mighty Mick.... and wouldn't it be nice to hear a few more offerings via the BBC in years to come?

by Dave Rees, June 1999