Alan White's first solo record was the bookend on the Yes solo album period. Each member of the group released songs under their own name during a two year hiatus while the band continued to tour in the US. White's own ideas for his LP were perhaps the least Yes like except for the spacey ballad, "Spring Song of Innocence" where Anderson and Howe contribute roles and co-wrote the piece based on a poem by William Blake. The rest of the album showcased the drummer's pre-Yes associations with the following bands: Happy Magazine/Griffin/Simpson's Pure Oxygen. At times the mix of R&B and sixties jazz works well especially on the opening cut, "Ooooh Baby" and "Avakak".
The former piece is characterized but a sultry lead vocal from Alan Marshall. The latter track is perhaps the most unique arrangement with pianist Kenny Craddock adding a sensitive intro before the toe-tapping cross rhythm begins. "Silly Woman" is a light take on a reggae piece that mostly works for Craddock's warm organ accompaniment. White nearly creates a vibe similar to the sessions he participated with on George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass". Overall his ability to adapt to several different styles has benefited him well through the years considering his 34 years with the most enduring group from English progressive rock.
by Jeff Melton
Tracks
1. Ooooh Baby (Goin' to Pieces) (Pete Kirtley) - 5:33
2. One Way Rag (Colin Gibson, Ken Craddock) - 4:07
3. Avakak (Ken Craddock, Pete Kirtley) - 6:54
4. Song of Innocence (Pete Kirtley, Eilliam Blake) - 5:02
5. Giddy (Colin Gibson, Ken Craddock) - 3:13
6. Silly Woman (Pete Kirtley) - 3:15
7. Marching Into A Bottle (Ken Craddock) - 2:00
8. Everybody (Colin Gibson, Ken Craddock, Pete Kirtley) - 3:14
This is a reissue of two albums by the seminal American Rock group Spirit. Those are the last two of the five albums released by the Mercury Records label, following the five albums the group released on Ode and Epic labels. The albums are separated by seven years of hiatus, which characterized most of the late years if the group´s career.
In between these two albums Spirit released the "The Adventures Of Kaptain Kopter & Commander Cassidy In Potato Land" album in 1981, which included material recorded in 1972 and 1973 and was partly re-recorded in 1981.
"Future Games", originally released in 1977, was practically a solo album by guitarist / composer Randy California, who wrote almost all the songs and played most of the instruments, assisted only by Ed Cassidy on drums and a few unspecified guests. It emphasized California´s superb songwriting and spectacular guitar playing, often compared to that of Jimi Hendrix, who is given a tribute by including the Bob Dylan´s "All Along The Watchtower" all time classic associated with the Godly version performed by Hendrix.
The album is a masterpiece of late Psychedelic Rock, presenting twenty-two short songs creating a fascinating Sci-Fi like story. California used novel (at the time) studio techniques and completely unprecedented use of multi-layered sound effects and other studio paraphernalia. It still sounds absolutely innovative today, well over four decades later.
"Spirit Of 84", released as "The Thirteenth Dream" outside of the US, was recorded by a reunited lineup of Spirit, which included apart from California and Cassidy also original members Jay Ferguson on vocals and guitar, John Locke on keyboards and Mark Andes on vocals and bass, as well as a bunch of guest musicians. The original lineup was reunited for the first time since the recording of the classic "Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus" album in 1970 (hence the title).
The material includes several remakes of old songs from the first four albums by the group as well as a few new songs, recorded "live in the studio". Although obviously opportunistic / nostalgia based, this is still some of the best American Rock even created, and these fine musician performing together are simply unbeatable.
Overall this is Classic Rock stuff that nobody makes today, hence an absolute must to any serious Rock fan and record collector!
by Adam Baruch
Tracks
Disc 1 • Future Games 1977
1. CB Talk - 0:42
2. Stars Of Love - 2:29
3. Kahauna Dream - 2:44
4. Buried In My Brain (Blair Mooney, Carla Savage, Kim Fowley) - 2:55
5. Bionic Unit (Blair Mooney, Kim Fowley) - 3:00
6. So Happy Now - 0:19
7. All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan) - 4:27
8. Would You Believe - 3:13
9. Jack Bond Speaks (Burt Shonberg) - 1:17
10.Star Trek Dreaming - 2:16
11.Interlude XM - 0:26
12.China Doll (Ed Cassidy) - 2:00
13.HawaiianTimes - 0:10
14.Gorn Attack (Timothy Blanton) - 2:10
15.Interlude 2001 - 0:25
16.Detroit City (Ed Cassidy) - 3:55
17.Freakout Frog (Ed Cassidy) - 1:57
18.The Romulan Experience - 0:57
19.Monkey See Monkey Do - 1:39
20.MT. Olympus - 0:25
21.The Journey Of Nomad (Tom Hall) - 2:30
22.Ending - 3:50
All songs by Randy California except where stated
Disc 2 Spirit Of 84 1984
1. Black Satin Nights - 3:15
2. Mr. Skin - 3:34
3. Mechanical World (Mark Andes, Jay Ferguson) - 5:51
4. Pick It Up - 2:59
5. All Over The World (Randy California, David Crawford, Lisa Henke) - 3:56
Pentwater's first and (for a long time) only LP was originally released in 1977 on the band's own small Beef Records label, as was the CD reissue from 2003. The group took this opportunity to expand the original LP tracks with a few pieces recorded at the same time (tracks 7, 9, 11 and 12). Presumably these numbers were part of the original LP concept, but were omitted at the time for reasons of space. In any case, they fit into the album without any problems and bring it up to a good 50 minutes of playing time. The order of the tracks has also changed slightly on the CD reissue.
The album gets off to a rather wild start, with a woman shrieking and the rather bizarre, exalted vocals starting off with some rather crooked, weird prog that is vaguely reminiscent of Gentle Giant. “Frustration Mass” is a very promising start to the album, even if the vocals take some getting used to. Unfortunately, this level is not maintained, as “Living Room Displays” is an upbeat rocker that is only given a rudimentary prog factor by a short, tricky section after around 4 minutes. Even the beautiful, almost a little cheesy ballad "Memo" doesn't change much. It is only with "Orphan Girl" that prog realms are reached again. An elegiac flute, accompanied by echoing piano and subtle percussion, introduces this long track, of which the last few minutes in particular are really great, with their tumbling, polyphonic vocal lines, accompanied by a guitar that howls again and again.
The rest of the album is also quite a varied mixture of slightly symphonic, but mostly very guitar-heavy, mildly complex prog and more or less interesting, "normal" rock. The latter often has a somewhat affected glam rock character, or is strongly reminiscent of Queen ("Palendrome", "Gwen's Madrigal") due to the expressive choral passages, although interludes of Mellotron, flute and organ and occasional complex-fickle sections provide a certain progressive element.
Also worth mentioning is the instrumental trilogy of "Prelude to War", "War" and "Death". After the short, somewhat shaky viola-violin duet of the prelude, "War" is an exciting jazz rocker that shines with Ken Kappel's intricate organ playing. "Death", on the other hand, consists of elegiac, sombre, slowly striding keyboard pads and long, drawn-out bass and guitar tones. All in all, Pentwater make quite independent, entertaining music on their first album, which occasionally shows certain influences of Gentle Giant, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Genesis.
by Achim Breiling
Tracks
1. Frustration Mass (Ronnie Fuchs, Tom Orsi) - 3:37
A definitive British rock journeyman, guitarist Ray Fenwick played with numerous famous acts, though even most serious collectors would be hard pressed to identify him. He replaced future Yes guitarist Steve Howe in the Syndicates in the mid-'60s, and played a wild freakbeat solo on their single "Crawdaddy Simone," which comprised some of the most adventurous guitar work of the British Invasion era. He served time in Dutch groups After Tea and the Tee Set (who would later make the U.S. Top Five with "Ma Belle Amie") before joining the post-Stevie Winwood lineup of the Spencer Davis Group in the late '60s.
There were also stints in the Guitar Orchestra with future Procol Harum lead guitarist Mick Grabham; Fancy, who had two Top 20 hits in the U.S. in 1974; the Ian Gillan Band; and, in the 1980s, Forcefield, which also featured Jan Akkerman and Cozy Powell. Fenwick also did a lot of work as a sessionman and producer. And, finally, he made one solo album in 1971, Keep America Beautiful, Get a Haircut, a run-of-the-mill mix of the era's popular hard rock/progressive-rock styles. Ray Fenwick died on April 30, 2022 at the age of 75.
Fenwick's only solo album, recorded with Elton John's rhythm section (Dee Murray on bass and Nigel Olsson on drums), touches on a lot of facets of British rock circa 1970 -- Traffic-like folk-rock, country-rock, Paul McCartney-ish melodic bits, and rumbling, pedestrian boogie -- without really getting anywhere. Much of the material was inspired by his travels in the U.S., and there are some quasi-suites supposed to reflect journeying through the American landscape, but the execution is unremarkable. The 1997 CD reissue adds five bonus tracks.
by Richie Unterberger
Tracks
1. Stateside: Mr Straight / The American Way / $ Jesus Saves - 8:06
2. Anniversary - 3:56
3. I Wanna Stay Here - 4:49
4. City Ride - 4:34
5. The Dream: The Exotic Escape / The Working Man's Dream / Nightmare / Reality - 11:53
Best remembered for their ubiquitous 1977 pop hit "Smoke from a Distant Fire," blue-eyed soul duo Sanford & Townsend reunited Ed Sanford and John Townsend, who previously teamed in the Montgomery, AL-based Warner Bros. act the Heart. Despite a series of opening gigs in support of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the group's lone LP attracted little notice and after the Heart dissolved, both Sanford and Townsend migrated to Los Angeles, where the latter signed on with the group Feather and scored a chart hit with the White Whale label single "Friends." After renewing ties in L.A., Sanford and Townsend began writing songs, most notably placing their "Peacemaker" on Loggins & Messina's 1976 effort Native Sons; with engineer Alex Kazanegras, they cut a demo tape that eventually made its way to the legendary producer Jerry Wexler, and on his recommendation Warner Bros. extended a contract offer.
After decamping to the famed Muscle Shoals Recording Studio, Sanford & Townsend issued their Wexler-produced eponymous debut in 1976. The record fared poorly on its initial release, but when "Smoke from a Distant Fire" cracked the Top Ten on the pop charts in the fall of 1977, the LP was re-released, this time titled after its smash hit. In addition to a lengthy stint opening for Fleetwood Mac on their epic Rumours tour, Sanford & Townsend also supported Smoke from a Distant Fire via gigs with Southern rockers the Marshall Tucker Band. Their second album, Duo-Glide, nevertheless failed to repeat its predecessor's success, and when 1979's Nail Me to the Wall met a similarly dismal fate, Warner Bros. terminated the duo's contract. Both Sanford and Townsend then returned to session careers. Sanford later co-authored Michael McDonald's 1982 pop classic "I Keep Forgettin'," while Townsend resurfaced following an extended creative hiatus with a 2003 solo release, The Road Leads Home.
by Jason Ankeny
Tracks
1. Nail Me To The Wall (Ed Sanford, John Townsend, Jeanne Townsend) - 4:21
2. Gopher Broke - 3:43
3. Every Day - 3:04
4. Shady Grove - 3:52
5. Jubilee - 4:05
6. Just Another Lie - 4:38
7. Just A Fool - 4:04
8. Hour Of Love (Ed Sanford, John Townsend, Otis Hale) - 5:38
9. Tell Me How Love Survives (Ed Sanford, John Townsend, Kenny Loggins) - 4:24
All songs by Ed Sanford, John Townsend except where indicated
British Folk pop soft rock duo of Paul Vigrass and Gary Osborne, come together here with a wonderful harmony sound – a mode that's somewhere between the A&M work of Lambert & Nuttycombe, and maybe the best America albums of the 70s – set to these great arrangements that feature lots of cool keyboards from sound library genius Alan Hawkshaw! Jeff Wayne arranged and produced the set – and his touches here clearly make him the third member of the group – as the care of presentation really makes the album way different than it might be otherwise – one of those really unique, really special little 70s records that never got its due at the time. Titles include "Men Of Learning", "Virginia", "Sail Away", "Forever Autumn", and "Don't You Worry".
D.G.
Tracks
1. Men Of Learning - 3:18
2. Don't You Worry - 3:48
3. Ballerina - 3:35
4. Mississippi Lullabye - 2:43
5. Virginia - 3:27
6. Sail Away - 3:23
7. Forever Autumn - 2:50
8. An Invitation - 5:30
9. Remember - 2:35
10.The End - 4:40
11.Mr. Deadline - 2:50
12.Remember Pearl Harbor - 3:32
Music by Jeff Wayne, all Lyrics by Paul Vigrass, Gary Osborne
Personnel
*Paul Vigrass - vocals
*Gary Osborne - vocals
*Jeff Wayne - Moog synthesizer
With
*Chris Spedding, Caleb Quaye, Clive Hicks, Martin Kershaw - Guitars
*Alan Hawkshaw - Keyboards
*Pete Morgan - Bass
*Barry Morgan - Drums
*Ray Cooper, Terry Emery, Alan Graham - Percussion
*Barry St. John, Doris Troy, Harry Vokales, Jimmy Thomas, Judith Powell, Liza Strike, Rob Freeman - Backing Vocals
Quartz is an English heavy metal band from Birmingham. They came to prominence during the initial rise of the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal), but their origins can be traced back to the mid-1970s.
The band had strong ties to Black Sabbath, with one of Quartz’s prominent members in the 1970s being Geoff Nicholls (who was a member and off-stage musician with Sabbath between 1979-2004). Tony Iommi was a friend of the Quartz members from their early days playing in bands, and ended up producing their first and self-titled album Quartz in 1977, bringing in friends like Brian May and Ozzy Osbourne to give the project some further star power.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s go back and start at the beginning. Quartz dates back to 1974, when they saw the light of day under the moniker Bandy Legs. Prior to the founding of Bandy Legs, Geoff Nicholls played lead guitar for the Birmingham bands The Boll Weevils, The Seed, Johnny Neal and the Starliners, and played keyboards for World of Oz.
Guitarist Mick Hopkins had played in Wages of Sin, a short-lived Birmingham band that toured as a backing band for Cat Stevens in 1970. After that band’s dissolution, he followed his Canadian bandmates Ed and Brian Pilling to Canada to form the band Fludd, but left less than a year later after they were dropped from their original record label.
At that point, Hopkins went back to Birmingham and co-founded Bandy Legs, later known as Quartz, with guitarist/keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, vocalist Mike “Taffy” Taylor, bassist Derek Arnold, and drummer Malcolm Cope.
Bandy Legs became a very popular live band in their wider regional circuit. Their members were already well known to their audiences through their previous bands, and as they were well connected and friends with others in the business, they often supported bands like Black Sabbath and AC/DC. On a tour with AC/DC, Sabbath’s tour manager Albert Chapman agreed to take them under his wing, further positioning them for a wider breakthrough.
They were signed to Jet Records in 1976, and only changed their name to Quartz in time for the release of their 1977 debut album, Quartz.
Most of the band had been close friends with the guys in Sabbath since the sixties, growing up in the same area. Tony Iommi knew them well as early as the 1960s, and they had stayed connected through their recent bouts of supporting Sabbath on tour. In fact, Iommi insisted on producing their album, as he’d become a huge Quartz fan, which the guys were thrilled about.
In an interview with MetalMouth in 2012, guitarist Mick Hopkins said “[Working with Iommi] was great fun, we learned a lot from him.” Geoff Nicholls, who would soon end up working longer with Iommi than just about anyone, added “Working with Tony on our first album was an eye opener as he showed us a lot of technical stuff which helped us with future things we did.”
There were some surprises as well. Malcolm Cope (drums) still sounded shellshocked when he said during the 2012 interview “I couldn’t believe it when he added flute to the track Sugar Rain.”
One song from these album sessions would turn out to provide some inspiration for a later Black Sabbath song. Mainline Riders had a droning, atmospheric build with a steady bass line. When Geoff Nicholls was called in to help out the band during the early sessions for Heaven & Hell in 1979, he found himself playing bass and went back to the Mainline Riders riff. It quickly built from there, turning into the framework for the Heaven And Hell song.
“They already had Children of the Sea [when I arrived],” said Nicholls of those Sabbath sessions. “Geezer wasn’t there by that point so I had to play bass at first to start getting the songs worked up. The very first song we did was Heaven And Hell – not bad for a first go, eh? Tony had a riff which he put over my bass line. I had used a very similar chugging bass line in Quartz for the track Mainline Riders so I just did that. I was just messing about with this bass riff and suddenly everything started to build up from there. It was very, very simple but it really worked.”
Iommi was (and is) a close friend of Queen’s Brian May, so he invited him to the Quartz sessions. He ended up making a guest appearance on the track Circles. May was keen to do his Queen-style layered guitar editing on the track, so the band left it to him and Iommi to get it done. “We left him in the studio,” Malcolm Cope told MetalMouth, “and returned a few hours later from the pub to find piles of recording tape on the studio floor.”
The layered approach wasn’t as natural a fit as May first thought, and in the end he gave up, agreeing that it sounded better as Quartz was already playing it.
At one point, the song also featured Ozzy Osbourne on backing vocals, but his contribution was cut from the final mix by Iommi. “As I remember,” Mick Hopkins said, “I don’t think Tony really wanted Ozzy on the track.”
In any case, the song did not make it onto the final track selection. “I think Tony thought the song was a bit too commercial for the album,” Geoff Nicholls shrugged. Dropping the song wasn’t a big bone of contention within the band. Mick Hopkins said, “We had used Circles as a b-side when we were still Bandylegs, so it hadn’t occurred to us to use it on the album.”
The track seemed destined to forever remain a b-side, as Quartz used it as a b-side again on the Stoking Up the Fires of Hell single. It finally got an album inclusion as a bonus track when their second album Stand Up & Fight (1980) was reissued on CD in 2004 by Majestic Rock.
Right up until his death in 2022, Bob Neuwirth was known to cognoscenti as a songwriter (“Mercedes Benz,” famously recorded by Janis Joplin), painter, recording artist, and onetime member of Bob Dylan’s inner hipster circle. The last thing he was known for was being famous, which his longtime partner, music executive Paula Batson, says was intentional. “He was very self-effacing in a way,” she says. “He didn’t believe in blowing your own horn. He loved promoting other people and helping them, but he wasn’t good at self-promotion.”
On the next edition of Joni Mitchell’s rarities boxes, Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol 4: The Asylum Years (1976-1980), Neuwirth will be heard introducing Mitchell on several performances recorded during the Rolling Thunder Revue. Over 1,000 pieces of his paintings and artwork have been catalogued. And Neuwirth’s own debut album, first unveiled 50 years ago, has been remixed and will be re-issued next month, accompanied by a new lyric video featuring rare footage, most of it shot in the Sixties by Neuwirth himself.
An art student at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the Ohio-born Neuwirth wound up in the Cambridge and then New York folk scenes. “Right from the start, you could tell that Neuwirth had a taste for provocation and that nothing was going to restrict his freedom,” Dylan wrote admiringly in Chronicles: Volume One; indeed the two shared a love of a cynical putdown. But Neuwirth could also be supportive, encouraging Patti Smith to write songs and not just poems and suggesting Joplin record his friend Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” when the song was largely unknown.
Eventually leaving the Dylan orbit (although returning for Rolling Thunder), Neuwirth moved to L.A. There, he fell in with the Troubadour crowd and wound up being signed to David Geffen’s Asylum label alongside Dylan and fellow Laurel Canyon regulars Mitchell, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, David Blue, and Judee Sill. Arriving a decade after he’d first played clubs in New York, his first and only Asylum album, Bob Neuwirth, was the definition of a long-delayed debut.
But with Geffen’s financial encouragement, Neuwirth made up for lost time. Attesting to his stature, Neuwirth recruited a veritable denim-clad army to join him on the songs, including Kristofferson, Cass Elliot, Don Everly, the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, Rita Coolidge, then-Poco member and future Eagle Timothy B. Schmit, folk legend Geoff Muldaur, steel player (and Neil Young compadre) Ben Keith, then-Doobie Brother Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, and Dusty Springfield. Neuwirth, McGuinn, and Kristofferson cowrote “Rock and Roll Time,” a boozy slice of Seventies music life, and Neuwirth also finally was able to release his version of “Mercedes Benz,” which he never considered much of a song, and with a new verse.
Befitting the times, the album sessions were reportedly carousing affairs. “He said it was just a drunken alcohol fest,” says recording engineer and Neuwirth friend John Hanlon. “It was the Seventies. The label gave him a lot of money, and you could tell. Nobody questioned budget with them. It was just about making great art.”
But according to Batson, Neuwirth was never happy with the end result, which was overloaded with guests and layers of instrumentation that swamped Neuwirth’s voice. The album also reflected his own indulgences at the time. “As long as we were together, Bob would mention how amazing it was to have Don Everly and Mama Cass and Kris’ band and Booker T. Jones at those sessions,” Batson says. “But he knew that the end result was not what it could have been. He wasn’t happy with it because he felt that, not being sober, he didn’t deliver what he could have. It was a regret.” In fact, Neuwirth stopped drinking three years after the album’s release.
Shortly before his death, Neuwirth thought about revisiting and tweaking the album and reached out to Hanlon, who has worked for notorious audio perfectionist Neil Young for decades. “I said, ‘How do you want me to approach this?’” Hanlon recalls. “And Bob said, ‘I know what you do. Just do what you do.’ He was a man of few words about music, but he knew what was good and what sucked.”
Working painstakingly with the tapes, Hanlon was able to pare down some of the horns and orchestration and declutter the recordings. “These were A-list players, all playing great licks, but everyone was playing constantly,” he says. “You had to figure out the lick that accentuated the melody and what the melody line was. I wanted to find the song in the song and bring it out.”
With the help of the remix, Bob Neuwirth sounds even more like an early alt-country record, especially on “Kiss Money” (which is getting the lyric-video treatment), the waltz “Hero,” and Neuwirth’s takes on country songs by Don Gibson (“Legend in My Time”), Donnie Fritts, and Troy Seals (“We Had It All”). The reissue, which will be released on CD and vinyl on Sept. 27 and then on streaming services on Oct. 31, will also include “Ohio Mountain Blues,” an outtake that finds Neuwirth singing about leaving “a little old country town” for, ultimately, New York City.
Neuwirth passed away any of this renewed interest was in the air. The bulk of the work on A Complete Unknown didn’t start until after his death. (Batson says she hasn’t seen any of the movie yet but adds, “I’m happy to see Bob included and I hope it’s wonderful.”) The same goes with the revamped Bob Neuwirth album; sadly, Neuwirth was never able to hear a note of his dream project. But Hanlon feels his friend is aware of it, somehow. “I know he’d be proud of it,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, he has heard it in his own way. He’s heard a bit of it in heaven.”
by David Browne, Rolling Stone, August 14, 2024
Tracks
1. Rock 'n' Roll Time (Kris Kristofferson, Roger McGuinn, Bob Neuwirth) - 3:21
2. Kiss Money - 3:14
3. Just Because I'm Here (Don't Mean I'm Home) - 5:36
4. Honky Red (Murray McLauchlan) - 3:46
5. Hero - 3:51
6. Legend In My Time (Don Gibson) - 1:51
7. Rock 'n' Roll Rider - 3:00
8. We Had It All (Donnie Fritts, Troy Seals) - 3:08
9. Country Livin' - 3:50
10.Cowboys And Indians (Bobby Charles, Ben Keith) - 4:48
11.Mercedes Benz (Janis Joplin, Bob Neuwirth) - 2:48
Millard and Dyce was a folk-rock band formed in the 1970's and based in Baltimore. They toured on the east coast for several years and recorded one album. The album has since become a rare collector's item, recently selling for as much as $449.
It's a custom pressing on the Century - Kaymar label by this Maryland trio. On a whole it’s a modest album, highly influenced by the likes of Tim Hardin though with a mix of electric and acoustic guitars of the folk blues nature. As with most private vanity pressings little effort went into the production and engineering, leaving a weakness in both the vocals and the instrumentation, though as of late folks are embracing this sound and calling it earthy.
It’s a strange album for sure, especially lacking a drummer, two guitars and a bass, with all three members singing lead at one point or another, laced with smooth soft though hardly compelling harmonies.
