Speedy Keen - Previous Convictions

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Pretty forgettable

I thought that an album by the man who wrote and performed in Something In the Air by Thunderclap Newman would be pretty good. Sadly, I was wrong.

Plainly, Speedy Keen is a good musician and Previous Convictions starts quite well with Old Fashioned Girl, but it goes downhill quite rapidly after that. Keen’s original compositions are trite, almost nursery-rhyme standard tunes with uninspiring arrangements and his pleasant but inexpressive singing voice does nothing to help. The cover of Somethin’ Else is bland and has none of the drive and charm of the original, and Positively 4^th Street is simply frightful. A couple of instrumentals which feel like filler complete the mix and it adds up to a pretty weak, forgettable album, I’m afraid.

I’m sorry to be so critical, but this really does seem like another example of a very good session musician/sideman demonstrating that he should stick to the day job. I can’t recommend it.

Canned Heat - '70 Concert

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not great

I’m not very keen on this album – and I speak as someone who wore out their original copy of Boogie With Canned Heat (and still has the replacement vinyl). It’s sort of OK and the sound quality is adequate but, frankly, it’s a bit dull.

The chief pleasure of the album for me is hearing Alan Wilson playing some wonderful harmonica and bottleneck in places, but there’s an awful lot of very ordinary slow blues improvisation which for me wasn’t the Heat’s strength. They were at their best laying down a solid boogie as in On The Road Again, in some of Wilson’s slightly eccentric songs or in really driving blues/rock like Amphetamine Annie. Here, in a lengthy pause between songs, an audience member shouts out a suggestion to which Bob Hite responds, “Fleetwood Mac do that, man. Better than we do.” I felt that about a lot of this album.

I think it’s telling that I haven’t heard this for a long time and the only thing I remembered when I listened again was, in the same audience exchange, someone shouting “Parthenogenesis,” and Hite’s classic reply “Huh. Yeah. You got the acid?” Musically, it had made almost no impression.

It’s always good to have any recording of the great Blind Owl and the album does have its moments, but even this serious lover of the Heat can only give it a very qualified recommendation.

Eric Clapton - Transmission Impossible

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Mixed but well worthwhile

This 3-CD set is of mixed quality, but well worth having for Clapton fans (like me). It’s worth saying at the start that the sound quality is pretty good, which isn’t the case with some releases of “lost” live recordings.

Disc 1 is Cream recorded live in October 1968. It’s good; the band is on fine form and the material is what you’d expect from this time. To be honest, I don’t think it adds much to what we’ve had for decades on Wheels Of Fire and Goodbye Cream, but it’s always good to hear them playing and it ends with a fine, epic, 17-minute Spoonful. (Although as someone who played Sides 1-3 of Wheels Of Fire a lot and Side 4 almost never, I’m unlikely to listen to another version of Toad more than once.)

Disc 2 is, frankly, weak. It’s from late 1978, a time when Eric wasn’t in good shape, and it shows. Some of the material isn’t his best and he just seems to be going through the motions. For example, the live version of Can’t Find My Way Home on E.C Was Here is among my favourite Clapton tracks; here it’s a tedious dirge which should have been put out of its misery long before the final chord. It’s a sad reminder of a sad period, really.

Disc 3, from September 1998 is far better. The material (a lot of it from Pilgrim) is much stronger and more importantly, the Eric we know and love is back. He sings like he really means it and his guitar work has all the old soul and wonderful touch. He’s quite brilliant in places and on tracks like River Of Tears his guitar is utterly beautiful.

So...not consistently great by any means, but a worthwhile addition to the Clapton discography and worth getting for Disc 3 certainly and probably Disc 1 as well, so recommended.

Professor Longhair - Rock 'n' Roll Gumbo

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Wonderful stuff

This is terrific. Professor Longhair was a great New Orleans piano player who moved Boogie Woogie toward what became Rock & Roll. There are things here which make me think of Fats Domino, Elvis and others quite regularly. It’s immensely enjoyable stuff which I find impossible to sit still to.

If you don’t know Professor Longhair and you like really rockin’ piano-based music, don’t hesitate. This is wonderful stuff.

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - The Lost Broadcasts

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Poor sound quality

This is one for real fans and completists only, I think. I tried it because I will listen to anything played by Peter Green, but it’s not great.

The problem is the sound quality. It’s not as absolutely terrible as some of the stuff foisted on us over the years (buyers of some Canned Heat and Clapton “lost” or “unofficial live” recordings, for example, will know what I mean), but it varies from the dodgy to the awful. Some of it is worth it – there’s a terrific solo performance by Green of Dead Shrimp Blues, for example, which I’m glad to have in spite of the crackles, scrapes and overall dismal quality – but a lot of it isn’t really. You can tell that the issuers haven’t taken this compilation at all seriously from the comic font on the cover (what??) and it shows.

The music itself is mostly pretty good without being brilliant with a nice mix of solid blues, odd covers like Peggy Sue Got Married (yes, really) and some of Jeremy Spencer’s enjoyable knockabout Rock & Roll parodies. There are flashes of genius from Green and the band is always very good, but most of these tracks aren’t as good as the versions already available either on original albums or compilations like Live At The BBC.

I’m a massive devotee of the original Fleetwood Mac and even I’m not over-keen on this. It’s basically an exploitative cobbling together of poor-quality recordings with no effort at cleaning them up or meaningful curation. On balance, I’m glad to have it in my collection, but I can’t really recommend it.

Andy Fairweather Low - La Booga Rooga

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Still a cracking album

This is still a cracking album. Andy Fairweather Low is a phenomenal musician and fine songwriter, plus he was a great singer. It’s a combination which came together in the 70s to make some wonderful albums (my other favourite of his is Spider Jiving). Here, he often develops a slightly ragged-sounding, almost jug-band feel which I like very much – and of course there’s the classic Wide Eyed And Legless.

This really is a fine, hugely enjoyable album which has aged remarkably well. Very warmly recommended.

Come Join My Orchestra; The British Baroque Pop Sound 1967-73

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Some great, some OK, some terrible

This compilation is excellent in many ways. It’s terrific value, the notes are very good indeed and the compilers have dug out some real obscurities along with some better-known and in some cases very famous bands performing more out-of-the-way material. Musically, the quality is very mixed, though.

The thing is, I was there. I was aged 13 to 19 during this period and music was a big part of my life. Some of this is very familiar to me, some I’d never heard before and there is both great stuff and tracks whose obscurity is thoroughly well deserved. Just the opening of Disc 1 epitomises the collection: Come Join My Orchestra is a nice but rather average track, Honeybus, Clifford T. Ward and The Strawbs contribute interesting and enjoyable songs, The Freedom’s The Better Side is another decent but unmemorable song and then there’s the dreadful Acorn Street by Michael Blount and Toast utterly destroying a very beautiful Paul Simon song...and so on. This mixture of the great, the OK and the terrible persists throughout the 80 tracks here. Others’ taste will differ from mine, of course, so you may disagree over individual tracks, but I expect most listeners will find a mixture of stuff they like and stuff they really don’t.

The collection is pretty representative of some aspects of the period (there are certainly plenty of harpsichords, strings and flutes) and there is stuff here that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. Personally, I’d be happy if I hadn’t found some of these tracks here either, but there’s also plenty to like and at this price it’s well worth it for the good stuff. Recommended.

Curved Air - Air Conditioning

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still a good album

Air Conditioning has aged rather well. It came out when I was in the sixth-form and was staple listening then. Sonja Kristina created considerable excitement among us teenage boys for reasons which were not exclusively musical, and after several decades I was interested to see whether the music itself justified my good memories. On the whole it does.

The star of this album for me (nowadays, anyway) is Darryl Way. His musical excellence and the unusual sound of a violin on a rock album still make Air Conditioning stand out from the slew of very average stuff in the early 70s. Tracks like Vivaldi are still a pleasure to listen to, and the same can be said of most of the album. There’s really not too much tedious, over-complex, self-congratulatory stuff (the curse of so many prog rock albums, in my view); it’s largely enjoyable but grown-up rock which still sounds good almost 50 years on.

Sometimes it’s a big mistake to go back, but not this time. This is still a very good album which I can recommend.

Rough Guide to Blind Willie McTell

Rating: 5/5

Review:
More great blues from Rough Guides

This is yet another brilliant release of vintage blues from Rough Guides.

Blind Willie McTell was a true great of the genre. He wrote fine songs, played brilliant ragtime guitar and had a fine voice all of which had a great influence on many who came after him – including Ralph McTell who even took his name.

This is a fine collection which has been excellently remastered; the sound is very clear without losing the atmosphere of the originals, which are often of very poor quality. There is still some hiss and the crudity of the recording technique still shows so it’s not hi-fi – but who wants that on these recordings? I think the balance between clarity and authenticity of sound is absolutely right and I can recommend this release very warmly indeed.