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CR0 1AL, Great Britain.
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Family - A Song For Me;
Anyway...; Fearless; Bandstand; It's Only A Movie; Family Live
(Mystic Records MYS CD 170-174, 176)
For those who have never heard of Family before
they were what used to be called an 'underground' rock band much loved
and played by the likes of John Peel and Bob Harris back in the heady
days of the late 60s and early 70s. Mystic Records have re-issued the
bands' final five studio albums plus a previously unreleased live album
and given them the overhaul treatment - so every album now comes complete
with a handful [or more] of extra tracks, many of them live, and an extended
inlay booklet full of lyrics, interviews and anecdotes and rare photographs.
If you are an old fan you're going to love this...
The strength of Family
lay in the songwriting talents of vocalist Roger Chapman and multi-instrumentalist
John Whitney - they took in rock, blues, jazz and country elements and
came up with a sound that was uniquely theirs, helped in no large fashion
by Chapman's unconventional voice.
I don't have the space
to discuss each album in depth, so here are the highlights: A
Song For Me - contains the hit single No Mule's Fool,
the country-fried Song For Sinking Lovers and a pretty rat-arsed
but funky instrumental 93's OK J. Anyway...
- the second album from 1970 and a hybrid studio and live album. No singles
but pretty anonymous sounding, if I'm being honest. Fearless
dates from 1971, saw a new line-up including John Wetton and includes
the hit single In My Own Time - the album is more adventurous,
much lighter in tone and with several jazzy elements in the music. 1972's
Bandstand was pretty much the bands' highpoint, an album
that I remember sold well at the time and had one of that era's most distinctive
covers... and it included the classic Burlesque and the dreamy
My Friend The Sun, plus this new version now includes live versions
of No Mule's Fool and The Weavers Answer. It's
Only A Movie dates from 1973 and was the bands final album, featuring
another line-up that included Tony Ashton and Jim Cregan replacing Poli
Palmer and John Wetton. The album has a bluesy bar room feel to it, musically
sloppy but just right, if you know what I mean. I was rather taken with
the instrumental, Banger. Finally we come to Family Live,
a previously unreleased set from 1971 and recorded at the Rainbow, which
shows the band in confident form.
So six albums covering quite a chunk of Family's
career. I have to admit that I was never a fan of the band back in the
70s and to be honest nothing I've heard here has changed that opinion,
but Mystic have done a fine job remastering these albums and adding the
sorts of 'goodies' that the fans will want, namely unreleased tracks,
live tracks and excellent sleevenotes and photos. The band have been done
proud with these releases and if you are a fan snap them up quickly.
Pete Brown & The Interoceters
- Live
(Mystic MYS CD 184)
Mystic Records have done it again
and revived another old rocker from the halycon days of British rock.
Pete Brown may not be a household name as such but he wrote many of the
hits for Cream, and led several bands during the 70s, including Batter
Ornaments and Piblokto - all of which I seemed to miss at the time. Brown
has stayed the course with music and this live album was recorded at London's
Borderline Club during late 2002. As with Cream, most of Brown's songs
veer towards the blues and extended workouts for the guitarist, Mo Nazam,
and organist Dave 'Munch' Moore. Apart from the Cream classics The
Politician, White Room and Theme For An Imaginary Western,
I was unfamiliar with the rest of the twelve songs on this cd, so I can't
really say whether Pete Brown was on form or not. The band rock well and
his careworn voice obviously suits the material, but I didn't really connect
with the album. However, if you are an old-time Cream fan and anticipating
the just announced reunion then you might like this to be going on with.
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Joe Turner
- My French Connection
(MYS CD 190)
The blues has always found a welcome
home in Europe with many an American bluesman finding a home in France,
Britain or even Scandanavia. The latest in this long line is Joe Turner,
former bass player for BB King, who lived in Chedigny in France for
several years and even established a blues festival there. My French
Connection is a collection of his songs based on his life experiences
both in the Mississippi Delta and then in France. Mr Turner shares the
vocal duties along with the raunchy-voiced Ladonna Smith, and is backed
by a group very funky Frenchmen. His own vocals have a warm, gruff tone,
similar to that of Isaac Hayes. On the whole this is quite an uptempo
set of tracks, with a collection of songs to get the foot tapping and
the head nodding to the bass. And while it may have been recorded in
France and London it evokes Chicago and the deep south. Track highlights
for me are Beale St Boogie, Some Day and My Regrets. It
has long been held by non blues lovers that the blues are dead, but
you only have to listen to this album to realise that that is a load
of bollocks, the blues are very much alive, especially in the capable
hands of 'Big' Joe Turner.
Jess
Roden & The Humans - Live At The Robin
(Mystic MYS CD 183)
Back in the early 70s Jess Roden was one of the best kept
secrets of the British rock scene - a musicians' musician and a blues/soul
singer of high reputation but who never really broke through and sold
a lot of records or made the charts. Back then this type of rock music
was the staple diet for countless pubs and blues clubs, and it paved
the way for pub-rock and later the new wave rock movements. Roden eventually
retired from the music scene until the early 90s when he returned and
formed The Humans and started to build up a strong rep for putting on
a great gig - again. The Humans include guitarist Gary Grainger [ex-Rod
Stewart band], bassist Nick Graham [ex-Skid Row], guitarist Bill Burke
and drummer Leo Brown.
This live album dates back to 1996 and
was recorded at the famous Robin Hood club outside Birmingham, and was
the last gig the band ever performed. The overall sound is classic British-style
blues-rock with some soul added to the mix, and on most of the nine
tracks here the band rock mightily. Along with several band-penned songs,
the Humans burn the stage up with Willie Dixon's I Live The Life
I Live, Buddy Guy's Let Me Love You Baby, Joe Tex' You'd
Better Believe It, and a particularly corruscating version of Neil
Young's Rockin' In The Free World. For a live album the audience
are surprisingly quiet for most of the time, but the band are on great
form and this is a great record of a working band doing their thing
to the max. If John Mayall, Chicken Shack, Cream, Dr Feelgood mean anything
to you then you will definitely want to hear this album. Two words -
Buy it!
Shiva Shakti
- Shiva Shakti
(MYS CD 163)
 Mystic
Records certainly have a thing about reviving singers and bands from
the 60s and 70s, and there is nothing wrong with that at all, God knows
the musicians from that period were and are real musicians and not the
bland plastic non-talented clones that seem to choke up the charts nowadays.
Shiva Shakti consists of Shiva Jones, who was formerly in Quintessence,
and Rudra Beauvert - I must admit that Quintessence was another 70's
band that I missed at the time, but if the contents of this new album
is similar to their sound then I'll have to try and find some of their
old albums...
OK, so what is Shiva Shakti
like? Well, I guess you could call it an amalgam of the hippy ethic,
eastern mysticism and a healthy mix of funkiness and soul. The album
contains reworkings of five Quintessence [all old favourites, according
to the press release] tracks and the rest are original to the new band.
At times like on More Than Meets The Eye the dialogue samples
collide with the funky beats and the outcome is rather weird but hugely
enjoyable. Ultimately this is an album that leaves you feeling 'up',
which is its intention, and one can't help wishing more albums did that
in these confusing times. Highly recommended.
Tyla Gang
- Yachtless
(MYS CD 162)
This is a reissue of the Tyla Gang's
1977 debut album, which originally appeared on the Beserkley label.
Rather than following the punk template that was fashionable in 1977
the band came out of the disintegrating pub-rock scene and their boogie
rock style fitted more into the new labels' burgeoning New Wave marketing
portfolio. And so here we are in 2003 with an album that still sounds
freshly minted and a damn sight better than most of the stuff by any
up and coming band you care to mention.
 The
Tyla Gang comprised Sean Tyla on guitars, keyboards and lead vocals,
Brian Turrington on bass, marimbas, Bruce Irvine on lead guitars and
Michael Desmarais on Drums. This reissue of Yachtless includes
an extra six bonus tracks, including singles (Hurricane, Suicide
Jockey and Styrofoam) and pre-Tyla Gang recordings, so it
should be a 'must have' for any fans of the band who want to enjoy that
golden glow of nostalgia.
I have to say that I don't really remember
the Tyla Gang the first time around - 1977 was an explosive year for
pop music with the punk and new wave movements growing exponentionally
and there was an explosion of new bands to explore, and of course some
just got missed. So hearing this album now is simply a pure joy, the
blues-based rocking sound cuts through the chaff of so much of the crap
being issued now. This was real rock music - where's Tommy Vance when
you need him!
Roger Chapman's
Riff Burglars
(MYS CD 165)
 Now
here's a name that goes right back to my callow youth in those heady
days when the 60's slid into the 70s! Roger Chapman was the singer with
Family, at the time a very successful rock band. Chapman eventually
went solo and disappeared in the UK, only to find a lot of success in
Germany and across Europe. So that's the back story - this double album
collects together two albums Chapman made with a variety of friends
back in 1982/3. These friends include Boz Burrell, Tim Hinkley, Micky
Moody, Zoot Money and many others, all listed under pseudonyms such
as Reverend Stovepipe, Seude Soupspoon, Ramblin' Ray Rubble and suchlike.
The first album is called The Legendary
Funny Cider Sessions and the other is called Swag. These
two albums were recorded for a laugh and contain a large selection of
classic blues, r 'n' b and rock and roll classics all done in what I
guess you would call 'party style'. Some of the songs included are
Havana Moon, Wang Dang Doodle, Downbound Train, The Shadow Knows, Who
Do You Love, Harlem Shuffle, Sea of Heartbreak and loads more.
These albums are great fun to listen
to and pretend to be nothing other than a bunch of rockers letting their
hair down and having fun. Thankfully, the performances are 'straight'
and stand up to repeated listening.
Stan
Webb's Chicken Shack - Still Live After All These Years
(Mystic Records MYS CD189)
If I tell you that Stan Webb and his band Chicken Shack
date back to the 60's blues rock boom and the heady days of John Mayall's
Bluesbreakers when "Eric Clapton is God" was graffitti'd on
the walls then you'll appreciate the wry irony of the album title. This
is unabashedly a live album by a hard gigging band who may not have had
the big hit albums of other blues rockers but have consistently recorded
and gigged across four decades - and that deserves a lot of respect!
 Still
Live... was recorded on a German tour last year and it is as good
a live document as you can get of a hard rocking touring band doing what
they do best, playing the blues in their own style. This version of Chicken
Shack consists of Stan Webb on guitar and vocals, Gary Davies: guitar,
Jim Rudge: bass and Mick Jones: drums, plus the Shadow Horns section on
the second half of the album.
I always did like blues rock back then though somehow
I never connected with Chicken Shack, so this album has a double interest
for me. Stan Webb has a reflective guitar style which rocks loudly when
required but is often quite dreamy and slightly sad on the quieter passages
- check out The Thrill Is Gone to see what I mean. The album is
made up of a number of Webb originals alongside blues and country standards
like Reconsider Baby, Night Life, and his one hit, I'd Rather
Go Blind, plus a Beatles number, Saw Her Standing There.
For a live album the audience are strangely reticent
for most of the album, which allows one to focus on the playing, and this
is a band that rocks, but comes really to life when the Shadow Horns kick
in. I'm sure that Chicken Shack fans will buy this album stroingly, but
it should also appeal to those discovering blues rock now.
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