Disco talk

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33383, 15 November 1973, Page 4

Disco talk

(With MIKE LOMBARD and MALCOLM SEVERS)

Blue Oyster Cult. C.B.S. 58P474101. This type of music is this reviewer’s bag and it doesn’t take a particularly good heavy group to send him off on trips to the moon. Blue Oyster Cult, however, is a really good heavy group and consequently he is way past Mars. This is “wedge” music. It is impossible to be oblivious to it. It can drive itself between the most serious of conversations and start all parties oscillating to its compulsive, pulsating energy. I haven’t been able to find out much about the group, but it seems it’s a collection of ex-deejays. If constant exposure to rock music can produce this kind of sound it’s a pity more deejays don’t give up the turntable and hype and take to trying to make a go of the big world of the artist and his audience. This is the best hard rock album I have heard since Ursa Major — every home should have one. — M.S.

Gram Parsons. G.P. I Warner Brothers R 52123. Not long ago Rayl Columbus, writing in the! “Listener,” described this as “the best country rock • since the Flying Burrito] ■ Brothers’ ‘Gilded Palace of i i Sin’.” Now, with all due respect to Happen Inn’s oldest raver, I can’t really agree with that. It’s not that Gram Parsons produced a bad album, it’s just that 1 wouldn’t describe it as country rock. Country it surely is; rock it’s not, at least not to these ears. What Gram Parsons did on G.P. was to go back to the music he heard first and liked best, and he did it very well, with songs like “Streets of Baltimore,” “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning,” “That’s All It Took,” and “Cry One More Time,” certainly the rockiest thing on the album. Alongside these older numbers are another seven songs which I Gram Parsons either wrote alone or with other people. These are more sophisticated and adventurous than the traditional material and they evoke, rather than ] just imitate, the country' idiom. G.P. was Gram Parsons’! first, and, sadly, his last solo album, so it isn’t really! surprising that it falls a! little short of the best of the Burrito’s tracks. A little | of their uninhibited zest has gone, as well as the feel of that beautifully tight-knit ! instrumental work the group perfected over the years. — M.L. Flo and Eddie: Mark Vol-j man and Howard Kaylan. Reprise R 52141. Probably! the most amazing feature of this album is that it was recorded at all. If it was supposed to be funny, it fails; if it was supposed to be a parody, it fails; and if it was supposed to be a! serious attempt at old song revival it also fails. ■ Mark Volman and Howard | Kaplan are a couple of ex- ■ Turtles (and one exMother) who. on this disc, have surrounded themselves with a bevy of avant garde heavies including Mother’s ex-drummer Aynsley Dunbar and wasted everybody’s time. There is an uninspired and rather insipid version of the Small Faces “Afterglow,” a Tom Lehrer-type: parody of the Mexican bull-; I fighting scene which these] guys are just not clever ■ enough to pull off, and a! | revival of “The Best Part of | I Breaking Up”; a song that | should never have been written, let alone revived. —M.S. The First Cut. Keith Hampshire. A. and M. Records AML 34888. This isn’t Tom Jones country — Keith Hampshire is more like John Baldry or

Keith Barbour. "The First i Cut” has some effective l arrangements, with guitars,! organs, pianos and drums,! and strings provided by the I Toronto Symphony Orches-! ’ tra, background vocals by j the Laurie Bower Singers ! with Dianne Brooks and Brian Russell, and ample lashings of brass from Gord Fleming and friends. But, in spite of the best efforts of this musical multitude, much of the record fails to come to life. Or perhaps it’s because of them: vitality is j a delicate thing which can J be orchestrated out of | existence. There’s a disappointing I similarity about some ofj the better known tracks,! performed in a manner not-! able for its similarity to the I original versions. If you! can’t think of a new way of L treating a song there doesn’t; seem to be much point ini reviving it. If your taste runs to full-throated cover versions this could be your; thing, but my advice is to! have a good, long, cautious listen first. — M.L. ■