UK Landfill Bog-Standard Rock (Psych/Prog/Proto-Metal) in Decline, 1973-75

Despite the title, I'm actually a fan of many of these bands. However for a long time I've ignored a lot of releases from the 1973-75 era, which gave me unsexy images of cut-out bin albums that smell like moldy basements and covered in bongwater stains. Many of the bands were winding up pretty brilliant careers with their last, and often least-acclaimed albums like Traffic and Family. I heard Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory[i] and [i]It's Only A Movie by those two bands for the first time yesterday, and they're really good. I have a hard time believing Nazareth is better than Free's Heartbreaker, one of my favorites of recent years, but I'll certainly check 'em out. Other bands dramatically changed their sound, often due to major personnel changes such as Spooky Tooth, The Pretty Things and Deep Purple. I finally heard Burn and it was better than I expected.

I'm wondering if there are any particular albums anyone would recommend. I will probably try Barclay James Harvest's Everyone is Everybody Else, even though I never even got into their earlier stuff, because it was produced by Roger Bain (first three Sabbath albums, first two Budgie, Judas Priest) and is supposed to be pretty heavy. I had no idea people liked later Jethro Tull albums. I have not yet heard the majority of this list. I included Budgie's Bandolier, which I have and like, but didn't put their two previous because they're the band's peak work. I excluded other bands that were also clearly peaking rather in decline, like Strawbs, Rennaissance, Camel, Yes, King Crimson, etc. The albums are listed roughly in order of their ranking on Rateyourmusic, although most don't have an overall ranking because they are not in the top 5,000. Some by Stray and Lucifer's Friend don't have any ranking at all, due to RYM's secret algorithm, probably not meeting the required number of ratings.

Nazareth - Hair of the Dog (1975, 52, 3.86)
Deep Purple - Burn (1974, 69, 3.80)
Jethro Tull - Minstrel in the Gallery (1975, 74, 3.81)
Caravan - For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night (1973, 147, 3.77)
Nazareth - Razamanaz (1973, 154, 3.79)
Free - Heartbreaker (1973, 170, 3.79)
Budgie - Bandolier (1975, 121, 3.77)
Status Quo - Quo (1974, 159, 3.78)
Nazareth - Loud 'n' Proud (1973, 197, 3.75)
Procol Harum - Grand Hotel (1973, 180, 3.75)
Wishbone Ash - There's The Rub (1974, 188, 3.72)
Status Quo - Hello! (1973, 254, 3.71)
Jade Warrior - Floating World (1974, 254, 3.70)
Man - Back Into the Future (1973, 289, 3.74)
Soft Machine - Bundles (1975, 256, 3.65)
Slade - Slade In Flame (1974, 271, 3.67)
Status Quo - On The Level (1975, 284, 3.65)
Lucifer's Friend - Banquet (1974, 298, 3.64)
Procol Harum - Exotic Birds and Fruit (1974, 305, 3.62)
Jade Warrior - Waves (1974, 322, 3.64)
Slade - Old New Borrowed and Blue (1974, 341, 3.60)
Groundhogs - Solid (1974, 351, 3.68)
Barclay James Harvest - Everyone Is Everybody Else (1974, 363, 3.58)
Man - Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics (1974, 379, 3.66)
Jethro Tull - A Passion Play (1973, 305, 3.57)
Nazareth - Rampant (1974, 394, 3.56)
Caravan - Caravan & The New Symphonia (1974, 398, 3.57)
Deep Purple - Stormbringer (1974, 404, 3.48)
Soft Machine - Six (1973, 420, 3.55)
Traffic - Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory (1973, 455, 3.55)
Curved Air - Air Cut (1973, 456, 3.57)
Uriah Heep - Sweet Freedom (1973, 465, 3.52)
Barclay James Harvest - Time Honoured Ghosts (1975, 409, 3.51)
Wishbone Ash - Wishbone Four (1973, 538, 3.49)
Spooky Tooth - Witness (1973, 610, 3.55)
Spooky Tooth - You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw (1973, 612, 3.51)
Deep Purple - Come Taste The Band (1975, 440, 3.44)
Traffic - When the Eagle Flies (1975, 498, 3.48)
Deep Purple - Who Do You Think We Are (1973, 528, 3.44)
Argent - Nexus (1974, 555, 3.48)
Jethro Tull - War Child (1974, 495, 3.42)
Egg - The Civil Surface (1974, 511, 3.45)
Argent - In Deep (1973, 728, 3.42)
Stray - Mudanzas (1973, 754, 3.52)
Man - Maximum Darkness (1975, 571, 3.53)
Caravan - Cunning Stunts (1975, 642, 3.34)
Spooky Tooth - The Mirror (1974, 668, 3.39)
Soft Machine - Seven (1974, 774, 3.31)
Uriah Heep - Wonderworld (1974, 731, 3.28)
Argent - Circus (1975, 610, 3.41)
Uriah Heep - Return To Fantasy (1975, 599, 3.35)
The Pretty Things - Silk Torpedo (1974, 749, 3.33)
Edgar Broughton Band - Oora (1973, 816, 3.37)
Atomic Rooster - Nice & Greasy (1973, 857, 3.30)
Humble Pie - Eat It (1973, 892, 3.31)
Stray - Move It (1974, 3.26)
Humble Pie - Thunderbox (1974, 882, 3.23)
Lucifer's Friend - I'm Just A Rock 'n' Roll Singer (1973, 3.23)
Procol Harum - Procol's Ninth (1975, 800, 3.23)
Family - It's Only A Movie (1973, 971, 3.23)
The Pretty Things - Freeway Madness (1973, 981, 3.22)
The Pretty Things - Savage Eye (1975, 3.14)
Stray - Stand Up And Be Counted (1975, 3.14)
Curved Air - Midnight Wire (1975, 3.12)
Humble Pie - Street Rats (1975, 3.05)

My deep catalog digging was of course inspired by 1970-1979 WTF - The Hard 'n' Heavy 'n' Loud + Krautrock, Arty, Noisy, Weird, Funky, Punky Shit - Albums Poll! - VOTING THREAD! Closes Mar 8th 11.59 PM UK Time - All ILXORS/LURKERS WELCOME as I finalized my ballot. Voting ends Mar. 8!

I would add Roy Harper's HQ to that list.

i own like 40 albums on that list, but its not a great list. definitely listen to The Mirror by Spooky Tooth and avoid Grand Hotel by Procol Harum. terrible thread title, by the way. makes it sound like you want to hear shitty music. just as much great music in 1973, 1974, and 1975 as any other year in the 70's.

i mean its not like there aren't good albums on that list its just not a very exciting list.

Nazareth - Razamanaz (1973, 154, 3.79)
Status Quo - Quo (1974, 159, 3.78)

These are the only ones I could vouch for as being really good, but the rest of the Quo and Nazareth albums on the list are worth a pop, as are the Jade Warrior, Man and Slade. Wishbone Ash, Soft Machine and Uriah Heep were well onto the downward slide by this point (not that I’ve played any of those records since about 1984).

I don't own Slade in Flame, but it's the soundtrack to an unexpectedly tough and bleak 'Play for today' movie about the music biz, and the music . . c'mon it's fucking Slade!

The 2 Man albums listed are awesome but this one is essential!
http://991.com/newGallery/Man-Rhinos-Winos--Lun-446251.jpg

Definitely the best Man album. Infact the other one is their 2nd or 3rd best probably.

so yeah, go listen to Man!

i love all 70's nazareth. and i like stray a bunch.

lucifers friend are from germany not u.k.

The Groundhogs album is pretty good too but the 4 before it were of a very high standard so obv it's not as good as those.

Love Slade In Flame (favorite cuts: "Them Kinda Monkeys Can't Swing" and "Bangin' Man"), and would vouch for the top 3 Nazareth albums on that list (don't actually know Rampant, though "Shanghai'd In Shanghai" is great), and thought several others listed up there were good enough to keep as well. Like Scott, I don't get the thread title. Those were excellent years for music, especially hard rock (well, soul and disco too. Among other things). Don't see how they can't stand at or above any year in the past quarter-century, at least.

And "would vouch for" is way understating things, actually -- Nazareth is one of my favorite rock bands ever, period (they are still making really good albums by the way), and the top 3 up there are probably their 3 best albums.

some stuff i would recommend:

robin trower - removed from yesterday
bedlam - s/t
budgie - never turn your back on a friend
thin lizzy - vagabonds of the western world
foghat - s/t
mott the hoople - mott
faces - ooh la la
pink fairies - kings of oblivion
badger - one live badger
tempest - s/t
gary moore - grinding stone
hawkwind - space ritual
sharks - first water
three man army - mahesha or s/t
geordie - hope you like it
paul kossoff - back street crawler
ellis - why not?
budgie - in for the kill
thin lizzy - night life
queen - sheer heart attack
sweet - desolation boulevard
judas priest - rocka rolla
tempest - living in fear
heavy metal kids - s/t
hawkwind - hall of the mountain grill
trapeze - hot wire
hustler - high street
thin lizzy - fighting
armageddon - s/t
rainbow - ritchie blackmore's rainbow
status quo - on the level
hawkwind - warrior on the edge of time
deep purple - come taste the band
rory gallagher - against the grain

Everyone is Everybody Else isn't that heavy, but it is the best BJH album.

i didn't list proggy stuff. you'd be here all day. roxy, floyd, eno, where do you stop?

oh god yes the pink fairies rule. they were on my ballot

xps

and hell yeah to that faces album

i mean jesus the first three 10CC albums came out in 73/74/75. i really would be here forever. though they were u.k. artrockpopprogmusichallhardwave.

and the hawkwind !(i'll stop now)

"Everyone is Everybody Else isn't that heavy, but it is the best BJH album."

i've never heard anyone say this! kinda cool that anyone would even take a barclay james harvest stance on ilm. i like everything up to and including Gone To Earth. so, the first 8 albums.

also, you need every manfred mann album from the 70's. and all the badfinger. and hollies.

i love Once Again and Baby James Harvest a ton.

does the U.K. include canada and australia? hahaha. i already included ireland.

cuz then i could go on and on about buffalo and chilliwack.

Skot can you answer something here please? It's about something sund4r & I were discussing last night. I think fnb would be interested too.

scott if you extend the thread title to the commonwealth you certainly could!

I guess The Enid kinda escape this as their first was '76

...and maybe they're too Prog anyhow

The heaviest BJH album was the live double one, imaginatively called "BJH Live" I think. Still not exactly Pentagram though.

I would say that the true decline years for a lot of these bands was 1977 onwards - the labels wanted a response to New Wave, they were all running out of ideas after 10 years on the treadmill, every band had drug issues and/or they all hated each other and so on.

Nazareth - No Mean City
Uriah Heep - Fallen Angel
Wishbone Ash - No Smoke Without Fire
Camel - Breathless
Gentle Giant - Giant For A Day
Slade - Return To Base

Luckily Stray didn't release anything past 1976.

Some prog bands went AOR though and became even bigger, right? Though since they weren't making prog then you cant say they (prog bands) weren't in decline. How did new prog bands post 77 do? They always claim the media/labels had no interest and the thriving scene died etc. Just like hair metal bands claimed with grunge. So how much of that was true?

New prog bands didn't do that well post new wave / punk, but maybe that's because they tended to sound like earlier prog bands so it was all a bit second-hand (like England, Machiavel, errr there were others I know). And the earlier bands (Yes, Genesis etc) either went pop or floundered if they weren't big enough to carry on under their own momentum.

well Marillion were just genesis clones, right?

xp Scott, I think the thread title is funny and totally appropriate. I don't understand how you and Chuck can't understand it! The reason I didn't get around to hearing most of those albums for so long is I DID think they were shitty! And some of them probably are, but not all. And it is regarding bands that mostly been around since the 60s or at least 1970-71 and are in decline, not firing on all cylinders, so that excludes Roy Harper, Roxy, Floyd, Eno, Sabbath, Zep, etc. etc. That's why they're not listed.

Obviously 1973-75 were awesome years for music in general. I'm addressing a specific group of bands, not all the music of that era.

XP AG - Not really, first record certainly was but after that they had kinda achieved their own monstrous second hand Peter Hammill fronts chimey pop-rock with Rock Follies bedroom theatrics.

didn't matter post-77 cuz then you had cool nwobhm bands to listen to! who could be plenty proggy and psych-y. and the 80's and 90's was an excellent time for u.k. hard stuff too. then everyone died.

x-post

I meant to address this in the first post as I knew someone would complain -- John Lawton of Lucifer's Friend is British, and the band sound British, and they were in a downward spiral since their second album so I felt they belonged here.

get Bridge Of Sighs (1974) by robin Trower even if you don't like procol harum.

"And it is regarding bands that mostly been around since the 60s or at least 1970-71 and are in decline, not firing on all cylinders"

but wait how did you know they were in decline if you never listened to them? just from what you read?

i think manfred mann's earth band put out 8 or 9 albums in the 70's and i like them all. and i LOVE the chapter three stuff and i like every 60's manfred mann album. what an amazing career. needs LOTS more love out there in the world.

I would say that the true decline years for a lot of these bands was 1977 onwards - the labels wanted a response to New Wave, they were all running out of ideas after 10 years on the treadmill, every band had drug issues and/or they all hated each other and so on.

I focused on 73-75 because the initial core of bands I was thinking of - Traffic, Family, Stray, Spooky Tooth and Free were done by that point. I wonder how many bands had drugs as a key factor to their decline?

Of course I've heard bits of most of those bands, I simply avoided the full albums for a while because of a combination of bad reviews and just prejudices. In my initial post I said I was wrong about some of the albums. From the ones I've heard so far, I'd still say Traffic, Family and others were still in decline even if the last albums were good. Free's Heartbreaker is an exception, being better than many of their others. I included it more for comparison sake.

Manfred Mann's Chance from 1980 is worth it for "stranded", a nice spacey "montage daydream" ripoff

"MOONage daydream"

i have a Man album where they write "Man" like Mad Magazine and there's a cartoon fish on the cover

they are like the most 70s group ever, they sound like every kind of 70s rock band for like 5 minutes on that album

low spark is the last good traffic album. they weren't even really a band though after the 60's. i mean they were, but not really. welcome to the canteen is the last - chronological - album i really need by them. steve's stuff with stomu kinda interesting. the go stuff.

There was a Chris Wood cd released a few years ago called Vulcan that was all prev unreleased recordings. It's pretty cool, mellow sort of ambient flute jams.

I think it was mostly recorded in the 70s

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0000/262/MI0000262038.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

xp That's a good list. A lot of those albums are actually on my ballot for the 70s poll. If you don't submit a ballot we'll just put that in for you ;) The rest below are ones I've been meaning to check out.

bedlam - s/t
badger - one live badger
tempest - s/t
gary moore - grinding stone
sharks - first water
three man army - mahesha or s/t
geordie - hope you like it
paul kossoff - back street crawler
ellis - why not?
tempest - living in fear
trapeze - hot wire
hustler - high street

man were cool. kinda prefer the first two psych-y albums probably. from the 60's. they are fun to listen to. i even like the deke leonard solo album. and the iceberg album. and help yourself. and the tyla gang. ...and the force.

avoid Grand Hotel by Procol Harum

Too late, I bought the reissue back in 2008, and it's a great album. I wrote about it here: Between The Cracks: Great bands that slipped between the cracks of glam, prog, art rock, metal and punk, 1973-1978.:
Procol Harum aren’t exactly obscure, thanks to their huge 1967 hit, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale.” But they are too often mistakenly considered a one hit wonder, when they actually had a long career with brilliantly ambitious albums of orchestral prog, including Shine On Brightly (1968), Salty Dog (1969), and the more down-to-earth Home (1970) and Broken Barricades (1971). By their sixth album, guitarist Robin Trower had left with Gary Brooker returning to more orchestral pop.

The evocative title track opens the album with a sweeping melody that evokes all kinds of images and moods, from louche decadence to sad nostalgia. The album was produced by Chris Thomas, who had recently worked on the second Roxy Music album, Dark Side of the Moon, and John Cale’s Paris 1919. Procol Harum got less attention than the more flambouyant likes of Bowie, T. Rex and Queen. But they were hardly somber. They were just trying to make appropriately complex rock for grown-ups. Listening to the 2009 remaster of this album, they succeeded. Hopefully more people will notice this time.

i even like the deke leonard solo album

Which one, Scott? Pretty sure I'd take Iceberg over Kamikaze, but it might be a close call. Guess it's time to pull them back out to make sure.

i always found grand hotel kinda bland. and the songs aren't very memorable. sadly, they often remind me of The Band when they ramble on with the purple prog prose and i'm not a big fan of The Band. i'd much rather listen to spooky tooth. love that band. from the Art album to the first sppoky tooth album to The Mirror. love The Mirror!

i started a thread once about bands like that. bands that were a little pub, punk, glam, prog. city boy, doctors of madness, etc. dan selzer started a similar thread. bands that were sold as punk and new wave but were just arty pub rock bands.

AG - thanks that's the one!

the solo i meant was kamikaze, chuck. always thought iceberg was a quasi-group kinda. i mean it was just his thing, so i guess its just a solo album.

The Egg record there is kind of an oddity as it's more of a reunion album than anything else. After Hatfield and the North got big (for sufficiently small values of "big") Dave Stewart managed to get Egg signed a record contract to record some of the songs Mont Campbell had written but not recorded properly. Campbell didn't actually have a whole LP's worth of Egg material to record so there's some weird filler (a couple of wind quintets), and the drums are mixed way too loud, but the album is worthwhile on the grounds that it contains "Enneagram", the single best tune the band did (written in response to Aaron Copland rightly pointing out that as supposedly "complex" as Egg's music was it mostly consisted of repeating a riff in an odd time signature a bunch of times and then moving on to the next one).

Campbell would go on to write a bunch of songs for the original lineup of National Health, most of which (particularly "Zabaglione") never got recorded properly, before getting disgusted and giving up rock music forever.

"Bundles" is fusion with early Allan Holdsworth on guitar, if you're into that kind of thing (I'm not).

I think "For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night" is not bad- like many of these records there's the dreaded Lineup Changes, with Richard Sinclair out, but the songs are good and I'm rather fond of their viola player for this record.

As far as Tempest goes, their first record is more early Holdsworth- I prefer their second with Ollie Halsall in on guitar and a pretty good take on "Paperback Writer".

Have Back Door been mentioned yet?

noel redding is another unsung hero. hendrix/lord sutch/fat mattress/road/noel redding band. like it all. road one of my favorite hard rock albums of all time. and the 2 NRB albums are cool.

i was listening to lord sutch & heavy friends the other day. his friends really were heavy.

for the record, i don't own any tull albums. just never need to hear them. i like the first three albums fine.

Between that Man lp cover and the Depardieu photo it's been quite a month for unforgettable images on ilx already.

The Tull albums on that list show a band in the worst state of floundering. But they came back like crazy with Songs from the Wood, their best lp IMO.

I can't remember whether it's Procol Harum or the Moody Blues but one of them supposedly set out to make an album based on the Canterbury Tales or something but the book ended up being way longer than they thought and they were hella stoned so they just decided "fuck it"

you know what are awesome if you ever see them for a dollar?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Bluejays.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Justin_Hayward_Songwriter.jpg

great sound on those records.

Gotta love the freeway madness sleeve
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Pretty-Things-Freeway-Madness.jpg

For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night is a very very good record, in my opinion. Probably my favourite of all Caravan's albums, actually.

I love reading comments on these albums on Amazon. About the above, "The car seen on the album was actually David Gilmour's car!" Does that mean they all had to pile into Gilmour's car to pose for the painting? Wouldn't it be funny if they had to stay in there for hours? Sounds like the makings of a SNL skit even better than the cowbell bit.

xp Scott, Buffalo hopefully will make a strong showing in the poll. Did you vote?

i don't really care about polls. plus, that poll makes no sense to me. i did vote in the madonna poll though cuz for some reason it was really important to me that live to tell do well. don't ask me why. and i voted in the action movie poll last summer.

Wot, no Tucky Buzzard?

When I was in high school, friends and I had a "radio station" that played over the intercom into lunchroom, art rooms and study halls. We used to even get promo service if we'd drive out and pick the albums up, but we generally couldn't get the big name records like Zep and Sabbath. So we ended up playing stuff like the Heep, Free, Spooky Tooth and Edgar Broughton albums on that list. I haven't heard or even thought about Sharks or "There's The Rub" by Wishbone Ash since then.

I tended to be into the artier end of the rock spectrum, so I played bands like Flash and Golden Earring a lot ("Big Tree Blue Sea/Are You Receiving Me" was in heavy rotation!) "Whirlwind Tongues" by Bloodrock, and the Sopwith Camel reunion LP.

"Wot, no Tucky Buzzard?"

this thread is only about certain bands that one person perceived rightly or wrongly - via the things they read or the feeling they got looking at old records in record stores - as sucking past a certain point in their careers. i understand that much by now.

I've never actually heard Tucky Buzzard but they became a sort of in-joke between me and my friends as being representative of crap early 70s UK rock sludge, no-one else had ever heard them either. The only reason I knew their name at all was because I'd read that when Jowe Head had left Swell Maps the band announced that they were looking for a new bass player "into the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Tucky Buzzard". NOW I know that the 60s psych band, and Bill Wyman proteges, The End became Tucky Buzzard.

i don't really care about polls. plus, that poll makes no sense to me. i did vote in the madonna poll though cuz for some reason it was really important...

Seriously? I know we've got all kinds of eccentric characters here that make ILX so, so special, but these hangups on polls (except apparently for Madonna) are just ridiculous. Dude, you just listed a shit-ton of albums that would have been eligible for the 70s poll had you just bothered to put that list in the nominations (mind you a good number were nominated). Would it have made sense to you if you'd done that? Did AG's inclusion of funk and krautrock bother you? You could have nominated and voted for whatever you want! It just irks me because your knowledge is such a valuable resource for many of us here, and the poll is worse off without your input.

I've started hunting down and listening to these, which I like roughly in this order so far: Tempest, Trapeze, Paul Kossoff, Barclay James Harvest, Geordie, Badger, Gary Moore, Sharks, Three Man Army and the albums by bands whose earlier albums are all-time faves - Stray, Groundhogs, Spooky Tooth. Thanks!

hey if he (or others) doesn't want to vote that's fine. Its a shame we lose out on input from some of the best ilxors but thats ilx.

best song ever. one of my fave rock songs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjkDN2EiJKE

i posted a list here cuz i felt like it and i had the time. i can do whatever i want. if you use the search function you can find ten friggin' years of recommendations from me. i'm just not a poll person. never got into pazz&jop. i'm not a bill jamesian rockcrit type. i don't mind lists if they are entertaining or quirky or whatever.

If you're talking about the massive long-running polls that seem to take forever to compile and participate in then I voted in the Beach Boys and Abba polls. Don't feel I knew enough about the artists to contribute to any other (and that includes artists I like, e.g. the Bee Gees - hey that rhymes).

i don't mind lists if they are entertaining or quirky or whatever.

I'm pretty sure those words should describe the rollout of the hard/heavy/loud/weird 70s poll. Fortunately it looks like at least 70 ILMers don't feel they have to be Jamesian rock crit types to participate and have fun with this. Would be glad to have you participate if you change yr mind.

i was just explaining that polls and rankings don't mean that much to me. math, in general, doesn't mean much to me. that's why i brought up james. chuck is a big james guy and i love that about him but it ain't me. and waiting six months for the outcome of something i don't care about would be pretty silly, right? i don't go on poll threads all the time and say that i don't care about them. i think its great if people have fun with them! i went on that thread once to say OMG i can't believe this is still happening! i didn't know about it being postponed or whatever. and yeah you've got plenty of people! i'll look at the outcome. maybe. unless it takes 6 months to unveil.

i hid actual multiple choice poll threads from my ilx YEARS ago.

i did do a mathy thread once though:

The James Gang - 16 Greatest Hits (ABC-1973) -VS- Steve Miller Band - Anthology (Capitol-1972)

and i have started polls:

Yer Fave Gayz 4Ever Poll!

Man, Steve miller band from children of the future through no. 5 is one of the best runs of that time. 5 solid albums.

Did they reissue all his early ones finally? A couple started to trickle out about 6 yrs ago, but I just have Children of the Future, need more.

Another way to think of this thread is mainly popular bands that sometimes fairly, sometimes not, were perceived as in decline during 1973-75. I don't really know what the perception of Manfred Mann's Earth Band was, but I'm really liking Solar Fire and Nightingales & Bombers so far.

On the flip side of the coin, I just finished this book, which I highly recommend to anyone keen on discovering interesting bands they might not have heard of, and reading fresh perspectives on some old favorites with some great interviews:

http://fastnbulbous.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/chelled-demons-fairies-wailing-guitars.jpg

Slik Torpedo ain't that great, but I do like the opener, which has those glam music hall touches of Mick Ronson and late Mott

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8NmNNpP1fE

By the way there was a whole hour of this sort of stuff on BBC4 last night (followed by a documentary on Mott the Hoople), read it and weep, Americans

Wow, Man, Heavy Metal Kids and Stone the Crows even, impressive!

Cool, missed that last night but looks like it's on iPlayer, might watch it tonight instead.

Does that mean they all had to pile into Gilmour's car to pose for the painting? Wouldn't it be funny if they had to stay in there for hours? Sounds like the makings of a SNL skit even better than the cowbell bit.

REEEEEEEWIND!

(xp) Was able to work out the intro to SAHB's "Faith Healer" just from watching Zal Cleminson's chord shapes ... tho I'd never actually tried to work it out before