Jack Bruce - Harmony Row (1971)

Steve:

After Led Zeppelin whet my appetite for what is called Classic Rock, one of my favorite new favorite bands in my high school days was Cream. By far, my favorite aspect of Cream was the vocals, songwriting, and overall musicality of bassist/singer Jack Bruce. My admiration of Jack was amplified tenfold one day when I purchased a double LP on Polydor called Jack Bruce at His Best.  Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker had also been honored with similar-looking and similarly titled double LPs; Cream remained extremely popular, even after their premature demise in 1968.  

Eric Clapton was always the main draw of the band, popularity-wise - his tenure in the Bluesbreakers, Derek and the Dominos, and his commercial success as a solo artist kept the interest in Clapton alive well into the 70s, 80s, and 90s. But Jack Bruce? Even as the primary creative force and front man for the Cream juggernaut, he always seemed the underdog to me - a "musician's musician" whom everyone respected but who never had much commercial success on his own. Which brings me back to Jack Bruce at His Best. This double album provided a pretty inclusive summary of Jack's first three solo albums: Songs for a Tailor, Things We Like, and Harmony Row. I was blown away by all of it.  All but one track from Harmony Row was included in this double LP.

To a large extent, Harmony Row is all Jack's work. He wrote all the music (his writing partner Pete Brown handled the lyrics, as always), and played piano, organ, bass, acoustic guitar, and cello. John Marshall, soon to join Soft Machine, played the drums, and session whiz Chris Spedding played electric guitar. A good analog to this album would be Steve Winwood's realization of John Barleycorn Must Die, a similarly eclectic Traffic album on which Winwood handled the lion's share of the instrumental and compositional duties by himself.  

Harmony Row, however, sports even more sharp left turns and just plain odd tracks than Winwood's opus. For the most extreme example, listen to "Post War", with its weird near-ska rhythm and sudden key changes, not to mention the abrupt bridges that sound like they were flown in from a different album. For the most part, though, these eclectic musical decisions only serve to pump up the excitement. "A Letter of Thanks" is an exhilarating piano-fueled rocker whose unpredictable changes in meter successfully build momentum rather than halt it. The closing "The Consul at Sunset" uses a slow jungle beat to frame its spooky portrait of a haunted and doomed man. "Smiles and Grins" uses its length (at nearly 6 minutes, it's the album's longest track) to include jazzy instrumental passages as breathing room between the rapid-fire vocal sections. Finally, "Victoria Sage" might be one of the prettiest ballads I have ever heard, and I'll leave it at that.

All the tracks I cited above comprise side 2 of this fantastic album. I believe it's the best album side in my collection. There, I said it. Side 1 rules too. Don't miss this one.

Dan:

It seems only fair to be scooped by my own son on music from my generation. He's right about Jack Bruce's relative neglect compared to "Slowhand" Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, Bruce's Cream bandmates. Despite the neglect, I could make the case that Bruce was the best musician in Cream. For evidence, listen to the live sides on Wheels of Fire, paying attention to Bruce's bass lines. "Spoonful," in particular, is transformed from an average blues song into something bordering on the miraculous. The instrumental "Toad" is also filled with great bass playing. Jack Bruce was also Cream's best vocalist.

I have to confess to being unimpressed with Harmony Row the first time I heard it. I was too impatient. I have since revisited the album and now know why it's one of Steve's all-time faves. It's worth the extra investment of time to appreciate each and every track on its own terms. I especially enjoy "The Consul at Sunset" and "Victoria Sage." I'm glad I rediscovered this album. 

Soft Machine - Fourth (1971)

Steve:

Thank goodness for the CD age. As I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I was a Camel fan at a very early age, so when Camel albums first became available on CD, I got a few right off the bat. One of the great things about many CD reissues back then was the liner notes, which gave me some history behind the band and the album that I did not otherwise have the means to learn. This was still pre-Internet, so all I knew about Camel was provided by the LP sleeves and the weak writeup in the Rolling Stone Record Guide. I believe it was in the booklet of The Snow Goose CD on Deram that I first saw mention of "the Canterbury Scene". Camel had a link to this scene by virtue of bassist/vocalist Richard Sinclair, who played with Camel for just two short years but still left an indelible mark on the band's history. The CD booklet went on to mention several other Canterbury Scene bands, including Soft Machine, one of the bands central to the whole "Canterbury" thing.

Armed with this new knowledge, my next record store trips were focused on finding releases by these Canterbury artists. Two of my first purchases (on the same day, as I recall) were In the Land of Grey and Pink by Caravan (featuring the aforementioned Richard Sinclair) and Fourth by Soft Machine. While the Caravan album was very much what I expected and had hoped to hear (helped by Sinclair's presence, no doubt), the Soft Machine album was more of a surprise. Essentially, it is a hardcore progressive electric jazz album - something that was not in my wheelhouse at the time. Elton Dean's free-blowing saxophone dominates several of the pieces, and although Robert Wyatt, the lovably whimsical vocalist I'd heard about, is present, there are no vocals on the album as he sticks to playing drums here. Wyatt would leave the band after this album, and his adventures subsequent to Soft Machine are well worth exploring. 

Despite my initial "huh?", I kept listening to this album, gradually understanding and internalizing it, and within a year or so I had collected all of their first six albums. In retrospect, I think this album may have been the first time a jazz album clicked with me - I know every note on it, and it all makes sense to me. Since then, Soft Machine has become one of my favorite groups of all time (even top 5, dare I say), and this album is where it all started. What's more, I've developed a deep affection for all of the Soft Machine albums, even though the band's direction and personnel were always in constant flux, to the point that by their seventh album, keyboardist Mike Ratledge was the only original member left. I attribute their continuity to an overriding "guiding principle" that seems to hover over the band, no matter who is in it. 

I understand that music like this owes a huge debt to the originators of electric jazz - Miles Davis, Weather Report, etc. But bands like Soft Machine still brought something to the table that those guys didn't or couldn't. Alhough they had developed some pretty good jazz chops, they were in essence a rock band playing jazz, not vice versa. This difference manifests in a bit more of a raw edge to their playing - whether it's a particularly ramshackle drum fill by Wyatt, or Ratledge going for a little extra distortion on his organ freakout, or bassist Hugh Hopper cranking up the fuzz. There's a rock energy here that I really responded to in my rock-centric youth.

Dan:

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Steve had gotten into the Softs because I don't recall ever playing their albums while he was young. I added Third and Fourth to my collection within a few years of their releases (1970 and 1971). I came to them as a jazz lover, having read rave reviews in the jazz press. The early 70s were challenging times for jazz heads like me, but I thought I would "get with the times" and not wait for the resurrection of John Coltrane. I was impressed by this adventurous band of Brits who clearly knew how to play and, as Steve notes, felt like a rock band too. Elton Dean had solid jazz credentials, as demonstrated on two of his jazz albums in my collection: a quartet session (All the Tradition, 1990) and a large band (Newsense,1998). But those jazz albums do not resemble the wonderful world of Soft Machine. 

Emerson Lake & Palmer - Tarkus (1971)

Steve:

Although I was already aware of both Pink Floyd and King Crimson in my high school years, I didn't have any real awareness of "progressive rock" per se. I had a few Genesis albums, but they were all from the post-Steve Hackett period. To me, Floyd and Crimson were just another form of classic rock. However, once a friend introduced me to ELP, it became clear that this was part of a strain of early 70s music that stood apart from classic rock, with different goals. For ELP, the goal was to combine the complexity of classical music with the visceral excitement of rock. At this time in my life, I was studying music theory in college and loved the challenge of following such harmonically and rhythmically complex music while still "getting my rocks off".

Tarkus, the band's second album, is my favorite. While the first album relied mostly on piano and organ for its keyboard arsenal, this second album introduced some crazier synthesizer sounds, while still keeping the album grounded in earthy rock/soul-based textures on the whole. Despite the high-minded conceptual aspirations of the band at this point, they still rocked in a way that might fool you into thinking this is just a band of mates jamming together - much like the concurrent The Yes Album sounds to me. 

The title suite occupies all of side 1, and it remains one of my favorite prog epics to this day. When I first discovered ELP, I recall I was more blown away by their over-the-top later efforts such as "Karn Evil 9" and "Pirates", but the earthier strains of "Tarkus" have aged much better. Besides the more approachable instrumentation, the thematic development in this piece is both felt on a gut level and also reveals its complexity and pithiness upon close theoretical examination. While Greg Lake's vocal sections ("Stones of Years", "Mass", and "Battlefield") provide the suite's most accessible moments, the interstitial keyboard pieces between these songs develop a common musical theme in various meters and modes, giving the entire piece a cohesion that one cannot miss.

A suite this great practically guarantees a great album even if side 2 is garbage, but the flip side holds up well too. "Bitches Crystal", "Infinite Space", and "A Time and a Place" are all excellent tracks. "Are You Ready Eddy?" and "The Only Way" are relatively weaker spots, but nowhere near as terrible as some critics have made them out to be. And even if they were, this would still be ELPs best album, as strong as it is on the whole.

Dan: 

Unlike Steve, I had room for only one ELP album in my collection - the self-titled first album with "Lucky Man" on it. However, I did see them perform in a campus concert in the early 1970s. Three acts performed at the concert: Cactus, Livingston Taylor, and ELP. Cactus was LOUD!!! Almost comically so, I thought. When Taylor took the stage with his acoustic folk-oriented set, the crowd rudely demanded that he play LOUDER!!! I was appalled. Finally, ELP took the stage for one of their grand performances, complete with Keith Emerson's antic of pulling his organ over on top of him. And, yes, they were LOUD!!!

I can't explain why I avoided the later ELP albums, especially since I liked the first one. I am now in a self-guided ELP listening program beginning with Tarkus. I understand Steve's point about its 7-part title suite. The lyrics are nicely obscure - critical but not preachy - and they fit well with the instrumental parts (which seem to me to be the essence of ELP). The other tunes are satisfying too, except for the 1950s-styled closer "Are You Ready Eddy?" which does not fit with the rest of the album. Apparently, it was an in-joke to salute their engineer Eddy Offord. (Why doesn't anybody learn that in-jokes aren't as funny as they imagine?) A better joke is the anti-religious "The Only Way," which is first played in conventional rock mode, followed by Emerson's ironically churchy organ.

I enjoy hearing such a variety of keyboards played by a true virtuoso. From piano to synth to Hammond B-3 to pipe organ, Emerson knew how to deploy keyboards to fit the band's messages. Building a whole band around organ was rarely attempted outside of classical and jazz music, but here it succeeds. Greg Lake's poignant vocals understandably echo his major role in King Crimson. Overall, a winner of an album!

Carla Bley and Paul Haines - Escalator Over the Hill (1971)

Steve:

I first became aware of Escalator Over the Hill via the Rolling Stone Record Guide. This semi-complete guide to record albums released as of the early 1980s was my primary source of new music to seek out during those formative early teen years. I had to learn to make allowances for the publication's questionable tendency to trash bands that were obviously awesome (The Doors, The Moody Blues) but scorned them as too pretentious. I quickly learned that I liked pretentious bands! When I read that something was "self-indulgent", I went right to the store looking for it.  

I noticed an entry for Escalator Over the Hill (the only Carla Bley album reviewed in the book, probably because she's primarily known as a jazz artist) that earned the top rating of five stars and was described in a way that sounded like the most self-indulgent, pretentious album in history. You can be sure I was intrigued. A triple LP avant-jazz-rock-whatever conceptual extravaganza? I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

When I finally did (it wasn't easy), it was everything I had hoped for and more. Dozens of different musicians were used in half a dozen different combinations covering a plethora of musical styles - big band jazz, psychedelic rock, avant garde drones, show tunes, drunken cabaret jazz, and a bewitching musical mode that sounds like what hallucinating in the desert must feel like. All of this provides the backdrop for a thoroughly surreal libretto and plot that doesn't follow a story line as much as it creates disturbing images in the listener's head. These images get progressively more disturbing as the album unfolds, until the album virtually implodes into itself by the end. 

Wow. Highly recommended to the adventurous.

[For my more in-depth review of this album on Progarchives.com, visit  CARLA BLEY Escalator Over the Hill (with Paul Haines) music review by HolyMoly (progarchives.com) ]

Dan: 

I strongly encourage anyone curious about this album to read Steve's full Progarchives review. It's knowledgeable, thorough, and helpful - at least it was to me. I've known about Carla Bley since the 1960s when I obtained Gary Burton's A Genuine Tong Funeral LP (RCA, 1968). Bley composed and arranged the "Dark Opera Without Words," as the subtitle indicated. In many ways Escalator follows logically after Genuine Tong Funeral. The jazz charts on both are novel and off the wall, even for this period of radical experimentation. Obviously, Escalator adds the words missing from Funeral, and that's where many critics shy away from it while others (like Steve) are drawn in. I'm somewhere in the middle: admiring the bravado on display and digging the jazz arrangements while remaining confused about the libretto. I'm not fond of disturbing dreams, especially my own, but artistic license being what it is, I admire artists and fans who understand the point of it better than me.

Carla Bley entered Down Beat's hall of fame in 2021. She is at her best composing and arranging thematic material such as Escalator, her own band's live performances, and all of Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra recordings (especially Ballad of the Fallen). I've written reviews of three of her 1980s albums in my jazz blog: MORE FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1980s (jazzinthe80s.blogspot.com). Most recently, she has focused on the trio format featuring her piano, bassist Steve Swallow, and saxophonist Andy Sheppard. Both the large and small group formats are ideal settings for her sublime artistry. 

Fleetwood Mac - Future Games (1971)

Steve:

As a sophomore in college, my interest in prog was ramping up quickly. My friend Rob and I even regularly made time for listening to mind-blowing music at high volume with the lights out while lying down (a listening session we nicknamed "Loud/Reclined/Now", or LRN for short). While our peers jammed out to Michael Jackson's Bad or Guns 'n Roses' Appetite for Destruction, we could be heard blasting early Floyd, Genesis, ELP, Jethro Tull and Steve Hackett. We couldn't have guessed that Fleetwood Mac would soon take their place among these bands. 

A dorm-mate of ours purchased Then Play On (1969), the swan song of the original incarnation of Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green at the helm, and Rob and I both listened with interest. This album quickly became a favorite of ours, and I still consider it one of the finest examples of "progressive blues" out there (along with The Turning Point by John Mayall and Raw Sienna by Savoy Brown). Rob and I became curious about what other great Fleetwood Mac albums might be out there. Soon thereafter, on the same day I bought Kiln House (1970) and he bought Future Games (1971). I was not too happy with Kiln House, with original guitarist Jeremy Spencer dominating the album with songs that were not to my liking. Future Games, however, was a revelation, and we quickly forgot about Kiln House and listened to Future Games regularly for the next couple of years.

Danny Kirwan (guitar, vocals) was comfortably in control - his three long compositions defined the tone of the album, stretching out his folk-rock style into long languid pieces with sweet harmonies and expressive cries of low-key guitar leads - a prog-rock CSN, if you will. Future hitmaker Christine McVie also contributed strong songs with her warm alto voice, and newcomer Bob Welch surprised everybody by upstaging both Kirwan and McVie with the bewitching 8-minute title track, which he would not top until "Hypnotized" two years later. 

Most reviews I've seen of Future Games describe it as boring, weak, or (at best) transitional. These reviews usually follow the narrative that the band was either impatiently waiting for Buckingham and Nicks to show up (fulfilling the band's destiny as classic rock/pop giants) or lamenting the loss of Peter Green (never recovering from the sad decline of their fearless visionary leader). This kind of critical alignment mirrors that seen with Pink Floyd reviewers - either discounting their transitional period in anticipation of the "arrival" of Dark Side of the Moon or whining about how the band died after Syd Barrett went to la-la land. In both cases, I argue strongly that the relatively unheralded middle period, that search for a new identity and a more successful approach, resulted in very interesting music - particularly of interest to fans of progressive rock. Progressive rock was a lot about the "search" anyway, wasn't it?

Dan:

Although memories tend to blur, I believe my first exposure to Fleetwood Mac was on a visit to Germany in 1978. Our work group was hosted by one of its members, who asked what I'd like to hear on his stereo. I noticed a copy of Fleetwood Mac and requested it. It made no impression on me as the conversations drifted to other topics. Within a year or so, I heard Bare Trees (1972), the follow up to Future Games, on the FM. It made a stronger impression. 

After the release of Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, it was hard to escape the cavalcade of hits, and I actually grew to dislike them. "Don't Stop" and "Go Your Own Way" seemed to play constantly, as did "Rhiannon" and "Landslide." I have to admit to never liking Stevie Nicks' vocals very much. Christine McVie struck me as cooler and less mannered.

At some point, my FM source for rock music changed from playing noontime albums to playing compilations. The Fleetwood Mac hour on my cassette proved to be key to a new understanding of the band. Some of the deeper cuts really stood out for me, especially Christine McVie's songs and vocals. Tracks from the maligned Penguin and other earlier albums convinced me that I had judged the hitmakers unfairly. Beneath the overplayed hits lay extraordinary gems like "Emerald Eyes," "Hypnotized," "Child of Mine," and "Spare Me a Little of Your Love." 1970-1973 was the best period of the band for me.

Future Games has no "filler" songs or goofy experiments. My favorite song is "Sands of Time," but all are great for the reasons Steve writes about. I appreciate his loaning me the CD long ago. I later bought the LP and now have a hi-rez download in my digital library. 

King Crimson - Lizard (1970)

Dan:

Steve told me recently that Lizard was Robert Fripp's least favorite King Crimson album. Fripp hated it, and so did the band. The lyrics were preposterous and the music a jumble of "jazz musicians" (what could possibly be worse?). Fripp was keen on discipline, so much so that he named a 1981 album Discipline. Lizard lacked discipline, which for Fripp spoiled the group's ambitious third album. 

I can understand his disappointment. Lizard surely has curious lyrics, and the themes are more pretentious than either of the first two albums. The jazz jumble is less of an issue for me, although their playing appears to be stitched together rather than played as an ensemble. But overall, I believe that this flawed album is redeemed by its finest moments, and many voices in cyberspace agree with me.

Side 1 (tracks 1-4) includes a series of songs with odd themes: "Cirkus (Including Entry of the Chameleons)," "Indoor Games," "Happy Family," and "Lady of the Dancing Water." "Cirkus" makes the biggest impact musically. It's an unsettling, threatening description of a circus as a dangerous place - a "pandemonium seesaw," as the lyrics proclaim. Compared to "Cirkus," the next two songs are merely cynical portraits of family and domestic life. Relief comes with the gentle "Lady of the Dancing Water," which resembles the pretty songs from the two preceding albums. 

Side 2 is what I really like about this album. The suite named "Lizard" consists of four parts. The first of these is sung by Yes vocalist Jon Anderson, the perfect voice for this assignment. Again, the lyrics are complicated and arcane, but Anderson makes it all sound like a safe fantasy. Even the Medieval ritual of staking of a lizard by the throat seems okay, given the positive vibe of the music. The second part, "Bolero - The Peacock's Tale," is a delightful instrumental that deserves careful attention. It's where "those jazzmen" create a magical soundscape, despite the stitching. A wind player named Robin Miller makes the biggest impression with his oboe solo, which segues into an English horn solo by the same artist. (This is how I know these sections were stitched together at the editing board.) No matter, the effect is beguiling. Eventually the other horns join in for "Bolero's" triumphant ending.

"The Battle of Glass Tears" consumes the next 11 minutes. It's a bit like "Devil's Triangle" from Poseidon. I don't usually pay much attention to it, given that I'm still marveling at "Bolero." Perhaps that is one of the problems with epic suites - they overwhelm an album's more appealing, shorter songs. 

Steve:  

Here, as with In the Wake of Poseidon, King Crimson was only barely a band at this point, careening uncertainly through different players and several musical approaches in an exploratory phase that would finally solidify with 1973's Larks' Tongues in Aspic. But as was the case with Pink Floyd's exploratory period (1968-1972), this strange uncertainty resulted in some of the band's finest and most unpredictable music. Lizard remains a favorite of mine for many of the same reasons Dan spelled out above, especially the "Bolero" section, which doesn't get much mention (being only one section of a suite), but it should - it's an eye opener. 

As for the band hating the lyrics, I'm thinking mainly of Gordon Haskell, the bassist/vocalist who was recruited for this album (he also sang lead on "Cadence and Cascade" from the prior album). At the end of "Indoor Games" you can hear him break into an extended fit of goofy laughter, which they decided to keep for the final mix for some reason. He was the one about whom I'd heard stories about his issues with the lyrics. Perhaps on the other takes he broke into angry protests instead: "What the bloody hell are these words? Where's Sinfield? I'll give him a right knock on the 'ead, I will!"

Jethro Tull - Benefit (1970)

Dan:

I took a long time getting around to Benefit, Jethro Tull's third album, which was sandwiched between Stand Up and Aqualung. In his unassuming way, Steve made it available thinking I might enjoy it if I only listened to it. I was familiar with "Inside," which also appeared on the compilation album Living in the Past that I used to own in the early 1970s. 

After hearing Benefit a few times, I can safely say that it's my favorite Tull album for several reasons. First, It's an intelligent set of songs. My favorite is "Nothing to Say," which addresses an interesting issue in game theory: should I share my knowledge with someone else? Ian Anderson says no:

Everyday there's someone asking "What is there to do?"

Should I love or should I fight, is it all the same to you?

No I say I have the answer proven to be true,

But if I were to share it with you,

You would stand to gain and I to lose.

Oh I couldn't bear it so I've got nothing to say.

Nothing to say.

The reason for this selfish posture appears to be resentment over the misfortune that the questioner has brought upon us. Later, it becomes more apparent that the questioner is a hateful hypocrite:

Climb a tower of freedom, paint your own deceiving sign.

It's not my power to criticize or to ask you to be blind

To your own pressing problem and the hate you must unwind.

So ask of me no answer, there is none that I could give you wouldn't find.

I went your way ten years ago and I've got nothing to say.

Nothing to say.

Now that's a worthwhile lyric! Other gems with equally profound lyrics are "With You There to Help Me," "To Cry You a Song," and "A Time for Everything?"

My second reason is songcraft, with or without lyrics. Benefit rocks hard where necessary but never dissolves into pointless jamming. Everything fits together, whether it's rhythm, flutes and guitars, or thumping bass. This might very well be Jethro Tull's secret advantage over dozens of other bands that are loaded with great players, but which have trouble establishing a sound of their own. 

Finally, I like Benefit's clever album cover art. It shows cutout figures of the band members on stage in front of a window with the same band members looking on from behind. On the album's back cover, you see the same cardboard cutouts from behind, with their names written on their backs. Cute!

As a kid, I'd spend a lot of time studying the sleeves of the 12" LPs that I owned. Not just the notes, but the images as well. I hardly ever do that for CDs because they're so small. However, for the digital albums stored on my laptop computer, I took the pains to find the highest resolution artwork for the 2,400+ albums in that part of my collection. I occasionally scroll through the larger images just for entertainment. 

Steve:

Insights like Dan's above remind me that I miss out on a lot of potential music appreciation by not paying attention to lyrics. "Nothing to Say" is a heck of a piece of writing. Lyric-wise, the Jethro Tull piece to which I've given the most effort is "A Passion Play", a strange tale of the afterlife I'm told; but time and again I can't make heads or tails of it. So rather than dwell on this sad affliction of mine, I'll stick to talking about what I know.

Benefit sits right in the sweet spot of Jethro Tull's finest period, in my opinion (Stand Up through A Passion Play). It was one of the first Jethro Tull albums I bought; I first got interested in exploring the band's catalog after borrowing a copy of M.U. The Best of Jethro Tull from a friend. My favorite song from that compilation was "Teacher", which was included on the US version of Benefit (though not on the UK version, as I later learned; most subsequent reissues have thus omitted "Teacher" as a part of the album proper). I still love "Teacher" and am only mildly annoyed that the version included as a bonus track on the Benefit CD reissue is a different version that I don't like as much. Oh well, I still have M.U.

Other favorites on this album are "With You There to Help Me"; "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me"; and "A Time for Everything" - three very different sounding songs. "With You There to Help Me" could probably have been sequenced a little more effectively - as a vast 6-minute beast of a number, it doesn't feel like it belongs as "side 1 track 1"; it could have worked better as a side closer. It's spacious and psychedelic, using a very standard folk rock chord progression but going all out in the arrangement, with echoed flutes, quiet/loud dynamics, and Martin Barre's wailing guitar leads. "Michael Collins" has the effect of making me wistful and nostalgic, even though I have no idea what the song is about. Maybe it's time I read those lyrics again.