Available in All colours by One Minute Silence (1998)

One Minute Silence – Available in All Colours (Art courtesy of Alterportal)

REMAIN CALM A few days ago, I bought a signed copy of Available in All Colours, the first album by One Minute Silence in a charity shop. Initially, I hesitated because I am not into rap-rock, but I did like their second LP, Buy Now… Saved Later from 2000, which was more of a rock album. This one tends more towards rap and Rage against the Machine, than the heavy rock of Workhorse Movement.

Opening track, New Dogs New Tricks, has a simple riff that any of the rap rock bands could have played, with rap vocals. The swearing is irritating. There are good percussive lines though. More frantic drumming is heard on South Central, a fast track which breaks for the unaccompanied vocal refrain of, ‘I don’t want to die, never want to die’. It also includes a strange line in, ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary – South Central.’ But, this is an Irish band. South Central could have been catchy, but the swearing comes across as, ‘I’m hard me, I swear a lot.’

Stuck Between a Rock snd a White Face begins with distorted bass, a bit like Faith No More. But, unlike FNM, it is a messy track with different rap sections and a ‘sung’ chorus, ‘Stay down, get back.’ There is a guitar solo and some repeated whining guitar, which is annoying. On A More Violent Approach we have the whole gamut of simple repeated riff, distorted guitar lines, fast rap phrases, nihilistic lyrics, swearing and frantic drumming. There is the much repeated line of, ‘Where there’s life there’s dope,’ which sounds like a bluesy sample, but may just be the band.

By Norfuckinmality I feel I have heard the entire One Minute Silence canon. It begins with the words ‘Good Christian’, which are followed by, ‘Don’t You Just Love it,’ in an Irish accent. Then we get shouts of what barely constitute a lyric, mixed with a heavy rhythm section. For Want of a Better World is more of the same, with some interesting instrumental passages wasted. It is only halfway through the album, but track 7, I Think Therefore I’m Damned, should be the last. It is quite heavy, but goes nowhere.

There are more shades of FNM’s Billy Gould-style bass on Remain Calm and the title track. The latter also including a role call of the characters listed on the (quite effective) album cover in test tubes(1), but the lyrics make no sense. Brainspiller seems to be an Americanised tale of a serial killer captured on national TV. A Waste of Things to Come and And Some Ya Lose are monotonous, while album closer Pig Until Proven Cop has at least the funny pig noises to rescue it from the same fate – it becomes very intense towards the end.

Overall, Available in All Colours is disappointing and lacks the concise hard rock approach of the following album. Guitarist Chris Ignatiou shares Tom Morello‘s annoyingly pointless habit of trying to make his guitar sound like a turntable. Vocalist Brian ‘Yap’ Barry, subjects us to too much rap and the lyrics are over-simplistic and contradictory. Gibraltarian Glen Diani on bass guitar and Englishman Eddie Stratton on drums, make a good fist of their parts, but they are wasted. Available in All Colours may suit Rage Against the Machine fans, but is not for me. It will probably find itself back on the charity shop shelf.

(1) The album cover is by English fantasy artist Anne Stokes, whose work is often quite beautiful: http://www.annestokes.com/the-artist/

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Boston by Boston (1976)

Boston - More Than a Feeling single sleeve (1976) (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

MORE THAN A FEELING
When I was about seventeen, I worked with someone who had a contact in the local CBS factory and, for a price, they got me a cassette of Boston‘s first album when it was released. To fit the tracks equally on the two sides of the tape, the track listing is different to that of the vinyl, so it became what I was used to hearing. Later, when I obtained the CD, I had to resequence the playing order for comfort. The cassette order is what I have used for reviewing the album in this blog entry. The quality of the recording was and remains high, with Tom Scholtz‘s sharp production and the Dolby noise reduction on the tape. Nearly forty years later and the cassette still sounds good!

Boston’s greatest hit, More Than a Feeling, fades in with a gentle jangling guitar and Brad Delp‘s voice on the first verse, but soon steps up after the singer announces,’I closed my eyes and I slipped away.’ After which, Tom Scholtz plays a solo, the pace increases and the hand claps drive the song towards the first chorus. The pattern is repeated similarly for the second verse/chorus until Scholtz plays his solo proper. With the third verse and chorus, the track fades out. It seems a predictable pattern, but Scholtz’s crystal clear production and pure sounding guitar are superb, while Delp’s glorious voice is the revelation here. The song is about hearing a song and getting more than a feeling, such as the distinct memory of, ‘I see my Mary Ann walk away.’ One could say the same of this track and album; while it creates an agreeable feeling when listening, afterwards there remains an indelible impression of the whole collection.

Acoustic guitar, with a rock ‘n’ roll feel, opens Peace of Mind, becomes an electric guitar line and is followed by harmony guitars. Again Delp lifts the following verse/choruses above the ordinary with his fantastic phrasing, but Sholtz’s guitar parts and instrumental passages constantly change throughout the song. There are hard rock riffs a-plenty, with piercing notes cutting across them. Peace of Mind was the third single from Boston (the second being Foreplay/ Long Time) and was less successful than its predecessors, probably because it was heavier.

Smokin‘ is a straight rock ‘n’ roll track with some funky keyboards and tells of the band being lively and exciting, or it may be about listening to music while smoking marijuana. Something that Boston are very good at is incorporating biographical elements into their songs. At about halfway, Smokin‘ develops a strident keyboards/ guitar passage before the vocals return and it ends. Scholtz demonstrates his skill at using seemingly simple dynamics with complex playing. Let me Take You Home Tonight is the first slow-ish track and is about taking a girl home and hoping to show her a bit of ‘sweet delight’. What could be a bit crass, actually turns out to be beautiful with Delp’s yearning voice and Barry Goodreau‘s inventive lead guitar. His solo has some Allman Brothers‘ sounding guitar, plus a host of others.

Side two of the cassette begins with Rock and Roll Band, representing more of the autobiographical material, along the lines of, ‘Well, we were just another band out of Boston/ On the road to try to make ends meet.’ It is one of the best songs of its type and gives the impression that this is a real band that worked their way around the clubs, while perfecting their playing technique. Rock and Roll Band goes on to give an account of their signing by the men in suits, but avoids the particular details of the contract.

On Hitch a Ride, Brad Delp follows the guitar with his voice to give a background of the city, before the pace increases and he declares, ‘Gonna hitch a ride/ Head for the other side/ Leave it all behind.’ His chilly phrasing and the harmonies paint an effective picture of having to leave the cold of New York in the winter. Scholtz introduces another organ solo, before launching into harmony guitar solos. An impression is given of more than one guitarist playing across each other, but it is unlikely to be the case – it is all Scholtz. The handclaps also make a return.

Something About You has a number of lead and harmony vocal parts, all by Delp. Like Scholtz, he is able to appear as lead performer and a number of backing musicians. Foreplay is a lengthy instrumental passage of guitars and keyboards. Fran Sheehan plays bass and stands out, as does Sib Hashian‘s drumming. After a quiet keyboard passage at around two-and-a-half minutes, a sustained guitar note ushers in all the usual elements, Brad Delp’s delivery, multi-part harmonies, yelps, keys, and eventually plenty of soloing from Goudreau. In 1976, Long Time made a good closing song with Delp telling us, ‘Well I’m takin’ my time, I’m just a movin’ along/ You’ll forget about me after I’ve been gone.’ However, following his tragic death in 2007, he could not have been more wrong. The greatest American hard rock singer was gone forever.

Another irony is that Boston were not the established band they appeared in their ‘personal narrative’ lyrics and polished instrumentation. Scholtz and Delp signed a deal with Epic around the time their band split, so they quickly recruited Barry Goudreau on guitar, bassist Fran Sheehan and drummer Sib Hashian to create a group which could play the songs for a record company audition to finalise the contract. The label wanted Scholz to rerecord his demo tapes in a professional studio, but he reworked them in his own basement studio. Original drummer Jim Masdea played drums on the track Rock and Roll Band. Later, Delp added vocals and the album was mixed by John Boylan. It was only at this stage that the latter and engineer Warren Dewey suggested the name Boston. According to the Remaster 2005 notes, Sib Hashian played drums, Fran Sheehan played bass guitar on Foreplay and Let Me Take You Home Tonight, while Barry Goudreau added lead guitars to the same tracks and played rhythm guitar.

NOTES
As with BOC’s Tattoo Vampire from Agents of Fortune, Boston’s Foreplay/ Long Time was to be reviewed as part of my ‘From the Alan Freeman Playlist’ series, but isolating one track from an album again seemed inappropriate. So, the whole album was swiftly reviewed in the available time over two days. I feel in my haste, I have done a disservice to Brad Delp, whom I consider to be the best American hard rock singer of all time. My intention is to later write an addendum to the blog entries up to that, as yet, uncertain date.

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Agents of Fortune by Blue Oyster Cult (1976)

BOC - (Don't Fear) the Reaper/ Tattoo Vampire single sleeve (1976) (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

THIS IS THE NIGHT WE RIDE
Agents of Fortune was described on its release as Blue Oyster Cult‘s most accessible and commercial album, which is true up to a point. Admittedly, it has a very clean clear production with plenty of catchy melodies, but the lyrics are intelligently dark and witty and are delivered with Eric Bloom‘s perfectly matched vocal. Added to this is the outstanding lead guitar work of Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, the range of complimentary keyboards of Allen Lanier(1) and the Bouchard brothers’ propulsive rhythm section. All combine to provide moments of inspired melodic hard rock, which avoid the sticky sentimentality of many bands who were to follow. Much of the credits were not written in stone as Roeser, Lanier and drummer Albert Bouchard all provided lead vocals on some tracks, while Bloom and Lanier were capable guitarists.

The intro to This Ain’t the Summer of Love(2) reminds me of a murky version of The Ripper by Judus Priest. However, this not so much heavy, as grungy some fifteen-to-twenty years before grunge. It serves as a reminder that BOC were no hippy band, but more a dark melodic rock faction. True Confessions is slightly commercial with piano to the fore. BOC’s greatest hit, (Don’t Fear) the Reaper, combines the harmonies of The Byrds with lyrics that sound bright, even if they are marginally sinister. The second half builds up to a guitar solo that was left off the single and is guaranteed to strip the paint from your door. Although written by Buck Dharma and serving as a vehicle for his singing and guitar, credit should go to Albert Bouchard’s drumming and choppy cowbell percussion, which drive the track.

E.T.I. (Exra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is the heaviest piece so far with spacey Hawkwind-like synthesizers and weird sci-fi guitar sounds, along with more of those Byrds harmonies. ETI segues directly into Patti Smith‘s breathy-voiced intro to Vera Gemini. She adds background voices throughout to a heavyish track with a great off-kilter bass riff. The lyrics demonstrate the brilliance of BOC’s songs and the lead guitar is as sharp as ever. Buck Dharma’s incisive guitar kicks off Sinful Love and is all-pervasive on another heavy song, with more terrific lyrics which dovetail perfectly with the instrumentation, ‘I love you like sinful love, but I won’t be your pigeon.’ By now BOC are on a roll and Tattoo Vampire is one of the best tracks on what is a flawless album, beginning with one of the best and strangest drum intros you will ever hear. Joe Bouchard‘s bass playing gives the track its dynamism, showing the brothers were an underrated rhythm section. vocal delivery of the alliterative lyrics makes for one of the most memorable hard rock songs of the seventies.

Opening track of the second side of the vinyl Agents of Fortune, Morning Final, reveals the overtly melodic aspect of BOC with its swirling organ, chiming piano, tubular bell, and wah-wah pedals. The only weak part of an otherwise perfect album is the blatantly contrived voice of the subway newspaper seller, but nothing is completely perfect. Tenderloin continues the melodic theme, a gentle song with a theme from ELP‘s Knife Edge, but about a district of a city where vice and corruption are prominent. Debbie Denise is beautiful with its interlaced mellotron and guitar, as well as vocal harmonies. It has several hooks to emphasise the cliched point about the girl left at home by the touring rock star, ‘I was out rolling with my band,’ and, ‘Debbie Denise was true to me-ee-ee.’ Buck Dharma’s guitar tone is sublime in the closing stages of the song. His playing is often criticised for fading, just when it gets interesting, and this is a case in point.

My version of Agents Of Fortune (Japan SICP-30662, 2014) has the song Fire Of Unknown Origin as a bonus, because, according to the excellent liner notes, it is an outtake from this album’s recording sessions. It reappeared as the title track of one of the band’s best albums after Agents. The outtake has a number of superb ‘sounds’ and deserves to be on this album. Sally and Dance The Night Away were demoed for Agents although not used – apparently versions were later recorded and released by The Brain Surgeons and Jim Carroll respectively. Sally is typically full of melodic tones, feeling like a cross between Bob Marley, The Shadows and the song Bony Moronie; it shows a lot of promise never fully realised. Dance Away is a John Lennon-ish piece and the only inferior track on the album, but it is a demo and who knows what it could have become? The first part of the demo of Don’t Fear the Reaper, with bongos, sounds less like The Byrds and a lot like America. It is different to the hit, but is no less wonderfully atmospheric, although the final section featuring the guitar solo seems a bit tacked-on.

Production was by the team of Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman, with David Lucas. If ever there was a fully consistent rock album with quality songs, strong vocals and shimmering instrumentation, it was Agents of Fortune. Possibly the only album to match Blue Oyster Cult’s effort was Boston‘s first album; that, however, is another story.

NOTES
As part of my policy of swift writing, this review took about two days on-and-off, which is the blink of an eye by my usual standard of weeks, months or even years. It started as just a post on Tattoo Vampire for my ‘From the Alan Freeman Playlist’ series, but isolating one track from Agents of Fortune seems inappropriate somehow. Stuart Maconie, in his biography, listed a music journalist’s particular skills as, ‘Taking the piss, reviewing at speed and taking pop music way too seriously’ (Cider with Roadies, p.229). So, I have got to increase my writing speed, whether I like it or not.

(1) Allen Lanier, a co-founding member of Blue Öyster Cult, tragically died on 14th August 2013. The keyboard player and guitarist, who was 67, succumbed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as a result of smoking. BOC guitarist Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, speaking of the habit in Rolling Stone said, ‘It wasn’t a big surprise, but it feels like the circle is broken.’
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/blue-oyster-cult-co-founder-allen-lanier-dead-at-67-20130815
(2) BOC made no secret of the fact that inspiration for the riff of This Ain’t the Summer of Love was borrowed from Ascension Day by Third World War. It can be heard on: YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhKeMc8mQRg

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