Music Banter - View Single Post - I know what I like: Trollheart's History of Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal
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Old 06-06-2021, 10:03 AM   #212 (permalink)
Trollheart
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All right then. As we head down into what can perhaps be called the bargain basement of 1970 prog rock, all the good albums done and all the decent bands looked at, we’re left with what appears to be a pretty eclectic collection of bands who had one or two albums and split, or who perhaps started as other than prog, changed and then either went back to their original format or folded altogether. I feel these guys are kind of like the unwanted, homeless children, the orphans of the prog world, and while for all I know many of the albums here may be great, I’ve never even heard of any of these people.

Normally I’d be reviewing them under the heading of “Over the Garden Wall”, but that kind of deals more with bands who are or were on the fringes of the prog movement, and I don’t know anything about any of these bands, so I feel they may not fit in there. In which case, I’ve decided to kick off a new section which will look at bands who had one or a maximum of two albums and then just faded away, forgotten by time, or to use a typical nautical phrase

Since, as I say, I know nothing about any of these I’m going to just take them in the order they appeared on Wiki’s list, and on mine. Which gives us this one to get going with.


Album title: Goliath
Artist: Goliath
Nationality: English
Label: CBS
Chronology: Debut and only

Tracklisting: Port and Lemon Lady/Festival of Light/No More Trash/Hunter’s Song/Men/I Heard About a Friend/Prism/Emerge, Breath, Sunshine, Dandelion/ Maajun (A Taste of Tangier)
Comments: Unsurprisingly, this is not easy to track down, but I found it on YouTube so here goes. The only album released by this Manchester outfit, they must have felt a little silly calling themselves what they did when they completely failed to take the world by storm. Was their demise deserved? Let’s see. You know, that was the wrong album. Strange as it may seem, there was a US Goliath too, and they released their self-titled album in 1970. Spooky. Or not. Anyway, the one I’ve found doesn’t have all the tracks, for some reason. I doubt I’ll care, as I listen to “Port and Lemon Lady” which is a kind of psych rock thing with mucho flute and a female vocalist. Yeah. Inevitably, given the flute, comparisons surface between these guys and Jethro Tull. So far, I don’t like either.

You know, I thought the album cover was a bit graphic, a torn off arm resting on the ground, but now I see it’s actually a close-up of a bent cigarette butt. Clever, and possibly the only interesting thing about this album. Well, the next two tracks are missing so we’re on to “Hunter’s Song”, which runs for a worrying ten minutes, and sounds a little jazzy for my liking. Oh well actually it’s getting a bit better. Oh, until she starts singing. I really don’t like her voice. Think she mistakenly sees herself as Janis Joplin or something. Still, I guess you have to give credit to her as one of the few, at the time, female prog vocalists. The basic rhythm and melody of this is pretty decent to be fair, and I could probably enjoy it with someone else singing. As it is, the vocal kind of ruins it.

Gets quite introspective once she shuts her yap, and goes into a kind of slow blues thing, very moody and certainly displays the talents of the guitarist, whose name I won’t bother with as none of these people were ever heard of again. Most likely he ended up selling computers or running for local office, or maybe became a serial killer. But a career in music was apparently never in the cards for any of these people. Which in his case is a pity as - to hell with it, let’s give the nameless guy his name - Malcolm Grundy is a pretty fine guitarist. And while we’re at it, we should also praise Joseph Rosbotham on woodwinds, and make a note that here is a prog band who didn’t use keyboards. Perhaps that accounts for their downfall. Perhaps not. Oh damn she’s back again. It was going so well.

There’s a bit of a somewhat confused beginning to “Men”, lots of honking brass, trundling percussion, sounds a bit disordered and then it looks like it might be turning into a blues boogie. Maybe. Actually yeah, it just picked up a Texas strut sort of thing and it’s rocking nicely now. Wish they’d let someone else sing though. Herself thinks she’s Suzi Quatro now, though the guitar does seem to be emulating Rory Gallagher, which can’t be bad. Sounds a little like the main riff from “In Your Town”. And now the sax fits in perfectly, ripping off a fine solo while she does her thing, and how I wish she would not. Or at least, do it somewhere else.

“I Heard About a Friend” is a slower, sort of mid-paced affair with peppy flute and a nice kind of beat to it, even the singing isn’t too bad here. The extremely oddly-named “Emerge, Breath, Sunshine, Dandelion” has an even stranger opening, almost ambient, before picking up on bright flute and boppy percussion, then it all fades away to a sultry bass line bringing back in the flute. Meh. Thought it might have been an instrumental. No such luck. God, the singing is just truly awful here, while the closer “Maajun (A Taste of Tangier)” kind of sounds like something out of a Sinbad movie, very eastern, very upbeat, very dancy in its way, and very much driven by flute and handclaps. Would be better if she had just shut it and left the guys to it, but no, she has to chant and moan all over it.


Favourite track(s): Hunter’s Song, I Heard About a Friend
Least favourite track(s):
Overall impression: Can’t really see how this is considered any sort of prog. I wonder had they a different singer might they have gone a little further? As it is though, I can kind of see why they failed. Some good ideas, great musicians but maybe paired up with the wrong frontperson? Or maybe it wasn’t her fault - maybe they were just trying too hard to straddle the boundary between psych rock, folk and just failing to reach the closest edges of prog rock.
Personal Rating:

Here, for this section only, I’m adding in a new category, which will chronicle whether or not I believe the band or artist deserved to go further. For the fun of it, and to tie in with the nautical theme of the section, they are:

Davy Jones’ Locker: deserved never to be heard from again, and not surprised that was what happened.

Clinging to driftwood: A possibility that they might have done better had a few small changes been made

Just missed the rescue boat: Something of a mystery why they did not do better

Man overboard! Can’t believe they didn’t make it.

In this case, it’s Clinging to Driftwood.
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