Trollheart

Once again, much time has passed. I've been busy with other projects, and to be honest I wasn't sure I'd get back to this in the first half of this year, but it's been almost a year now since I last wrote anything in this history, so I've made an effort to get to the end of 1971.

And I thought I'd get things started with this.

Yeah, another band who had just the one album in their career. Why was that?

Album title: Ikarus
Artist: Ikarus
Nationality: German
Label: Plus 4 Records
Chronology: Debut and only
Grade: C
PA Rating: 3.86 (Note: From this on, I’m going to include the rating the album received on Prog Archives, shown as PA Rating)
The Trollheart Factor: 0
Tracklisting: Eclipse: a) Skyscrapers b) Sooner or Later/ Mesentery/ The Raven (including Theme for James Marshall)/ Early Bell’s Voice
Comments: What can I find out about these guys? Well, at least, despite being German, they weren’t Krautrock, which is something. Not that every German prog band was, of course - remember Eloy? But overall, given the sub-genre name, it stands to good reason that if you were born in Berlin, Bonn, Bavaria or, um, some other German city beginning with B - Bad something or other, maybe? Bremen? Hey yeah, Bremen works. Well, anyway, if you were German and wanted to play prog rock the larger percentage of artists seemed to have gone for Krautrock as their prog of choice. These guys didn’t. Maybe that’s a reason why they didn’t last. Or maybe they were just crap. Or badly managed. Or maybe they were great, and it will remain one of music’s great mysteries why they didn’t flourish.

I won’t find out, as there’s little to no information on them, but at least I can make some sort of determination based on their music, as to whether or not they deserved to have more than the one album, which is all they had. One album. Okay, well when PA calls their one and only effort “solid, but not essential”, and awards it a paltry - 3.86? That’s not so bad. And equates on the site to “Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection.” Hmm. Mixed messages here. Time to make up my own mind.

Well at least they have the requisite suite, and perhaps rather unwisely put it at the beginning, so we get fifteen minutes of “Eclipse”, which is broken up into two sections, the first of which, “Skyscrapers”, sounds a bit more hard or maybe psych rock to me but we’ll see. Some good throaty organ breaking in, and what sounds like a harmonica, which is relatively unusual in prog. Fair bit of brass here - flute, clarinet, sax - which possibly is what led the reviewer on PA to liken them to Van der Graaf. Don’t really see it myself, not yet. Nice little acoustic guitar passage now slowing things down, and it sounds like there’s some Hammond in there too. The two parts of the suite are not timed, so I have no idea when one ends and the other begins; if it’s obvious I’ll let you know. Sounds more like Supertramp’s debut album to me now; lot of organ and thick bass. Quite nice really.

Good to see they sang in English, which is certainly a help. Big extended instrumental now and I would have to say this is pretty damn fine so far. Still, the production drops - or at least the level does, drastically, on “Mesentery” (huh?) though it’s only for less than a minute before it gets sorted out and then we have a sort of Queen-style track running on a nice guitar line, it’s pretty cool. “The Raven” then has a very familiar riff in it - oh it comes from Waits’ “Potter’s Field”. Yeah, well probably none of you know that. Well, maybe one or two. I wonder if this is an instrumental? Hardly: it’s the second-longest track at just shy of twelve minutes! Strangely enough, it stops dead after about three minutes, fooling you into thinking the next one is a new track, but it’s not, it’s all part of the one, and the same motif runs through this part too. And here come the vocals.

Oh it’s actually The Raven, the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which the singer recites here against the music. Not terribly audibly it has to be said, but the idea is not bad. The Alan Parsons Project did something similar five years later, but used a vocoder and I’m pretty sure it was very much an abridged version. This seems like it might be complete - no, they’ve jumped to the end, too. Well, who’s going to include the entire thing? I can’t honestly say it works: the idea of the lyric, as such, being so hard to make out, whether intentional or not, robs it of its impact, for me anyway. The music is good, but overall I think this has to be considered a failure. Pity. The album then ends on “Early Bell’s Voice”, which I think is an instrumental on mostly organ and piano. Very nice. Actually, it’s not an instrumental but it is a cool little closer.

I’d have to say on balance this is a very good album, and should really have pointed the way to greater things for Ikarus, but I suppose in the same way as many really good bands just failed to make it through the cluster of new guns pushing to establish themselves in the NWOBHM, and also given that they were living in a country which, at that time, was not exactly known for anything in the line of progressive rock other than Krautrock (Eloy being the exception), maybe they just were in the wrong place at the wrong time? In any case, you know I’m going to say it, so I will. Seems their wings melted and they came crashing down, but I believe that rather than being a process of musical natural selection, here, the lack of success for Ikarus can be seen as something of a tragedy, and a case of what might have been.

Favourite track(s): Pretty much everything really
Least favourite track(s):
Personal Rating: 4.50
Legacy Rating: 1.00
Final Rating: 2.50

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Album title: Barclay James Harvest and Other Stories
Artist: Barclay James Harvest
Nationality: English
Label: Harvest
Chronology: Fourth
Grade: B
PA Rating: 3.75
Introduction: A good album but certainly not a great album, and it’s no surprise to me that few people remember this, or indeed any BJH output. It’s got a lot of good songs - I don’t think I could say any great ones - but it’s all a little too low-key and sort of folk rock.
Tracklisting: Medicine Man/ Someone There You Know/ Harry’s Song/ Ursula (The Swansea Song)/ Little Lapwing/ Song With No Meaning/ Blue John’s Blues/ The Poet/ After the Day
Comments: Pretty dramatic opening in a sort of maybe Beatles Sgt. Pepper way, quite orchestral and stately as “Medicine Man” gets things going, some good vocal harmonies, again though you can see the - mostly justified - comparisons to the Moody Blues here, possibly Procol Harum too. More relaxed and pastoral for “Someone There You Know”, the piano is used very well here as well as the flute, a slightly heavier, almost dirtier sound on “Harry’s Song”, puts me more in mind of the sort of early hard rock of bands like Vanilla Fudge of Badfinger maybe. First time we hear the guitar cutting sharply through and setting its stall out. And I kind of don’t like it; seems somewhat incongruous compared to the two tracks that went before it.

“Ursula (The Swansea Song)” - clever - is more back to the folky side of things, with flute and acoustic guitar, more low-key, and I would say the vocal of Stuart Wolstenholme suits this far better than the rawer, gruffer one of John Lees which we heard on both the opener and “Harry’s Song”. Again the orchestra comes into its own here, “Little Lapwing” keeping things gentle with another nice vocal, this time from Les Holroyd, who sounds a little Glenn Frey-ish to me, and has only one other vocal contribution on the album. The whole thing sounds a shade on the country side of things, but that’s not a criticism. Nice instrumental section there at the end and we stay with Holroyd for “Song with no Meaning” which has a lovely acoustic guitar line leading it.

Really, no complaints about this so far, but by the same token, nothing terribly memorable. Maybe there’s a good reason why people struggle to name even one BJH track? All a little too pass-you-by and innocuous; nothing that reaches out and grabs you by the throat, forgotten as soon as it’s over. Which is a pity, as there’s some really nice music here. But nice music doesn’t necessarily translate to memorable music. “Blue John Blues” is the longest track at just shy of seven minutes, and is driven on a soft piano melody, Lee taking back over the mike and sounding a little like a bargain basement Dylan if I’m honest. It’s a nice song but sounds a little derivative to me. Okay, kicking up now on a powerful guitar and Hammond combination into a cool little blues (duh) tune with some squeaky guitar, though a staggered guitar riff pushes it sadly a little too close to Beatles territory.

You know, despite my somewhat pithy comments concerning the only real rock track as such so far, “Harry’s Song”, I do have to admit that this album seems to suffer from too many gentle, soft and often acoustic songs. I’m not saying it would send me to sleep, and the orchestra works probably the best I’ve heard yet with any prog band, but it could, to be honest, do with a kick up the arse. “The Poet” is another such example: lovely orchestral backing, yearning kind of vocal, this time from Wolstenholme, who will also take the next, and final track, but it does create a more kind of folky/Beatles feel to the music, and it persists pretty much throughout the album. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it boring, and it’s good music, but perhaps a little weak. Let’s put it this way: you’re not going to rock out to this album. “After the Day” doesn’t get much more punchy either. Nice song, some superb guitar and a kind of sense of Floyd before Floyd in there (i.e., from Dark Side of the Moon on) and a good closer, but the same as their previous album, too light and throwaway to make an impression.

Favourite track(s): Everything bar “Harry’s Song”
Least favourite track(s): “Harry’s Song” duh
Personal Rating: 3.0
Legacy Rating: 1.0
Final Rating: 2.0

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Album title: Nursery Cryme
Artist: Genesis
Nationality: English
Label: Charisma
Chronology: Third
Grade: A
PA Rating: 4.41
Introduction: I love this album. Despite its few flaws, it’s Genesis at their height and shows how they have stepped out from the shadow of Jonathan King to produce their own, mostly never heard before sound, and set down some of the precepts of progressive rock itself. It casually gives the finger to radio airplay or the charts, daring, encouraging, luring people into buying the album. Which they, well, didn’t. It sold poorly and barely scraped into the top forty, but who cares about that? This is progressive rock, and if Trespass had shown that Genesis had arrived, Nursery Cryme showed they were still going places.

Tracklisting: The Musical Box/ For Absent Friends/ Return of the Giant Hogweed/ Seven Stones/ Harold the Barrel/ Harlequin/ The Fountain of Salmacis
Comments: One of my favourite early Genesis albums, I’d probably even put it up against Foxtrot, an album which shows the band at their creative best, with the album structured mostly around three major tracks, all weird flights of fantasy. Like all but three Genesis albums (okay, four if you count the final one, but I sort of don’t) there is no title track, but what could be called certainly the signature track, “The Musical Box”, which starts the album off, is the nursery cryme of the title, set in Victorian England and featuring a rather risque story of illicit love, magic and, well, evil. It’s a real adult fairy tale, and it’s not a suite but goes through various changes, so long that it could actually be considered a suite were it broken up, which it’s not. As in all the first few Genesis albums, it’s Peter Gabriel who has control over everything, his voice not always loud but always in command, and on “The Musical Box” he gets to let loose that manic side of him we see sometimes, as we did on “The Knife” and “Stagnation” on Trespass. It’s a powerful, well-constructed song featuring major work by Banks on the synths and with a massive punch at the end.

In contrast to this, “For Absent Friends” is a pastoral, simple little song about two people going to church and missing those who have passed on. You know, it’s all right but after the breath-taking bombast of “The Musical Box”, it’s a serious letdown. A real English countryside, home in time for tea song that really does nothing for me. Luckily it’s followed by another epic, the eight minute “Return of the Giant Hogweed”, which I initially took to be based on John Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids, but have since been shown is actually based on real events. Well, sort of. It’s good fun and it builds up in a way similar to “White Mountain” off the previous album, with again a powerful, chaotic ending.

“Seven Stones” is a nice, if somewhat undecipherable song, with what sounds like orchestration but is of course all Banks, a nice flowing lyrical sort of melody and I think the first use on the album of flute. Genesis’s first song to use humour - if black humour - comes then in the shape (sorry) of “Harold the Barrel”, the darkly satirical tale of a man who goes on the run after upsetting his family and ends up, presumably, taking his own life. Collins shines on this, taking various roles, the whole thing playing out like some sort of comic act on stage. The final descending single piano notes convey the idea of Harold jumping very effectively. “Harlequin” then is a sort of ballad with a medieval flair and some really nice twelve-string, but kind of unremarkable when put up against the epics here. And speaking of those epics…

Feeding into their love of the classics, “The Fountain of Salmacis” takes as its subject an ancient Greek myth which resulted in the idea of hermaphrodites, the only people who literally can go fuck themselves. It comes in on a powerful crash of majestic synth, and goes through many changes over its eight-minute length, ending on a triumphant flourish that not only ends the song but the album, and bookends it really well with “The Musical Box”, essentially two fairy tales beginning and ending the album.

Favourite track(s): Everything bar “For Absent Friends”
Least favourite track(s): Let me think now…
Personal Rating: 5.0
Legacy Rating: 5.0
Final Rating: 5.0

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Album title: Fragile
Artist: Yes
Nationality: English
Label: Atlantic
Chronology: Fourth
Grade: A
PA Rating: 4.41
Introduction: If The Yes Album was the one to break the band, then this was the one that enabled them finally to break the USA, taking them to number four there (and seven in the UK) and bringing in the final piece to the puzzle with the addition of Rick Wakeman, a lineup that would take them through the seventies and several more albums. This album also features for the first time the distinctive Yes logo designed by Roger Dean, the cover also created by the artist who would be so linked with the band.
Tracklisting: Roundabout/ Cans and Brahms/ We Have Heaven/ South Side of the Sky/ Five Percent for Nothing/ Long Distance Runaround/ The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)/ Mood for a Day/ Heart of the Sunrise
Comments: Nice acoustic guitar to start off, and “Roundabout” would become a real Yes standard, bopping along nicely with some sweet bass from Chris Squire and Anderson’s distinctive vocal. The keyboards of new boy Rick Wakeman are all over this, sometimes blasting out in trumpeting arpeggios, sometimes just painting subtle soundscapes behind the guitar or vocal, but always there. More of those close harmony vocals Yes would become known for and identified with and by, something few other bands were doing at the time, and which would be taken up by the likes of Queen. Wakeman introduces himself on “Cans and Brahms”, one of two instrumentals on the album in which he gets to show what he can do with one of Brahms’s symphonies. Apparently he was annoyed that he was under contract to his previous record label and could not write any new material.

“We Have Heaven” starts off with a double vocal, one a repeating one which runs behind the main verse, very short but it’s made up for by the seven-minute-plus “South Side of the Sky”, driven very much on Steve Howe’s grinding guitar riffs until Wakeman’s piano comes in and takes the melody, joined later by vocalise from Anderson, Howe and Squire. Guitar then comes back in to take over and fade out the track. Pretty cool I must say. Not so cool is “Five Percent for Nothing”, thirty-odd seconds of bass, drums and a bit of organ, then “Long Distance Runaround” has a nice sort of mid paced tempo but it’s not really much to write home about, I feel, and it’s quite short, as are the next two tracks. “The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)”segues directly into the previous song and is bass and guitar-driven, probably an instrumental though not marked as one, but the next one certainly is. Okay at the very end there’s some sort of vocal from Anderson. “Mood for a Day” is an acoustic guitar number, again quite short and then we’re into the epic closer.

“Heart of the Sunrise” runs for over eleven minutes, making it, I think, the longest Yes song at that point, opening with a characteristic Bruford attack into Wakeman’s lush organ playing, making almost half of the song instrumental before Anderson comes in with a very quiet vocal, almost inaudible or at least discernable, as the song moves briefly into a kind of slow blues style, then Wakeman punches in with the organ again. And so it goes. Yes have yet, at this point, to really wow me, really take all my attention. I personally don’t get the love many of their albums get, and have yet to find a seventies one that does it for me. But no matter what I think, this was the album that finally launched Yes properly on the world, and from here there was never going to be any question of turning back, as the band went from strength to strength, towards the status of prog superstars.

Favourite track(s): I don’t hate anything, but I really don’t like anything enough to single it out.
Least favourite track(s): The Fish (no I'm not writing it all out again!), Five Percent for Nothing
Personal Rating: 3.0
Legacy Rating: 5.0
Final Rating: 4.0

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Album title: The electric Light Orchestra
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)
Nationality: English
Label: Jet
Chronology: Debut
Grade: B
PA Rating: 3.63
The Trollheart Factor: 10
Introduction: Hard to see how this led to the classic albums we came to know and love. It’s very much all over the place, but that could be due to the two guys wanting to go in totally different directions. Hardly an auspicious beginning though; even if the seeds were there, they were buried pretty deeply.
Tracklisting: 10528 Overture/ Look at Me Now/ Nellie Takes Her bow/ The Battle of Marston Moor (July 2nd 1644)/ First Movement (Jumping Biz)/ Mister Radio/ Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre)/ Queen of the Hours/ Whisper in the Night
Comments: From the first, it’s always been a point of contention as to whether ELO are considered progressive rock or not. Some of their albums undoubtedly reflect prog credentials, such as 1974’s El Dorado and to some extent Out of the Blue from 1978; others clearly do not. This being their first album I find to be mostly a mix of basic rock-and-roll and some elements of perhaps an ELP-style prog, mixing in classical music ideas into rock and pop, and it’s hard to make a real determination. The opener, “10538 Overture” has enough classical/strings in it to give an idea of prog, sure, and with its look forward to the (very far) future might qualify, or that might work against it, but it’s still a good song on what has to be admitted is mostly a pretty mediocre album, which makes it sometimes hard to understand how ELO managed to attract the kind of attention from a record company that they did, allowing them to get their feet on the road to stardom. That fame would not come easily though, or quickly, as we’ll see.

As for this, well “Look at Me Now” is pure Beatles with a sharp, sort of scraping guitar and maybe cello, not sure, but it’s kind of raw compared to the opener, and you can certainly mark the difference between the vocals of Jeff Lynne (on the opener) and Roy Wood here. Then “Nellie Takes Her Bow” is a piano-driven ballad with Lynne back behind the mike, though there’s a really incongruous jam after the first two or three minutes that for me makes no sense at all and really goes nowhere. Typical of the very disjointed nature of this debut album, as if Wood and Lynne, the two co-founders, were constantly pulling in opposite directions. This tug-of-war for control of the band would result in the former leaving before the next album was released and ELO would forever after be Jeff Lynne’s band.

I mean, they even throw in a bit of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”! What’s that all about? Mind you, poor as this song is, it’s a classic compared to “The Battle of Marston Moor”, which is, well, just a mess. Basically it’s a crazy instrumental which uses I think mostly cello and is quite harsh, with some speech - fighting talk, as it were - at the beginning, giving you the idea of watching a Shakespeare play or something. Bloody awful. “First Movement (Jumping Biz)” is an actual instrumental, on guitar mostly, and borrows heavily from Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas”. It’s alright I guess, but it’s quickly forgotten as we get to “Mr. Radio”, an example of the sort of thing ELO would turn out once they jettisoned Wood (hah! Got rid of the dead Wood?) and stopped fucking around. It’s a lovely little semi-ballad with that aching vocal we would come to associate with Jeff Lynne on such classics as “Telephone Line”, “Don’t Walk Away” and “Turn to Stone”. Worth the price of the album alone.

We’re back to nonsense sub-Waits instrumentals with the marching “Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre)” which sounds like something out of an old sixties cop show or something, I have to admit, much as I’m championing Lynne’s contributions here rather than Wood’s, his final one, “Queen of the Hours” does not impress me; I’m just bored by it. Conversely, the closer, sung and written by Wood, “Whisper in the Night” is one of my favourite early ELO ballads, and it’s a great way to close a really fairly so-so and very unbalanced album.

Favourite track(s): 10538 Overture, Mr. Radio, Whisper in the Night
Least favourite track(s): The Battle of Marston Moor
Personal Rating: 2.0
Legacy Rating: 4.0
Final Rating: 3.0

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Album title: Pictures At an Exhibition
Artist: Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP)
Nationality: English
Label: Island
Chronology: Third
Grade: A
Factsheet: Another live album, therefore not eligible for inclusion, to say nothing of the fact that this is a treatment of a classical symphony, so in many ways doesn’t hold as much interest for a prog fan as, say, Tarkus or Brain Salad Surgery. My own aversion to ELP plays a little into this, but I think I’m justified in just mentioning and not reviewing it. I’m not all that familiar with the suite, so I doubt I could even make comments or judgements on how well, or badly, they pulled this off.

Tracklisting: Promenade/ The Gnome/ Promenade/ The Sage/ The Old Castle/ Blues Variation/ Promenade/ The Hut of Baba Yaga/ The Curse of Baba Yaga/ The Hut of Baba Yaga/ The Great Gates of Kiev/ Nut Rocker

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Album title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
Artist: Traffic
Nationality: English
Label: Island
Chronology: Fifth
Grade: C (if that)
The Trollheart Factor: 0
Factsheet: I know virtually nothing about Traffic, other than that Steve Winwood cut his teeth there, but they don’t come across to me as a prog band and as such I have no intention of reviewing this. I will say, that's one cool cover.
Tracklisting: Hidden Treasure/ The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys/ Rock & Roll Stew/ Many a Mile to Freedom/ Light Up or Leave Me Alone/ Rainmaker

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Album title: Waters of Change
Artist: Beggars Opera
Nationality: Scottish
Label: Vertigo
Chronology: Second
Grade: B
Factsheet: Second album from Beggars Opera. No other information.
Tracklisting: Time Machine/ Lament/ I’ve No Idea/ Nimbus/ Festival/ Silver Peacock (intro)/ Silver Peacock/ Impromptu/ The Fox

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Album title: Islands
Artist: King Crimson
Nationality: English
Label: Island duh
Chronology: Fourth
Grade: A
Factsheet: Just the one from KC this year, lazy bastards.
Tracklisting: Formentera Lady/ Sailor’s Tale/ The Letters/ Ladies of the Road/ Prelude: Song of the Gulls/ Islands
Comments:

Believed generally, apparently, to be the weakest of their career up to this point, and I can kind of see why, even though I know little about them. “Formantera Lady” comes and goes without leaving the slightest impression on me. Boring as all hell. ”Sailor's Tale" is a little better, bit of excitement in it, but still nothing much to get excited about. ”The Letters” starts off very low-key and quiet, then explodes into a VDGG hornfest (oooer!) but it's still not gripping me. Yawn. “Ladies of the Road” seems to be nothing more than a boring, annoying attempt at hard rock on an album that doesn't quite know what it wants to be.That leaves us with “Prelude: Song of the Gulls”, which is at least a nice little almost classical instrumental, the first track on this album I've given a shit about. Very enjoyable. Beautiful, in fact. A welcome respite from the tedium this album is weighing me down with.

Well now in fairness the title track iss also very nice. I'm not wild about this third vocalist either (seems he, and everyone else, left after this album anyway) but the sax from Mel Collins is very easy on the ear, and it's a really nice relaxing tune. Overall I’d have to say basically pretty disappointing, though reading about it I had kind of expected this.

Favourite track(s): Prelude: Song of the Gulls, Islands
Least favourite track(s): Everything else
Personal Rating: 2.50
Legacy Rating: 3.00
Final Rating: 2.25

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Album title: Fairyport
Artist: Wigwam
Nationality: Finnish
Label: Love
Chronology: Third
Grade: C
Factsheet: I featured Wigwam in the Over the Garden Wall section for 1970. This is a double album. They did not sufficiently impress me, nor do I see any reason to review this.
Tracklisting: Losing Hold/ Lost Without a Trace/ Fairyport/ Gray Traitors/ Caffkaff, the Country Psychologist/ May Your Will Be Done, Dear Lord/ How to Make it Big in Hospital/ Hot Mice/ P.K.’s Supermarket/ One More Try/ Rockin’ Old Galway/ Every Fold/ Rave-up for the Roadies (live)

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