BAD COMPANY: BURNIN' SKY (1976)
1) Burnin' Sky; 2) Morning
Sun; 3) Leaving You; 4) Like Water; 5) Knapsack; 6) Everything I Need; 7)
Heartbeat; 8) Peace Of Mind; 9) Passing Time; 10) Too Bad; 11) Man Needs Woman;
12) Master Of Ceremony.
Apparently, this album was recorded so quickly
after Run With The Pack that they
even had to delay the release a few months — so as not to let two records
compete on the charts at the same time. But what am I saying? Compete? Only in terms of whichever one
manages to bore the maximum shit out of you. And by now, even the fans were
getting tired: Burnin' Sky peaked at
#15, ten positions below Run With The
Pack, and its only single of any importance (the title track) went no
higher than #78. For a band that placed 100% of its faith in record sales, the
sky must have been burnin' indeed.
But then again, what else do you expect from a
record that allows itself to build a seven-minute long track on a four-note
bass riff? ʽMaster Of Ceremonyʼ may feature plenty of absent-minded organ
punching, a distraught, echoey Paul Rodgers vocal that seems to betray traces
of pot, and even an occasional sax solo or two, but they are just fooling you:
it is really all about the «doo-dum...
doo-dum! doo-dum... doo-dum!» Nazi
torture assault on your brain. Seven bleeding minutes of a pseudo-funky,
pseudo-gritty pseudo-jam whose only purpose is to let you know: «Yes, we can make long improvisations that are
every bit as minimalistic as our singles!»
The rest is divided more or less equally
between rote, unmemorable, trivial rockers and rote, unmemorable, trivial
ballads. The title track, believe it or not, is also based on a four-note riff that is nearly the equal of ʽMaster
Of Ceremonyʼ, and it happens to be the hookiest thing on the whole album, with
Ralphs' electronically treated solo briefly reminding the listener of the
existence of such a thing as «danger». But ʽLeaving Youʼ, ʽEverything I Needʼ,
ʽMan Needs Womanʼ, etc. — does anybody need to hear these songs even once? Trust me, the music inside is
about as appetizing as the mega-inventive titles.
Straining my already tired mind, I can perhaps
acknowledge that there is a bit of pretty acoustic picking on ʽMorning Sunʼ,
and the joint effort of the phasing effect between verses and the pastoral
flute interludes is enough to at least recognize the song as something on which
these guys might have worked, meaning
it at least creates an atmosphere (in comparison, something like ʽPeace Of
Mindʼ doesn't even begin to create one — just blunders about in a mid-tempo
puddle of generic country-pop pianos and electric guitars).
Come to think of it, I may be slightly
downplaying the band's will for change. There is really a noticeable increase
in all sorts of instrumentation that is not hard rock guitar: folksy acoustic
melodies, pianos, saxes, even synthesizers (including synthesized strings).
None of which helps, unfortunately, because the basic ideology and style
remains the same: SMUT (Simple Music for the Undemanding Toiler). Sometimes I
think that the job must have really been a hard one — the guys had so many
things to unlearn about their
playing, I almost feel like pitying them. However, not even this kind of pity
should stay our thumbs
from going down.
This is an album that was born
begging for a thumbs down.
are you reviewing allo darlin's latest album?
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