BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST: LIVE TAPES (1978)
1) Child Of The Universe; 2)
Rock'n'Roll Star; 3) Poor Man's Moody Blues; 4) Mocking Bird; 5) Hard Hearted
Woman; 6) One Night; 7) Taking Me Higher; 8) Suicide; 9) Crazy City; 10)
Jonathan; 11) For No One; 12) Polk Street Rag; 13) Hymn.
Only four years separate Barclay James
Harvest's second live album from their first — that and the unexpected
commercial success of Gone To Earth,
which must have been the decisive factor in the appearance of Live Tapes, a record that is just as
long as Barclay James Harvest Live
and about twice as unnecessary. The actual tracks are a mix of performances
recorded on the 1976 and 1977 tours, and the original album title was to be Caught Live until somebody pointed out
that, once again, this would only help prolong the «poor man's Moody Blues»
curse, as the Moodies already had a Caught
Live + Five to their name. The advice was heeded, and the band eventually
went along with the genuinely original, groundbreaking, and inspirational name of
Live Tapes instead.
This time around, the band has jettisoned its
pre-1974 incarnation output almost entirely, retaining only a somewhat perfunctory
run through ʽMocking Birdʼ as the only link with their «progressive past». The
result is that the setlist now consists only of their derivative art-pop songs
that leave very little space for improvisation, restructuring, or rearrangement
(besides, songs like ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ were already «restructured» in
the first place, so how much further tampering could they stand?). So the only
thing that makes the record worth any of our while is that the live setting
removes some of the problems with extra-glossy production or too much silky softness
in the arrangements on the studio albums.
Concerning the setlist, it is interesting that
not a single one of Woolly's tracks is performed — the poor keyboardist is thus
completely degraded to the role of session player — and that Lees gets a slight
advantage over Holroyd, which is well understandable since it was Lees who was
responsible for writing most of the band's harder-rocking and anthemic tunes,
suitable for an arena-rock setting. As usual, Lees' melodic soloing is practically
always the high point of the performances, and he does get at least one of
those on each song. But the only track that can be seen as a relative
improvement is Holroyd's ʽRock'n'Roll Starʼ: in this setting, it gets a little
more meat on its bones and a little less ground to be accused of soft-rock
bogginess.
From a certain point of view, Live Tapes may act as a decent shortcut
for evaluating the band's entire career in their «silver» period of 1974-77 — most
of the highlights are here, and, fortunately, they do not include such
thorough lowlights as ʽTitlesʼ, and go easy on Holroyd's exaggerated
sentimentalism (only ʽTaking Me Higherʼ manages to break through the arena-rock
filter). But the live setting may be a turn-off just as well — in particular,
the roar of audience approvement that Lees gets after announcing ʽPoor Man's
Moody Bluesʼ as the next song brings on the usual troubled thought on the
elusive nature of good taste... then again, maybe the good gentlemen wre just
happy that, with the Moodies no longer around, somebody was able to go on stage and at least offer a credible
substitute for all the yearning hearts.
you know this is the sort of stuff that got 70s rock such a bad name, not queen, not Pink Floyd, not genesis (well) but lame cheesy bands that promised a lot but never delivered, hell I feel like gobbing in the face of the lead singers face after watching rocknrollstar. I mean you have a double fretboarded guitar...and you do nothing with it.
ReplyDeleteIts all too...mellow, too age of aquarius, too too nice milky tea before bed.
And I thought it was stuff like "Brain Salad Surgery" or "A Passion Play".
DeleteReally, these guys were always a second division band, they never got the attention of punks. The only anomaly in BJH career was their first class success in Germany.
to be fair it was probably the cumulative effect of some overlong albums by the first rank bands resting on laurels (with moments of greatness), hordes of second raters who ten years earlier would have all be sporting beatle haircuts and collarless jackets; and all those bands tiring of the music press and their endlessly repeated inane questioning and the press's reaction to said bands refusal, was to push something different...something novel that didn't involve cod dark ages mythology, or faux science fiction or capes or complex time changes.
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