BLOSSOM TOES: IF ONLY FOR A MOMENT (1969)
1) Peace Loving Man; 2) Kiss
Of Confusion; 3) Listen To The Silence; 4) Love Bomb; 5) Billy Boo The Gunman;
6) Indian Summer; 7) Just Above My Hobby Horse's Head; 8) Wait A Minute.
Is this really
the same band that was ever so clean but two years ago? Looks like somebody decided
to get dirty after all. The drummer is different, but other than that, it's all
the same guys writing and performing the songs — yet apparently, they have
switched to heavier stuff, and I might mean that in reference to chemical
substances, too. No more whimsy, afternoon tea, and music hall; we are going
hard and heavy all the way, and if you want my opinion on what is the closest
prototype of this sound, I'd say... early Chicago. (Incidentally, Chicago did
release their debut LP in April of 1969, and If Only For A Moment dates from July of the same year.) Or any of
those loud, lumpy 1968-69 bands who took after Hendrix but couldn't get their
psychedelia to properly roll, rather
than just rock, and ended up sounding like World War I-era tanks next to Jimi's
elegant cruiser models.
Not only that, but somebody also told them they
had to get serious — everybody's doing it and all, so a proper LP striving for
artistic recognition has to get away from «frozen little dogs» and make a
statement of high social significance. The first song already, as you can tell
by the title, is a sarcastic pacifist anthem ("take this bomb, drop it on
old Hong Kong" — I'm sure they meant "Saigon", but maybe they
got sidetracked by Hoagy Carmichael), and then the «bomb» motive surfaces in a
different, but related, context on ʽLove Bombʼ (which we need to make things
right), and then they also cover a song by Richie Havens, in the name of peace,
love, and understanding. Overall, it's all starting to make sense now.
Unfortunately, this self-conscious
transformation into a heavy blues-rock outfit with psychedelic overtones never
feels honest — there is not a single song here that would convincingly prove
that the Blossom Toes keep on doing, or at least searching for, «their thing».
ʽPeace Loving Manʼ, which was the single, is moderately catchy, but instead of
an alternately horrifying and optimistically soulful anthem to the evils of
war of joys and peace, they end up creating some sort of vaudeville number,
with horrible vocals on the verses
(Brian Belshaw sings them like a terminal stage TB patient with electrodes
attached to his toes) and a chorus that still can't help but carry traces of
merry music hall. Granted, when you throw in the chaotic bridge sections with
«spooky» whispered vocals and shit, the track ultimately emerges as an
intriguing musical freak mutant, but since that could have hardly been the
original intention (Bonzo Dog Band is not
an inspiration for these people), the result is still a failure.
Here is what I really appreciate about the
album: the broken riff of ʽBilly Boo The Gunmanʼ, which, together with the
cowbell, seems like the forgotten grandaddy of Blue Öyster Cult; the little quasi-Elizabethan
guitar dance melody that crops up in the corners of ʽIndian Summerʼ and seems
like the forgotten great-great-uncle of Jethro Tull circa Thick As A Brick; and... that's more or less about it. There is a
lot of different musical ideas scattered around, but they never combine into
anything worth a serious discussion, and the song lengths can be exhausting —
nowhere more so than on ʽLove Bombʼ, an «epic» that takes like millions of
years to build up... to what? A happy carnivalesque chorus that goes:
"What we need is a love BOMB / We don't have any and we need SOME / Easily
operated, purified love BOMB"? It doesn't even matter that these lyrics
stink to highest of heavens (how does one go about purifying a bomb?); it
matters that the chorus in general, music, words, singing, is a laugh rather
than a prayer.
Overall, the transformation is a disaster: at
least ʽPeace Loving Manʼ and ʽLove Bombʼ are so bad they actually give food for
thought and curses, but most of the other songs fall into that most dreadful of
categories — «non-descript» — that condemns the record to total oblivion. Even
the hard-rocking guitar solos feel like second-hand imitations of Hendrix,
Clapton, and the Frisco people, without any success in finding one's own
ground. And even if the songwriting on We
Are Ever So Clean was never all that good, the album's head-spinning
kaleidoscopic programme could easily and harmlessly trick you into thinking
those were great songs — here, gruesomely stretched out song lengths and
repetitive passages could not even provide a decent soundtrack to a
reefer-based experience; thumbs down all the way.
Naturally, the album neither managed to sell
nor become any sort of cult favorite — at which point the best thing that the
poor Blossom Toes could probably do was to dissolve, so they dissolved. From
then on, you could look for Jim Cregan in the ranks of Family (whom he joined in
time to record their last and arguably weakest album, It's Only A Movie), Cockney Rebel (with whom he recorded ʽMake Me
Smileʼ), and finally, Rod Stewart (whom he faithfully accompanied all the way
down to the lowest depths of his career, Camouflage
included). Brian Godding, on the other hand, chose a less flashy pop route and
went on to hone his skills in various jazz and prog rock outfits (even including
Magma, that enigmatic French band, at one point). Which, I should add, hardly
excuses him from the embarrassment of having both ʽPeace Loving Manʼ and ʽLove Bombʼ credited all to himself.
It's actually not the end for Blossom Toes. At least half of the group reformed ca. 1970 and recorded an album under the name of B.B. Blunder, which basically continues along the lines of this record - heavy blues/boogie rock with Music Hall choruses. If anything, the resulting record is actually somewhat of an improvement, although still hopelessly misguided. Here's a sample track for anyone who's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q4WuSCUK2I
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