Log #210 - A Heavy Rock Crossword Puzzle Circa 1983

I recently came across an old photo of my album collection from when I must have been about 18 years old. I had laid the albums out in the garden and taken a photo from an upstairs window:

My LP collection - circa 1983?

It's interesting to track my taste through a photograph like this. Considering I only bought my first proper album around the age of 15 (ELO Out Of The Blue on blue vinyl!) I had amassed a decent collection by the time I took my box of records off to Uni. 

From ELO (Face The Music and Discovery lie prominently above) I moved swiftly into heavy metal (Rainbow, AC/DC, Black Sabbath and The Scorpions), and then more considered rock like Led Zeppelin, Santana and Deep Purple, then more synth and spacey rock like Hawkwind and BOC, prog rock like Jethro Tull, BJH and King Crimson, some first excursions into electronics (Tangerine Dream), first singer songwriters (Neil Young - Van Morrison and John Martyn came later) and then finally Krautrock (I can see my first Can album on the top line). 

Like everyone at that time I also had a lot of cassettes (mostly home recorded) as I know there were bands I had discovered by then that don't appear in this photo.

How many of these albums did I reinvest in as CDs later on? Probably about two thirds of them?

This week I've revisited 6 of these albums from my teenage years:

Saga - Worlds Apart

Camel - The Snow Goose
Sammy Hagar - Danger Zone
Barclay James Harvest - Eyes Of The Universe
Jethro Tull - A

Moody Blues - Seventh Sojourn

SAGA

To be fair it's quite hard to listen to some of these albums now. The Saga (5 down 4 across) is a case in point. It was a struggle to get to the end of the album. I just don't have any interest in this sort of keyboard soft rock music any more (and probably only a very fleeting interest at the time - nice cover though). My reaction to hearing Worlds Apart mirrored my reaction to the Styx album I played a few logs ago ie. not positive. 

I fail to see how this music was ever categorised as prog rock. Great cover though, although more recent versions have different artwork.

CAMEL

Nothing wrong with the great Camel and Snow Goose (4 down 6 along) (their third album from 1975) is one of their best. Save for the odd bit of chanting and humming this is an instrumental concept piece displaying the full range of the band's prog rock tendencies and musical talents - keen guitar, melodic flutes, and bubbling keyboards. 

The concept is loosely based on the wartime novella The Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk. Very loosely based really as the album is instrumental, so there were no lyrics, just song titles. Nevertheless the author sued the band for copyright (seems odd really as surely such exposure would only increase his readership). 

Snow Goose has remained in my collection and I know it well, along with their best album in my opinion, Mirage. I see I also had The Single Factor, one of their later albums, at the time of this photo and that might have been a more interesting album for me to revisit - one for next time.

BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST

Eyes Of The Universe (5 down 2 across)- starts of with a gated keyboard rhythm. The best tracks, like this opener, and Capricorn do remind me of Octoberon, personally my favourite BJH album. AOR, or yacht rock if you like, but a good version thereof. 

The Song (They Love To Sing) sounds like Genesis. But then a song like Skin Flicks demonstrates all the schmaltz of the era (a waste of 7 minutes to be fair). The album is redeemed by the final track Play To The World which is classic BJH - an epic moving mellotron drenched ballad.

All in all a pretty good album from BJH, considering they were well passed their best by 1979. Great cover too.

JETHRO TULL

Jethro Tull's A (7 down 9 across) came out just a few months after Eyes Of The Universe. What to think about this? Mmmm, it's almost good. I like the fundamental Tull sound which is still intact - Anderson's voice, the catchy melodies, the harmonies, tinkly piano, guitar breaks, and of course the breathy flute. 

Already having moved on (Songs From The Wood, Heavy Horses) a fair bit from their earlier rock and prog days (Aqualung, Thick As A Brick) the songs on A are not a massive departure from what the band were already doing in the late '70s. Just a little bit more synthesized. 

In fact this album reminds me a lot of the more popular The Broadsword And The Beast album (also in the picture) which followed two years later - possibly their last good album before declining into an '80s mire? I can't comment to be fair having not heard anything post Broadsword apart from Thick As A Brick 2 which I now learn is credited as an Ian Anderson solo record.

My interest waned a bit on side two where there are quite a few throwaway tunes like 4.W.D. and The Pine Marten's Jig.

An odd cover, related (by UFOs?) to the Eyes Of The Universe one come to think of it, and also the recently reviewed Levitation by Hawkwind (also in the photo). Apparently the "A" derives from the fact that the album was originally conceived as an Ian Anderson solo record.

THE MOODY BLUES

 

The Moody Blues never seem to be mentioned in the same breath as other prog rock (and mellotron heavy) bands of the late '60s and early '70s. They were never on my radar like Genesis, King Crimson and Yes. 

There is some nice stuff on Seventh Sojourn (1 down 4 along) and some tracks like When You're A Free Man have elements of Nights In White Satin with some nice acoustic and electric guitar. It's all nicely played and produced but is just a bit too easy listening - and for a 1972 album it even sounds more dated than that when compared to what their rock contemporaries were producing by then.

SAMMY HAGAR

Heavy rocker Sammy Hagar enjoyed a solo career through the late '70s (after leaving rock group Montrose) and early '80s (before joining Van Halen). Danger Zone (5 down 9 along) was released in 1980 becoming his fifth solo album. 

It's exactly what you'd expect - heavy rock guitar in the mould of a Ted Nugent. Nothing too fancy or ambitious - just good old straight forward rock music which hasn't aged as poorly as some of the more progressive music above.

That was a fun trip down memory lane. I'll be returning to this photo for some more listening inspiration in the future.