Surprieze 1973

Quincy Jones followed up Smackwater Jack and his supervision of Donny Hathaway's Come Back Charleston Blue soundtrack with this, a mixed bag that saw him inching a little closer toward the R&B-dominated approach that reached full stride on the following Body Heat and peaked commercially with The Dude. That said, the album's most notorious cut is "The Streetbeater" - better known as the Sanford & Son theme, a novelty for most but also one of the greasiest, grimiest instrumental fusions of jazz and funk ever laid down - while its second most noteworthy component is a drastic recasting of "Summer in the City," as heard in the Pharcyde's "Passin' Me By," where the frantic, bug-eyed energy of the Lovin' Spoonful original is turned into a magnetically lazy drift driven by Eddie Louis' organ, Dave Grusin's electric piano, and Valerie Simpson's voice…

Mirkwood were from Dover, Kent, in England. They played psychedelic rock with two guitars and a thought-provoking text. They owed not only to their musical abilities, but also to their capacity of transforming new ideas into music that they were among the leading bands in Kent. Their one and only LP was recorded on 17 January 1973. It still was released in the very same year in a number of only 99 pieces.

It was designed to be a blockbuster and it was. Prior to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John had hits – his second album, Elton John, went Top Ten in the U.S. and U.K., and he had smash singles in "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel" – but this 1973 album was a statement of purpose spilling over two LPs, which was all the better to showcase every element of John's spangled personality…

Capability Brown had and still have a cult following in UK music history as a "progressive" band, ultimately based on an outstanding piece from their second album, Voice. But largely their range covered mainstream pop music, treated in an "arty", alternative fashion. The band was a six-piece in which everyone sang and played instruments. The line-up consisted of Tony Ferguson (guitar, bass), Dave Nevin (keyboards, guitar, bass), Kenny Rowe (bass, percussion), Grahame White (guitar, lute, balalaika, keyboards), Joe Williams (percussion) and Roger Willis (drums, keyboards).
Ferguson and Nevin wrote the majority of the band's material, and the band also excelled in covers of obscure material (Rare Bird's Beautiful Scarlet and Redman, Argent's Liar, Affinity's I Am And So Are You and Steely Dan's Midnight Cruiser).
Capability Brown's forte was vocalizing…

Grinding Stone is hard to place musically in Gary Moore's early, pretty varied career, but fits somewhere in between Colosseum II and Skid Row. In any case, as well as being his solo debut, it is one of Gary Moore's most overlooked albums. A description of the music could be something as seemingly self contradictory as experimental boogie rock, but on the album Moore explores a number of styles, from the title track's instrumental boogie rock to soulful vocals in "Sail Across the Mountain" and 17 minutes of guitar and keyboard excursions in the surprisingly funky "Spirit." In some ways Grinding Stone gives a taste of what would be heard from Colosseum II a few years later, but if the word fusion can be used here, it is not in the generic sense…

The overriding impression when listening to this album is of the consummate musicianship. Renato Rossert's piano and other keyboard work is superb, but then the other band members all contribute evenly. Even the drums are noticeably good. And the keyboards are sublime in places. Overall, the album would be a good addition to any Prog lover's collection.
Released at a time when Vittorio de Scalzi was not sure if he was able to use the New Trolls name, so the original LP was released simply as N.T. Atomic System. What happened was, shortly after the release of UT at the closing weeks of 1972, there was a split in the band. Vittorio de Scalzi wanted the band to go the prog rock route, which Nico di Palo wanted the band to go the hard rock direction. So New Trolls broke up, and di Palo went to form a group that was to be called Ibis (they had an album released in 1973 with a big question mark on the cover, which the name eludes me at the point)…

Semiramis is one of the most bizarre and talented one-album Italian acts from the 70s. Their prog offer is astonishingly "schizophrenic", since it is founded upon a trategy of brutal contrast between the very heavy (delirious guitar solos and riffs, red hot rhythm patterns) and the realms of acoustic sensibility (acoustic and classical guitars interludes, gentle drops on vibes, string synth layers). The musicianship is top-notch, flawlessly responding to the demands of the complex compositions and fast paced rocky sections. Semiramis' sound is reminiscent (to a certain degree) of Balleto di Bronzo, UT-era New Trolls, PFM and Metamorfosi, though you can tell that Semiramis has got a peculiar musical "insanity" of their own, an "insanity" that allows them to push the boundaries of sympho prog to extravagant levels of tension, contrast and dissonance.