Berg et Beck Robert Bober

Blow by Blow typifies Jeff Beck's wonderfully unpredictable career. Released in 1975, Beck's fifth effort as a leader and first instrumental album was a marked departure from its more rock-based predecessors…

Blow by Blow typifies Jeff Beck's wonderfully unpredictable career. Released in 1975, Beck's fifth effort as a leader and first instrumental album was a marked departure from its more rock-based predecessors. Only composer/keyboardist Max Middleton returned from Beck's previous lineups. To Beck's credit, Blow by Blow features a tremendous supporting cast. Middleton's tasteful use of the Fender Rhodes, clavinet, and analog synthesizers leaves a soulful imprint. Drummer Richard Bailey is in equal measure supportive and propulsive as he deftly combines elements of jazz and funk with contemporary mixed meters. Much of the album's success is also attributable to the excellent material, which includes Middleton's two originals and two collaborations with Beck, a clever arrangement of Lennon and McCartney's "She's a Woman," and two originals by Stevie Wonder…

After a life-threatening car accident forced him to take an extended break, guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Beck re-emerged in 1971 with a new band, a new album (Rough and Ready), and an attempt to merge a soulful Memphis sound with hard rock. 1972's Jeff Beck Group shows that Beck was already moving beyond his soul-rock hybrid and sowing the seeds for his exceptional mid-'70s jazz/rock fusion work. Jeff Beck Group also served as a precursor to Beck's next project, the blues-soul-rock trio Beck, Bogart & Appice. Produced by Booker T. & the M.G.'s guitarist Steve Cropper, Jeff Beck Group contains "Going Down," one of Beck's best-known tracks and a perennial concert favorite, as well as the album-opening highlight "Ice Cream Cakes." An important, transitional album in the career of this stylistically adventurous guitarist.

Recouping after a car crash and faced with the loss of Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, Jeff Beck redefined what the Jeff Beck Group was about, deciding to tone down the bluesy bombast, adding keyboardist Max Middleton for a jazz edge, then having Bob Tench sing to give it an overblown early-'70s AOR edge. As expected, these two sides are in conflict and Tench can be a little overbearing, but there are moments here that bring out the best in Beck. Namely, these are the times when the group ventures into extended, funk-inflected, reflective jazzy instrumental sections. These are the moments that point the way toward the success of Blow by Blow, yet this remains an unabashed rock record of its time, and it falls prey to many of its era's excesses, particularly lack of focus. Still, there are moments that are as fine as anything Beck played here.

"If the voice don't say it, the guitar will play it," raps Saffron on "Pork-U-Pine," the third track on Jeff Beck's minimally titled Jeff. And he does. Beck teams with producer Andy Wright, the man responsible for his more complete immersion into electronic backdrops on his last outing, You Had It Coming. This time the transition is complete. Beck used electronica first on Who Else!, moved a little more into the fire on You Had It Coming, and here merges his full-on Beck-Ola guitar heaviness with the sounds of contemporary spazz-out big beats and noise.

Before you do anything else with Flash, drop the needle on the last half of “Ambitious,” the album’s chug-a-funk leadoff track. Just as singer Jimmy Hall steps back from the song’s skeletal tune and jackhammer rhythm with a Tarzanlike “yeah!” Jeff Beck’s guitar suddenly shoots up into the mix like a runaway jet, cutting a reckless path through Nile Rodgers’ spit ‘n’ polish production with sawtooth distortion and heat-ray feedback. Then, in a daredevil display of rock-guitar heroics that recalls Jimi Hendrix on Electric Ladyland in his full pyrotechnic glory, Beck yanks his guitar up and down flights of freakish harmonic steps, executes breathtaking suicide dives with his vibrato bar, and claws away at the song’s core riff with angry trills and harsh, scraping leads.

The King’s Consort’s latest foray into the studio brings us a thrilling new recording of Michael Haydn’s Requiem, and reveals the little-known ‘St Ursula’ Mass to be a truly exceptional work. The Requiem was composed in response to tragedy, the death of Haydn’s patron—the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg—providing the official cloak for an outpouring of grief as much inspired by the death of the composer’s infant daughter. In itself the work is a memorable and confident example of the genre, but its deserved fame has been somewhat eclipsed by the many striking similarities between the Haydn and Mozart Requiems; when Wolfgang Amadeus composed what was to be his last—and most famous—work a full twenty years after Haydn’s memorial to the archbishop had been first performed, he doubtless intended it as the highest of praise to his friend that he borrowed melodies, rhythms, scoring, structure … Such points of musicological interest must no longer be allowed to obscure the worth of the Haydn’s original magnum opus.