The Shack

Three years after the enervated Here’s Tom with the Weather, Shack return with only their fifth album in an 18-year career. (And that doesn’t even count leader Mick Head’s former band, the Pale Fountains.) The title may name-check Gil Evans and Miles Davis, whose collaborations were the pinnacle of 1950s cool jazz, but On the Corner of Miles and Gil is no more jazz-influenced than any of Head’s previous albums. This is to say, the occasional stray muted trumpet figure or Wes Montgomery-style guitar line floats through these songs, but overall, the late Arthur Lee is a much bigger influence. Love’s trademark commingling of ominous, slightly paranoid lyrics and deceptively pretty melodies has always been Head’s primary starting point, but this album is Shack’s most vital and musically impassioned album in at least a decade.

This British blues-rock group is remembered mostly for their keyboard player, Christine Perfect, who would join Fleetwood Mac after marrying John McVie and changing her last name. Although they were one of the more pedestrian acts of the British blues boom, Chicken Shack was quite popular for a time in the late '60s, placing two albums in the British Top 20. The frontperson of Chicken was not Perfect/McVie, but guitarist Stan Webb, who would excite British audiences by entering the crowds at performances, courtesy of his 100-meter-long guitar lead. They were signed to Mike Vernon's Blue Horizon label, a British blues pillar that had its biggest success with early Fleetwood Mac.
Chicken Shack was actually not far behind Mac in popularity in the late '60s, purveying a more traditional brand of Chicago blues, heavily influenced by Freddie King…

At first glance, this otherwise grand career-spanner seems frustratingly incomplete: What a logistically fastidious, but regrettable decision to ignore leader Michael Head's lone "solo" LP as Michael Head & the Strands, 1997's incomparable The Magic World of the Strands. All longtime fans know that it is 1) really no different from the other Shack LPs, in style or in personnel since both crucial Head brothers were present, and 2) universally regarded as their best record. And Shack have released only five LPs otherwise over their two decades, one of which, the 1988's debut Zilch, was all but disowned as it's banished from here.

Originally released in 1973, but reissued with four extra tracks as part of Sanctuary's Blues Masters series in 2003, Chicken Shack's Unlucky Boy finds guitarist/vocalist/songwriter and band founder Stan Webb in fine form…

Fronted by the ubiquitous Stan Webb, the mighty Chicken Shack were second in popularity only to Fleetwood Mac in the late '60s Blues Boom. This set re-releases Shack’s three early 70s Deram albums, Imagination Lady, Unlucky Boy and the ultra-rare Goodbye Chicken Shack. Includes their European hit single 'Poor Boy' & the bonus track 'He Knows The Rules'.