The Move - Shazam
|
Our Price: $19.99 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $6.98 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Shazam
Free Music Review: The Tale of Four Chaps who Lacked Direction and Inspiration
Hit: 1 Stars
Perhaps the title of this album is appropriate--"Shazam". The Move apparantely tried to transform themselves into several different things on this album alone, trying to see what would work. Okay, I'll cut them a little slack--this was only the second album they put out in their first four years. And being a singles-oriented band, anyway, one couldn't possibly expect them to offer anything other than one of the most disjointed affairs--which this was. In other words, an album only for the sake of putting one out, and it shows that their heart wasn't entirely into putting forth their best effort. But that's just the first 6 tracks that make up the original album!
Adding the 8 extra live bonus tracks reveals The Move to be little more than a "covers band", and a below average one at that! Both live renditions of "Sunshine Help Me" are nice, but probably because I'd never heard the original Spooky Tooth version before. The band really showed what they were made of on that particular number, some of their flashiest guitar and bass fretwork. But all the other covers simply lacked the energy of the originals. "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" lacked the enthusiasm of the Byrds', only adding a roaming 'wah-wah' pedal to the mix.
I could just tell from listening to this album that this group was headed for "divorce court"--it just sounds like a "train wreck". Much of the music here was recorded during 1968-1969, and by this time--even American music had passed these guys behind! Except for a couple of songs--"Don't Make My Baby Blue" and the aforementioned "Sunshine Help Me", The Move sound like they hadn't progressed much since 1966. The rock music world was changing so fast at the time of this album's release, the "singles" market had long since been a thing of the past, and The Move hadn't even "moved" beyond just trying to figure out how to properly make an album!
Oh, there was some nice musicianship here. Carl Wayne had a wonderful, Americanised, Paul McCartney-when-he's-shouting, sort-of baritone voice that might have served him well across the pond, if he hadn't made the fateful decision to leave rock music altogether and go into "cabaret" (reminds me of when the Yardbirds' Chris Dreja was faced with the opportunity to become Led Zeppelin's bass player, but decided at the last minute that photography would be a better way to make money!)
Just overall poor business decisions led to this group's eventual downfall. They just never got a chance to form their own identity, but kept living off the identities of other bands, rather than at least trying to take a few ideas from each one and forming their own. Plus, they were falling woefully behind the times--the 60s passed them by. They did eventually evolve and transform for the better--into the Electric Light Orchestra!
Altogether, this album is pure imitation that SURE isn't flattery! It's third-rate Beatles and bad west-coast psychedelia being released right at the dawn of the 1970s.
Free Music Review: disapointing
Hit: 2 Stars
After an album of great originals the band gets cheap and does a mere 3 originals with a bunch of half baked covers. Cherry blossom clinic revisited is an unnecessarily stretched out re-do on their previous song, and hello susie is decent hard(er) rock. Why everyone thinks this album is great is beyond me..their first album is a true document of their songcraft ability, this album is a cop out.Free Music Review: Side 2 (songs 4-6) alone earn this classic top honors.
Hit: 5 Stars
We got to talking about this fantastic album a few nights ago on the discussion thread "YOUR TRIPPIN' ALBUM IS ON ITS WAY--WHAT IS IT?" (Most of those threads are a lot of fun, by the way...and very addictive to us music junkies.) I just shared my thoughts with joeindover in response to his knee-slappingly funny review and feel compelled to give my 2-cents' worth to the masses here.
Everything you've read here is pretty much right on the money, although I can't (yet) attest to the supposed lower-sounding quality of the CD. Guess I'll find that all out in due time. What I want to share was how I was made aware of this album. During the sweet summer of 1970--back when underground FM radio still blissfully existed--I was in Long Beach, California on vacation with my mom, between my sophomore and junior year of high school, and VERY much into the burgeoning English rock and prog-rock scene. In those days, the Moody Blues and King Crimson were my new gods. One afternoon, I was sitting in my living room, listening to what was then for me the Radio Station From Heaven: KABC-FM 95.5. There was so much unspeakably cool music I got turned onto that summer that I could be sitting here for another hour just chronicling it....but I'll never forget this particular afternoon. Seated there on my couch, I had my little portable mono Channel Master cassette recorder, microphone attached, pointed at the speaker of an inconsequential little FM clock radio, and filling up several C-60 cassettes with random recordings of what I was hearing on this fantastic radio station. After one commercial break, here came disc jockey Tony Pigg with the announcement, "Here's one from The Move, a Tom Paxton song called 'The Last Thing On My Mind.'" Well, I remember hearing the Chad Mitchell Trio's original country/folkie version of the song, so I kept the recorder going...
...and cornball and over-the-top as this might sound to some, this was one of the defining moments in my musical development. As I sat there listening to this band of Brits I'd not yet even HEARD of taking this sad little breakup song and turning it into a psychedelic, acid-drenched, acoustic and electric 12-string wah-wah guitar sound painting, I was just stunned. I couldn't move (pardon the pun) for the next 7 1/2 minutes. For me, it was like hearing "Question," "The Court of the Crimson King," Procol Harum's "Repent Walpurgis" or Yes's "Yours Is No Disgrace" for the first time. I swear this to you: those were moments that brought me to states of consciousness that tapped me lovingly on the top of my head to remind me that humanity--even with all its flaws--were still capable of creating great masterpieces in the world of music. When the song reached its very UNpretentious conclusion--with the final chorus still ringing in my ears in near-perfect CSN-style vocal harmoney--I couldn't set about to finding the album fast enough.
Here's what I discovered upon hearing it for the first time: I wasn't nearly as knocked out by Side 1 as I was by Side 2....that's just my opinion for all it's worth. But those 3 tracks on Side 2..."Fields of People," "Don't Make My Baby Blue," and the one I just raved about like a lunatic...for me amounted to 3 of the greatest tracks in a row in British prog history, 23 minutes of near-bliss. The psychedelia and interspersed humor of "Fields," the near heavy-metal interpretations of "Baby" and the concluding masterpiece alone made this album worth having...I can listen to those 3 songs even today and still get the initial rush of hearing them for the first time. But when it comes to "Last Thing," as I shared with joeindover, I think Roy should be humbly proud for coming up with such an exquisite arrangement of a very cool song, and I can only wonder what Tom himself would have thought of it.
For all of you uninitiated ones--especially those of you who might be exploring the founding days of the British progressive rock onslaught of the 70's--you'd be well advised not to let this one slip through your fingers. Cheers.....
Free Music Review: What else can be said?
Hit: 4 Stars
For a band whose album output was small,The Move made the most of everyone they released. Roy Woods excellent songwriting and arrangement skills were always the high point of any Move album and of course great musicianship was a given. Highly recommened.Free Music Review: Most Definitive 60's & Innovative 70's album you never heard of...
Hit: 5 Stars
Back in the early 70's - when I was wearing out my A&M copy of SHAZAM - a friend brought over an aquaintance who was heavily into folk music, and, in particular, Tom Paxton. So, I decided to play him the Move's version of "The Last Thing on My Mind" (which I still think is one of the greatest rock tunes ever recorded). In the vernacular of the time, he was "blown away" - he said he had never heard such a unique and outstanding cover of a Paxton song. Naturally, I agreed! Roy Wood's arrangement and guitar work are simply amazing and perfectly complimented by Carl Wayne's evocative vocals. Why wasn't this song a top ten hit? What radio station in their right mind would play a Seven and a Half minute folk rock ballad with a Two and a Half minute double-tracked psychedelic 12 string "wah wah" solo! But it's perfect! Just listen... This WAS the 60's. Eclectic, electric,.. and in this case, Exceptional!
Appropriately released in 1970, this album is the culmination and pinnacle of the 60's Pop-Rock scene. It runs the whole gamut of influences and textures that defined popular culture of the time - folk, pop, classical, eastern, psychedelia, heavy metal. But done to perfection due to the talent and effort of Roy Wood.
Certainly not as influential as other British bands of the 60's - the Beatles, the Stones, The Who, Cream, etc. The Move came more from the Dadaist/Surrealist element of the UK music scene - akin to the Bonzo Dog Band - the "Pop Pastiche" school of British Rockers which never seemed to be able to transition into the increasingly "serious" music scene in the States during the Vietnam era. This is probably why many people in the US see this album as corny or dated. But I don't think humanity invented music because they needed something "serious" to listen to, and this album proves it. Each song on the album seems seems to have a "genre-inflation" index just shy of "Satire" while still managing to amaze with the depth of skill and excellence in production in every song. How can anyone NOT have fun listening to something like the Move's over-the-top version of the Mann/Weill composition "Don't Make My Baby Blue" - a heavy metal classic(?) as hot as roywoodium238, or "Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited" with it's bouncing, vaudevillian construction segueing into Bach, Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, et al. "Hello Susie" as power pop on steroids and banana peels. "Fields of People" with it's anthemic "Flower Power" chorus and baroque-styled carnival barker verses ending in up in electric ragaland. Remember, in 100 years, the same weeds that are growing on my grave will be growing on yours... have some fun and check it out before you go.
"Good,.. Tune your organ and we'll roar away!"
P.S. I must agree that the sound on this Repertoire CD does not do the album justice. The extra live tracks are a nice look at a cross-section of tunes The Move covered, but the sound is murky, and I am unaware as to whether or not better versions exist.