01 - Main Street
02 - Saxmaniax
03 - The Fire In His Guitar
04 - French Perfume
05 - Take My Hand
06 - Don't You Feel Better
07 - Indiana Rainbow
08 - I Should Have Known
Recorded in 1976 A.D. .... Well, that more or less sums it up really. The powers that be (at the time) decided in their infinite widom, that this album should not be released. (THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE). In my opinion, this was nothing short of a crime. Now hopefully, the album is in the hands of a company who genuinely cares about music.
Until just recently, I had not even heard the album for around ten years, and had probably written it off. To be honest, I was not even sure whether I would still like it, but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. My first reaction was that it needed a remix, but the original multi track tapes were not available anyway, so that was out of the question. Basically, if you can adjust your ears to the fact that this album was produced with the aid of studio equipment that is more than twenty years old, then it sounds okay. At the time of recording this album, Wizzard as a working band had really ceased to exist.
This was probably a last attempt to retain some sort of sanity, trying to grow up, and not carry on indefinitely being just another pop group. We had experimented previously with this style, on B sides of singles, but never really had the opportunity to express ourselves fully in the kind of music that we genuinely preferred to play. I would like to believe that, if this album had been released when it was first created, then my writing style would have taken a different curve, and we would have been performing the type of material that bands such as Jamiroquai are being successful with right now.
In my opinion, I would say that the years have not jarred the quality of the songs, or even the performance and arrangements, because this album cannot be restricted to a definite era or time span.
That is only my opinion...
What do you think??
- Roy Wood, Main Street 2000 liner notes
Main Street, credited to Roy Wood & Wizzard (whereas the group's first two albums had been credited simply to Wizzard), was initially planned to showcase the more jazz-rock, deliberately uncommercial, side of the group as part of a double album, along with the material that became the album Introducing Eddy & The Falcons in 1974. When they eventually recorded Main Street (or Wizzo as it was originally to be called) in 1975-6, the group had rather slipped out of the public eye and was on the point of disbanding. The single, also credited to Roy Wood’s Wizzard, "Indiana Rainbow" (backed by a non-album track "The Thing Is This (This Is The Thing)"), released in March 1976, stiffed completely, and did not even make the BBC Radio 1 playlist. As a result Jet Records, to whom Wood was signed at the time, cancelled the album's release. The tapes only came to light in 1999 and, with Wood's blessing, released by Edsel, a re-issue label which specialised largely in licensing long-deleted albums from major companies and had recently made Introducing Eddy & the Falcons, available on CD for the first time.
- Wikipedia
Roy Wood & Wizzard - Main Street [Mirrors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
No comments:
Post a Comment