'RORY
GALLAGHER, formerly of Taste, is now on his own and happening.'
That's what the ads
say, but what do they know?
Well,
something about the first part and nothing about the last. Because this
is one of the most positively moribund albums to come down the pike
since Frank Zappa's Greatest Hits. And that was sheer novacaine. What
we have here, though, is a placebo.
The scam is that once there was this
fairly jiveass-hotsy Irish bluzroc trio called Taste. Their first album
on Atco had a couple of songs with titles like 'Blister On the Moon',
but didn't live up to them and when you saw an 8 minute version of
'Catfish' listed on the backside, you knew you didn't wanta fork over
your hard earned shoe shekels anyway.
But about a year later they released
this album called On the Boards
which had some nice bluesy neo-toned-down Led Zep, smidgens of
appealing 'jazz' sax and Wes Montgomery-Szabo-isms and really good
writing and the whole project sounded pretty good, especially if you
got it promo gratis. And Gallagher wrote all the songs and played lead
guitar and sax and voice and was fairly impressive on the level of an
Isles demi-Creedence without the claustrophobic American Heritage
fixations.
Almost concurrent with the album's
release, though, you began to see little items in the pop papers about
how the band was splitting up and Gallagher was dissatisfied with the
'limitations' of the format and the two other cats were saying things
like he picked up the checks and paid them at rigid scale like
one-nighter Chuck Berry sidemen or something.
So now a little over a year later we
have this album, Rory no longer weighted down by decision and his fat
ego flying free and it's one of the more noticeable vacuous releases of
the season which is paradoxical enough to signify something I guess,
but still no fun to hang around. And even if whatever Rory want Rory
gets, he's basically a fuck up because prima donnas always are and we
got enough asbestos air conditioner music already. Or, by Michael Ochs,
Twelve Years After. Except that just like their recent output it
resembles when divested of its Sir Lord Baltimorean amphetamine sizzle,
nothing so much as a stale washrag. And Rory and nobody else is on it
this time. by
Lester BangsThis
article comes from the January 1, 1972 issue of Phonograph
Record Thanks to Patricia McGarity for leading me to this article reformatted by roryfan
by
Lester Bangs