Log #20 — The Jethro Oyster Harvest — Underachievers In Rock
1. Randy Newman — Lonely at the Top
2. Nitin Sawhney — Beyond Skin
3. Blue Oyster Cult — Spectres
4. Barclay James Harvest — Gone to Earth
5. Jethro Tull — Aqualung
6. Paolo Nutini — Sunny Side Up
Barclay James Harvest eh, or BJH for short. That’s a strange one as is their name. Apparently this was decided by drawing random slips of paper from a hat and the word Harvest came before the subsequently named fledgling label they were signed to.
I first heard them at a school friend’s house one evening — I’d just broken up with my girlfriend. A girl named Penny who had decided to go out with my sister’s boyfriend, but that’s off the point! Their music is pretty sad but it was a small consolation to discover them that evening as I’d spent some time looking for other bands that sounded like King Crimson who I adored at the time, and with their prog rock mellotron strings they fitted the bill pretty well.
[They were].. everything that identified progrock then: vaulting themes, orchestra, wailing guitar riding heaving swells of tempestuous music like a doomed ship out of Coleridge, lyrics arising from areas other than the crotch, and a dexterity that would turn most composers and players on their heads.
Marc S. Tucker
Discovering new music and subsequently lending it around school was a constant excitement in those years (something I feel must be lacking in today’s digital world). I had an album called New Morning or something — an early compilation and amongst the odd mix of acoustic Simon and Garfunkel type tunes and rather portentous classical rock there was a tremendous rocker called Taking Some Time On. This tune (albeit not really representative) really turned me on to BJH and plenty of my friends too.
Progressing through the ‘70s their writing became more expansive and ambitious but their bloated live performances with full orchestra, allied with poor record sales, almost bankrupted the group before they underwent a renaissance with an enforced change of record label and a rebirth as a (relatively) stripped back four piece.
For a short time I bought everything they did. Personally I think they peaked with Octoberon (1976). By then they had mellowed somewhat and were writing largely radio friendly soft rock — songs like Rock N Roll Star should have been massive. After that they began that all too familiar terminal decline into ‘80s synthesizer irrelevance — an affliction of many ‘70s rock bands.
Despite playing some massive concerts (famously a 1980 live album was recorded in front of 200,000 in Berlin) they were always on the fringe of success. Bassist and singer Les Holroyd recently theorised that this had something to do with them refusing to join the London scene and remaining a “northern band”.
Maybe their music was just a little bit too twee — much more Moody Blues than King Crimson in hindsight — there is even a track called Poor Man’s Moody Blues on the 1977 album Gone to Earth. It also sounds quite religious — something that I hadn’t really clocked at all before playing this album again this weekend.
I saw a Holroyd incarnation of them relatively recently in Hove where they hesitatingly played to only about 300 people — what a fall from grace (albeit a relatively short-lived grace you could say).
The persistent downbeat vibes surrounding this underachieving/underrated band were heightened poignantly with the suicide of keyboardist Woolly Wolstenholme in 2010. Their haunting song Suicide? from the Octoberon album infamously ended with a mic’d up fall from a building:
Took the club elevator to the floor with a view
I took out life subscription — it’s the only one they do
I stepped out on the guard rail, saw the crowds slowly part
Heard a voice shouting “Don’t jump, please for God’s sake let me move my car!”
Felt a hand on my shoulder, heard a voice cry “Just in time!”
Felt the quick push, felt the air rush
Felt the sidewalk, fell in line
While we are on underachievers let’s talk about The Blue Oyster Cult. As I mentioned in an earlier post somewhere their early albums like their eponymous debut, Secret Treaties, and Tyranny and Mutation, are tight rock albums with an original twist.
They then had their big hit Don’t Fear the Reaper and like a lot of rock bands of the time drifted into a slightly more poppy sound on Spectres and Mirrors.
Then possibly continuing to chase commercial success they went heavy metal with a sci-fi bent in the early 80s even recruiting sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock to pen some lyrics (as he had done for Hawkwind). Incidentally if you aren’t familiar with the writings of Moorcock checkout his brilliant novella Behold the Man about a time traveller who returns to the time of Christ with blasphemous consequences.
I picked up the band’s 1977 album Spectres on the strength of the literally spooky cover at the head of this post! I don’t remember many specific album purchases but I do this one, a single LP purchase one afternoon from an old record shop in Havant (Hampshire, England).
The whole album doesn’t particularly gel what with it’s mix of rock tunes and ballads (indeed the picture above may suggest some degree of identity crisis although their mysterious mason like symbolism and umlauted “O” were always cool and consistent).
Aside from the straight rockers like the catchy Godzilla there are beautiful tunes like Fireworks and I Love The Night, some super tight pop like Searchin’ for Celine and Goin’ Through the Motions, and some epic prog like Golden Age of Leather and Nosferatu (lyrical extract below):
This ship pulled in without a sound
The faithful captain long since cold
He kept his log till the bloody end
Last entry read “Rats in the hold.
My crew is dead, I fear the plague.”
Da da da da daaaa da! In case you didn’t recognise it, that’s the riff from the title track to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung — one of the most famous guitar riffs ever. It’s a very strong album and probably the “go to” one for new Tull fans.
Apparently there is debate about whether it was meant as a concept album — the first side about a tramp like character called Aqualung, and the second side a commentary on organised religion (actually isn’t all religion “organised”?). But Tull leader Ian Anderson dismissed this:
Aqualung was just a bunch of songs.
And a mighty fine bunch of songs it is including heavy rockers like Cross Eyed Mary, Hymn 43, and Locomotive Breath and acoustic gems like Cheap Day Return and Mother Goose.
Anderson was reportedly not best pleased with the similarity between the painted Aqualung figure only the album cover and himself!
Just a quick word on the other slots in the player this week… Multi instrumentalist and composer Nitin Sawhney shot to fame when his album Beyond Skin was released in 1999. It is a slickly produced affair melding indian influences with electronica and jazz plus some beautiful piano pieces like Tides.
I really like Paolo Nutini’s voice — it has that gravelly souly quality of a young Rod Stewart or Joe Cocker, and something that sets him apart from your common or garden auto tuned singing by numbers types that tend to dominate the digital download charts these days (would he have made it through the first round of X-Factor?). Not particularly prolific Sunny Side Up from 2009 is the Scottish singer’s second album of only 3 to date.
Singer-songwriter-pianist Randy Newman eschewed the Hollywood/Laurel Canyon/Troubadour scene of his native LA in the late 60s and early 70s when contemporaries like Neil Young, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell were seeking fame and fortune.
This didn’t stop him producing some critically acclaimed albums like Sail Away and Good Old Boys full of political satire and irony, and well represented on this 1987 compilation album. Now he has fully embraced Hollywood gaining a wealth of grammys and oscars for his film compositions especially the tunes for Toy Story.
