Queen - Live at the Rainbow 74 (2014)

Queen Live at the Rainbow 74 is a newly released live album of Queen’s two 1974 shows at the famous Rainbow theatre in London, shows which took place during the bands Queen II tour in March which forms the basis of disc one, and the Sheer Heart Attack tour in November which features on disc two. The recordings capture the band at their hard rocking and theatrical best, when they were really just unknown novices and before they had broken through into the mainstream. The concerts were originally supposed to be released as a live album at the time but instead were put on the backburner with the band deciding to focus instead on the recording of their seminal album A Night at the Opera. Now forty years later, the original tapes have been re-mastered and polished up and boy oh boy do they sound good, with a crystal clear sound and fantastic mix which means you can actually here the individual instruments. This is something you don’t always get with live albums where often the sound is a bit muddled and not always the best. I am sure some pitch correction and other such things have gone on to get the sound up to a modern standard, but this is all in the name of getting a great sounding modern day historical release.

As for the material on this album, well the focus is the band’s first three albums Queen, Queen II, and Sheer Heart Attack, albums which if you know anything about early Queen are very heavy and quite progressive, something which may surprise people who only know Queen through their big late-70s and 80s hits. There are big vocals a-plenty as Mercury flexes is range, theatrics and banter with the crowd, something that occurs between each song and is a pleasure to listen to, heavy guitars, and a thunderous rhythm section courtesy of John Deacon and Roger Taylor, a somewhat underrated pairing. Song-wise, the highlights are for me mostly on disc one, the March concert with the band playing some stellar versions of tracks from their first two albums. There is the anthemic “Father To Son”, the early metal of “Ogre Battle”, the Sabbath-esque sounding “Son And Daughter”, along with two great versions of “Seven Seas Of Rhye”, “Liar” and a fantastic rollicking cover of rock and roll classic “Jailhouse Rock”. Disc two for me is the lesser of the two discs, but still captures great versions of the likes of “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Stone Cold Crazy” and “In The Lap of The Gods Revisited”. What is amazing about the material overall is how heavy Queen sounded in their early years, a sound far removed from what they became most-famous for later on. I would go as far in saying as a new band on the scene in 1974 following in the footsteps of the likes of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who and Black Sabbath, they certainly were footing it with the big boys of British heavy rock that had come before.

In conclusion, Live at the Rainbow 74 is a fantastic sounding record and offers up a great insight into early-Queen, a period in their career which has not really received much attention, especially in terms of re-releases. People forget Queen started as a hard rock band and this album does a great job in capturing their early sound. For people not familiar with the early part of the bands career, some of the material might fall a bit flat at times just because of their often theatrical and progressive nature both lyrically and musically, but this does not get in the way of what is a great 70s rock and roll show, featuring a band throwing everything they had in their arsenal out there on the stage. Little did they know that this was just the start of something much, much bigger to come, but as this albums shows, the marker was being laid down in a big way. 

A

- Sam 

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy (1973)

Released in 1973, Houses of the Holy was the fifth studio release by Led Zeppelin and in many ways was quite a significant moment in the history of the band. It was on this album when Led Zeppelin began to branch out musically and explore other musical sounds, as up until that point they had pretty much stuck within the confines of blues, hard rock and a bit of folk thrown in for good measure. On Houses of the Holy there is still hard rock and there is still folk, but there is also funk, reggae, progressive rock and even an eastern inspired song, with the band spreading their wings stylistically and experimenting with whatever they thought sounded good. Along with this somewhat change of direction musically, the band were also beginning to incorporate new production techniques into their recording which helped to evolve their sound more. Jimmy Page’s guitar playing for one on this album is more layered and less bluesy, while in keeping with the technological advances of the early-70s, keyboards and a mellotron also make an appearance. This combination of new styles and new sounds helped to make Houses of the Holy a completely different beast from the bands previous release, the classic Led Zeppelin IV. But despite this change in direction the results were just as good, all be it in a different way.

The album starts with fast-paced rocker “The Song Remains the Same”, a song which sounds more progressive than their previous work and contains heavy layers of multi-tracked guitar. This is followed by “The Rain Song” which is a progressive folk ballad that features a mellotron providing the orchestral baroque effects. This song was probably the furthest removed from Led Zeppelin’s traditional sound up until that point and was definitely a radical departure for the band at the time.  “Over the Hills and Far Away” is a folk rock track which starts with an acoustic folk section before transforming into a heavy guitar track much like one of their earlier songs “Ramble On”. This song highlights well how much the band was developing as songwriters, with many of their songs now beginning to feature different sounding sections as well as multiple genres.  

The middle of the album is where they really begin to mix it up stylistically, starting with “The Crunge”, a funk rock track that is a play on James Brown’s style of funk. As a track it is more a studio experiment rather than a complete song, and contains no bridge or chorus, something which Robert Plant is keen to point out in a tongue and cheek way at the end of the song. For me this is the weakest track on the album and I’m not sure whether their foray into funk was a good idea. They have better success in their stylistic experimentation on the next two tracks, firstly on “Dancing Days” which has a Middle Eastern feel to it, especially in the exotic guitar riff that makes the song sound so good. “Dancing Days” was actually inspired by an Indian tune which Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had heard in Bombay, an inspiration which can clearly be heard throughout the song and that gives it what I would describe as quite a hypnotic-like feel. They take their stylistic experimentation further on “D’yer Mak’er”, a reggae influenced track with a reggae drum beat and guitar riff. The title of the song is even a play on the word Jamaica leaving no doubt as to where the influence for this song came from.

The album concludes in explosive fashion with two of the better tracks on the album.
No Quarter” is a mellow progressive rock track which features John Paul Jones talent on the keyboards, something which in most unlike Led Zeppelin fashion dominates this song. This song more than any also highlights the changes the band was making in terms of song production, with studio effects and trickery featuring strongly. Things such as a compressed guitar track, as well as the use of the theremin and a moog synthesizer gives this track a magical quality and ensures it is one of the album’s standouts, as well as being one of the bands best songs. Finally, the album closes with heavy rocker “The Ocean”; a track which works well as an album closer with its heavy guitar and drum sound. This track also has the effect of reassuring the listener that the band still had the ability to rock out when they wanted to.

Although Houses of the Holy was a huge success commercially on its release, its critical reception was mixed, which leads me to believe that maybe the music press didn’t really know what to make of a traditional rock band playing reggae and funk. However, as time has passed it has generally held up quite well and has been acknowledged as a pivotal release in the bands career. In summing up I firmly believe Houses of the Holy is one of Led Zeppelin’s greatest albums and certainly is one of their most diverse musically. What this album showed was that this band was full of great musical ideas and that they were not just one trick blues rockers, while highlighting also their prowess as songwriters especially in their ability to mix up songs with different sections, tempos and rhythms. If you want to see how Led Zeppelin developed musically in the mid-70s Houses of the Holy would be the place to start, while if you ever thought that they were just a plain and simple hard rock band then this album I am sure will help to change your mind. Houses of the Holy for me is experimental and eclectic; it is full of magic, surprise and intrigue and captures strongly everything good about Led Zeppelin.

A

- Sam

 

 

Pink Floyd - Obscured by Clouds (1972)

The period between 1969 and 1972 is often overlooked in the history of Pink Floyd, as it fell right between the Syd Barrett era of the band and the post-Dark Side of The Moon era. However, it was during this period that the band were evolving musically and developing a different sound from their earlier releases. One of the albums from this period that stands is “Obscured by Clouds”, an album that was released in 1972 which also served as the soundtrack for the French film La Velle. This album is significant historically because it was on this album, as well as their previous release Meddle where the world got a glimpse of the progressive rock sound that would make them global superstars, in fact the band had already started recording “Dark Side of The Moon” during the recording of Obscured by Clouds. The band by this time were clearly moving away from the more experimental psychedelic sound of the Syd Barrett era and were beginning to experiment with a more rock sound that included the prominent use of guitar, as well as dreamy “space” like keyboards. The band did a good job on this album weaving together these two key components of their newer sound, especially on the instrumental tracks, with David Gilmour’s space-like guitar screeching over the top of some beautiful organ and keyboard playing by Richard Wright. This album also sees song-writing credits shared on seven of the ten tracks, suggesting that at this stage there was still creative harmony amongst the band members, before Roger Waters took more control over song-writing on future releases. The standout track for me on this album is “Wot’s...Uh the Deal?” with it’s beautiful flowing melody accompanied by gentle piano, as well as a scorching lap steel guitar solo. A song that in my opinion is one of the Floyds best ever songs and definitely one of their most beautiful melodically. All in all this album is a solid effort with some quite beautiful moments amongst a couple of weaker tracks, while as an album it does not discredit the bands reputation in anyway, sitting nicely alongside their more well known albums. “Obscured by Clouds” is well worth a listen if you are an avid Floyd fan, and could also be a good place to start if you have heard “The Wall” and “Dark Side of The Moon” but would like to explore more of Pink Floyds music.

B

- Sam