{"id":16572,"date":"2019-06-12T05:30:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T09:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16572"},"modified":"2019-05-02T15:19:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T19:19:22","slug":"album-review-the-gun-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/12\/album-review-the-gun-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Gun &#8212; Gun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-16573\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/gun.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/gun.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/gun-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/gun-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Brothers Adrian and Paul Gurvitz launched The Gun in 1967 a a re-branded and slimmed-down version of their previous band the Knack (no relation to the American power pop quartet). Then using the surname Curtis, guitarist Adrian and bassist Paul led a power trio with Louie Farrell on drums. Taking an aggressive and decidedly psychedelic approach to their songcraft, the trio recorded <i>Gun<\/i> in 1968. In October of that year, the lead-off album track \u201cRace With the Devil\u201d was released as a single, reaching the top ten in England. The single and album did well in other countries as well, though no American success was forthcoming.<\/p>\n<p>The band did get noticed by some high-profile artists; they opened a number of shows for Pink Floyd. And when Jimi Hendrix performed at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, he inserted some \u201cRace With the Devil\u201d licks into his own \u201cMachine Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Gun<\/i> shows the group to be of a manic, proto-metal disposition, with a sound reminiscent of Love Sculpture (featuring a young Dave Edmunds) or the Open Mind. The orchestral flourishes and demented screaming of \u201cRace\u201d play well against Adrian Gurvitz\u2019s speedy lead guitar work. In fact, horns and strings show up throughout the record\u2014most notably on \u201cThe Sad Saga of The Boy and The Bee,\u201d <i>Gun<\/i>\u2019s second (and second-best) cut. In places <i>Gun<\/i>\u2019s sound suggests what the Moody Blues might have sounded like had they rocked (a lot) harder.<\/p>\n<p>A second LP, <i>Gun Sight<\/i>, was released in 1969; it largely sank without a trace. <i>Gun<\/i> went out of print by 1973. The album did receive a short-run vinyl reissue in the late 1980s, but has been largely unavailable in that format since then. Even CD reissues of <i>Gun<\/i> were limited to Europe and Asia. Real Gone Music\u2019s modern-day vinyl reissue of this early hard rock nugget is pressed on red vinyl; the record sleeve features the original garish-yet-distinctive album art, one of the earliest projects for Roger Dean. Dean, of course, went on to greater fame as the creator of many of Yes\u2019 most iconic album covers as well as that band\u2019s logo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brothers Adrian and Paul Gurvitz launched The Gun in 1967 a a re-branded and slimmed-down version of their previous band the Knack (no relation to the American power pop quartet). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,62,64,65,73],"tags":[3804,3803,1796],"class_list":["post-16572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psych","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-adrian-gurvitz","tag-gun","tag-real-gone-music","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16574,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16572\/revisions\/16574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}