![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cropper_help.jpg\")
Steve Cropper \u2013 With a Little Help from My Friends<\/i><\/b>\nGuitarist Steve Cropper is known for a lot of great things, and at the top of that list is his knack for tuneful and tasteful guitar playing. In and beyond Booker T & the MG\u2019s, he\u2019s responsible for some of the most recognizable licks in popular music. But he\u2019s comparatively lesser-known for albums made under his own name. The first of those was 1969\u2019s With a Little Help from My Friends<\/i>. An all-instrumental collection of song he wrote, co-wrote or just dug, this album is as catchy as you\u2019d expect. Cropper never wastes a note, never overplays, and always delivers in a distinctive, inimitable fashion. His reading of the title track owes a lot to the Joe Cocker version, but let\u2019s not hold that against him. A new Omnivore reissue appends the original with eight bonus tracks, a highlight of which is a cover of the delightful \u201cGrazing in the Grass.\u201d The CD also features a superb essay by \u2013 who else? \u2013 Robert Gordon. His essay and a little note in the booklet even reveal (with admittedly a bit of speculation) who-all played on the sessions, an important detail not included on the \u201869 LP. By the way, I’ve interviewed Steve Cropper twice: here in 2010<\/a> and here again, this time in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Today I’ll tell you about five albums from the distant past, newly reissued and deserving of your attention. Steve Cropper \u2013 With a Little Help from My Friends Guitarist Steve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,57,58,62,64,65,69],"tags":[5334,635,1528,1622,5333,2044,5335,5332],"class_list":["post-26852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prog","category-psych","category-pub-rock","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","category-soul","tag-british-lions","tag-david-gilmour","tag-mott-the-hoople","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-second-hand","tag-steve-cropper","tag-think-like-a-key","tag-unicor","cat-56-id","cat-57-id","cat-58-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26852"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27047,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26852\/revisions\/27047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/unicorn_crooks.jpg\")
Unicorn \u2013 Too Many Crooks<\/i><\/b>
\nUnicorn was (so it is said) a country-rock band out of England; while they\u2019re comparatively unknown in the U.S., they made some fine records. Their sound and style are similar in places to Brinsley Schwarz, a group that featured a young Nick Lowe. But Unicorn are perhaps best-known (and somewhat unfairly, really) only for having written and recorded \u201cNo Way Out of Here,\u201d when recorded by band friend and producer David Gilmour. The Pink Floyd guitarist\u2019s version doesn\u2019t really reinvent the tune (though his guitar work is predictably distinctive), and the original has all the appeal of the better-known cover. It\u2019s merely one highlight on Too Many Crooks<\/i>, the band\u2019s third LP. And as these songs show, the country-rock label often applied to Unicorn really sold them short; their music is tuneful in the extreme, flawlessly arranged and performed. The term \u201coverlooked gem\u201d might be bandied around too wantonly, but in this case it applies. A new Think Like a Key reissue adds a bonus track; the booklet features photos, lyrics and a solid (if too brief) essay by David DiSanzo, an acknowledged expert on Unicorn. As for me, I interviewed DiSanzo<\/a> about the band, and also wrote a feature based on an interview<\/a> with Unicorn’s Pat Martin.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/secondhand_reality.jpg\")
Second Hand \u2013 R<\/i>eality<\/i><\/b>
\nEven among progressive rock fanatics, Second Hand is a relative obscurity. Some – among those who have any familiarity at all with the London band \u2013 might classify them as progressive, proto-prog or art rock. Their 1968 debut, Reality<\/em> came a bit too early to be considered prog (at least at the time). Listening now to a new reissue, the elements of prog are there, but they’re alongside some bits that sound a bit like what we now call freakbeat, popsike and other sub-styles. Touchstones might include the equally obscure East of Eden, or even Gracious! (albeit with less prominent use of Mellotron). Rocking hard on tracks like \u201cRhubarb!\u201d Second Hand may remind some of Andromeda, Blossom Toes or Pink Floyd a la<\/i> \u201cCorporal Clegg.\u201d They get music-hall weird on \u201cDenis James the Clown\u201d and downright spooky on \u201cMainliner.\u201d Eclectic to the nth<\/i> degree, Reality<\/i> is a must-hear for aficionados of late \u201860s deep dives. The CD reissue of this formerly impossibly rare set adds three bonus tracks.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/seondhand_death.jpg\")
Second Hand \u2013 Death May Be Your Santa Claus<\/i><\/b>
\nBut here\u2019s the thing: in 1971 Second Hand returned with another record, the idiosyncratically-titled Death May Be Your Santa Claus<\/i>. Far weirder and more forebodingly inaccessible than the band\u2019s debut, at times Death<\/em> sounds more like a parody of an outr\u00e9 prog album than, y\u2019know<\/em>, an actual one. Fans of Captain Beefheart, Soft Machine at their strangest, Kevin Ayers and the like may warm to the bizarre vocals, shift-on-a-dime musical dynamics and kitchen-sink instrumentation. Others may be drawn in by the chirpy intro to songs like \u201cHangin\u2019 on an Eyelid,\u201d only to be scared off by the Zappa-esque musical detours that inevitably follow. Speaking of FZ, \u201cSic Transit Gloria Mundi\u201d sounds like his \u201cThe Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny\u201d reimagined by The Residents. (There are moments of true inspiration here as well.) For adventurous listeners, it\u2019s recommended; for others, maybe sample it on Spotify or YouTube before plunking down cash for physical product. Know, though, that when\/if you do the latter, you\u2019ll get bonus tracks and a thoughtful essay by TLAK label head Roger Houdaille.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/british_lions.jpg\")
British Lions \u2013 s\/t<\/i><\/b>
\nFew listeners (in the U.S., anyway) noticed when Mott the Hoople ceased operations in the mid 1970s. After losing both lead singer Ian Hunter and two of the three words in their name (they\u2019d be billed as Mott for their last two LPs) the group members found themselves without a hit and with a dwindling prospects. Four of the band members \u2013 keyboardist Morgan Fisher, drummer Dale \u201cBuffin\u201d Griffin, bassist Pete Overend Watts and Mott-era guitarist Ray Majors \u2013 subsequently joined forces with John Fiddler, formerly of another presumably past-peak band, Medicine Head. In their new band, Fiddler would write more than half of the material, and the sound was updated for the times. British Lions sound like a missing link between \u201870s hard rock, pub rock of the late decade and \u201880s arena rock. Trust me, though: it sounds better than that suggestion might suggest. While at 5min 30sec the \u201cWillie and the Hand Jive\u201d retread \u201cBreak This Fool\u201d goes on five minutes too long, the album as a whole is solid. Tight vocal harmonies wedded to no-nonsense rock arrangements result in a workmanlike album that\u2019s good enough so that if someone told you it had been a minor hit (it wasn\u2019t), you\u2019d believe them. A 2000 reissue added bonus tracks in the form of four demos and some BBC cuts; the TLAK reissue jettisons the BBC material but adds a second CD featuring a 1978 live set from San Francisco\u2019s Old Waldorf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"