Country Flying with Redeye

Buckahead is in Wellington. A couple of Sundays ago, the Town Hall filled with people to hear the Country Fliers and Red-eye. This concert was the first in a series of ten which will be held over the coming weeks. The aim is to provide music on Sunday night and to give New Zealand bands a regular showing. Last Sunday night there was Mark Williams and hopefully Buckahead will bring Splitz Enz back from Aussie.

So good old Country Fliers opened the show with a Fiddle. They were a group of guys into having a good time and letting us hear the results. By their third number they had warmed up and during 'Naturally' by Little Feat the lead guitarist did a good solo. However it wasn't until the fifth number 'Alimony' by Ry Cooder that the sound filled out and seemed to balance. Turn up the bass.'

The group sound was good on the whole, the only problem being the three guitars. The second lead guitarist is left with nothing to do except clutter the sound. Possibly the singer should stop playing rythm and then the two guitars would have to tighten up. When the first and second guitarists did work on their own it was effective; should've heard that intro to Lousiiana Lady. Still I'm new to the rules of country rock, they're the musicians. I'm just an 'audience'. But I do know enough to like a good lead guitarist and that slide was pretty okay.

The sound ranged the whole compass of country rock with numbers by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Commander Cody and the Ozak Mountain Daredevils, to mention just a few. The music seemed to bounce along. It was helped by the fiddling of Bob Smith who played for a few numbers Once again the overall sound was spoilt by lousy mixing, but what you could hear was good.

Midge Marsden the singer really did a bonza job on keeping everyone alive and laughing. He had Humour and a sense of fun, which not only the band but the audience needed to loosen up. There was a sort of natural high which comes from making music with a group of friends. The classic expression was when he got the harp the wrong way round — it was almost as good as Keith Richard's when he dropped his pile at Western Springs. Country Fliers was a good opening to good time music that's coming.

The second half of it was that professional Soul Band, solid and dairy, Redeye. Singer and sax man Dennis Mason presented the strong front to give his band total sound.

He was particularly good on

Tom Swainson, drummer, gave out a chunky beat, he knows how to handle those sticks along with the bassist, filling in the sound which gives this band solid power. But, there is no prize for guessing who is the loudest Bass Guitarist in NZ, perhaps it was just the mixing, but it sounded worse than Black Sabbath.

Redeye specialises in doing Loggina & Messina better than they do it themselves and on that Sunday night they were very impressive. The main fault was their extra professionalism and polish which overshadowed any life. It seemed to me these guys are entertainers before musicians. As well they could sure take lessons on being funny. Their attempts were forced and seemingly rehearsed to the point of being dead. Better luck next time.

Yet I enjoyed this band's particular style of soulful sound, as much as my own preconceptions of a band-audience relationship could let me. To most of the audience Redeye closed the evening with the quality of music that shows New Zealand music is often as good as imported stuff.

On the first showing it looks like the Buckahead series is going to be value for money.

Scheisskoff.

Maggie Bell : Suicide SAL Polydor 2383 313

Reviewed by Patrick O'Dea

Suicide Sal is far and away the most ambitious, most musically satisfying album yet to issue from one of the most formidable, yet still commercially underappreciated, female hard rock singers. Though none of the album's ten cuts have quite the melodic force of 'I Saw America' (Maggie Bell at her most congenital), or 'Queen of the Night' (at her most soulful). Suicide Sal contains her finest vocal work to date. She's backed forcefully by a spare, trimmed-down outfit — an element that helps lend the album a seriousness of intent, an emotional force that exceeds that of previous work.

Two songs — the only indigenous group compositions, 'Suicide Sal' and 'If You Don't Know' — both work well within the whole, 'Suicide Sal' is a melodic invocation of a former relationship, with its sensuous lyric imagery that specifically recalls the atmosphere of an enchanted affair and provides the case on which the album's centrepiece, 'If You Don't Know' resides. It is a gorgeous, often violent commentary on the insanity that accompanies romantic passion, its aura of suicidal desperation, its blindness that permits a greater truth wherein the identity of the partners, the 'You' and 'I' are almost inseperable and hence mutually destructive. Though it is a song of few words, the words resonate, and Jimmy Page's extended guitar break between verses embodies some of the most eloquent musical commentary that I can recall. Bell's vocal is piercingly rendered, the instrumentation that joins her, [unclear: spare] and anguished.

Her version of Free's 'Wishing Well', the opener, is an engaging song that is strongly melodic and tightly constructed, with fine instrumental work by all hands. 'In My Life', a heavier rocker, skilfully inveighs against institutionalised fantasies while expressing a strongly positive message.

Finally, there is the masterful 'It's Been So Long' — a simple, delightful invitation to rock. The cut surges with exciting instrumentation, topped by Bell's unfaltering lead vocal and supported by an irresistible backbeat. Fine rock and roll on a stunning album.

Steely Dan : Katy Lied (Probe)

Reviewed by Peter Simons

Steely Dan 1975. Katy Lied is upon us with another dose of mainstream rock and roll, restating the basic themes of Countdown to Ecstacy, but this time concentrating a bit more on the rockier side of their style, best exemplified by 'Do it Again'. Kicking off with 'Black Friday' they move out. A hard-driving guitar exchanging leads with Donald Fagen's straightforward keyboards is balanced on top of a pulsating bass. Three rather nondescript ditties follow and then they rock on for 3.59 on Doctor Wu. This time Steely Dan strike gold and really boogie. Nothing too original but they combine a wealth of mid-Sixties rock influences in a refreshing way.

Side two opens with an absolutely insane chorale called 'Everyone's gone to the movies', successfully, as its lyrical inanity is completely overwhelmed by sheer enthusiasm. 'Chain Lightening' is another exuberant exercise in toe-tapping that seems to be a natural by-product of this group. Though their playing is hardly unique and their singing is occasionally hampered by ridiculous lyrics, they exhibit a control of the basic rock format that is Invigorating and that bodes well for the group's long-term success.

In fact, it is their ability to play three-to-five minutes rock songs in a jaunty, up-tempo fashion without becoming redundant or superfluous that may well make Steely Dan the thinking man's alternative to Slade. If you think, why not hear them?