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Fufkin.com Review of 'That Was Now And This Is Then' by Eric Sorensen
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That Was Now And This Is Then - a double CD compilation of Starry Eyed And Laughing’s mid-70s albums, along with some excellent bonus tracks and very thorough liner notes.
Lead guitarist and vocalist Tony Poole, and his Aurora Music label, has done the pop music community a HUGE favor by re-mastering and re-releasing these terrific musical vignettes from an era when pop/rock was being suffocated by other genres of music. Tony’s vintage Rickenbacker 12-string guitar sparkles throughout - whether it is chiming, ringing or jangling.
On tunes like “Lady Came From The South”, the English quartet could be mistaken for Firefall. On other tunes - like “Meet Me Lord” and “One Foot In The Boat” - they pretty much nail the Byrds’ sound. The double disc includes the band’s own version of “Chimes Of Freedom”, and it is every bit as good as the Byrds’ classic version of this Dylan tune. Long may you run, Sir Tony (who is currently with another jangly folk/rock/pop band - The Falcons) … and thanks to fellow jangle-enthusiast Alan Sack, who alerted me regarding this wonderful release. - Eric Sorensen
Lead guitarist and vocalist Tony Poole, and his Aurora Music label, has done the pop music community a HUGE favor by re-mastering and re-releasing these terrific musical vignettes from an era when pop/rock was being suffocated by other genres of music. Tony’s vintage Rickenbacker 12-string guitar sparkles throughout - whether it is chiming, ringing or jangling.
On tunes like “Lady Came From The South”, the English quartet could be mistaken for Firefall. On other tunes - like “Meet Me Lord” and “One Foot In The Boat” - they pretty much nail the Byrds’ sound. The double disc includes the band’s own version of “Chimes Of Freedom”, and it is every bit as good as the Byrds’ classic version of this Dylan tune. Long may you run, Sir Tony (who is currently with another jangly folk/rock/pop band - The Falcons) … and thanks to fellow jangle-enthusiast Alan Sack, who alerted me regarding this wonderful release. - Eric Sorensen
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Terrascope Online Review of 'That Was Now And This Is Then' by Nigel Cross
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1974 - the dog days of rock – where you really had to dig for the good things; but there was hope on the horizon – the buzz was out for a bright new British quartet who had taken their name from a line in the Dylan song ‘Chimes of Freedom’ and were blazing new smoke trails based on the classic electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar sound of the Byrds. They were called Starry Eyed and Laughing and for a while in 1974 and 1975 you’d have been hard put to find a better British band. Their two albums for CBS were joyous affairs full of youthful bounce, irresistible pop hooks, heavenly harmony vocals and the kind of smouldering psychedelic undercurrents that made LPs like 5D and Younger Than Yesterday so good.
Led by guitarists Tony Poole and Ross McGeeney, Starry Eyed were a one-off and it’s difficult now to see how they fitted into any of the scenes that were happening in mid-70s Britain – SEAL came too late for the pyschedelic country scene of Bronco, Greasy Bear and Formerly Fat Harry of a few years earlier. Pop back then was at best 10CC, at worst the Bay City Rollers (or vice versa according to your taste!) – and they were only peripherally part of the pub rock scene, often sharing the same bills and venues with the likes of Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers. Of course had they come from the greater Los Angeles basin and been signed to Asylum, they would probably have become as big as The Eagles
Progressing from covers by the likes of Gene Clark, Jackie De Shannon, The Beatles and of course McGuinn & co, the group began to work up a formidable repertoire of original material – and with the arrival of bassist Iain Whitmore at the end of 73, the group boasted three fine writers. The classic SEAL line up gelled with master drummer Mike Wackford in early summer 1974 and they were soon recording their self-titled debut waxing. When it hit the stores that October it was a time for celebration.
Produced by Dan Loggins, it was a delight from start to finish, though it had turned out rather differently to how Loggins had planned it (cover versions of songs by Dylan, Jackson Browne and Mike Nesmith had been scheduled but ditched in favour of group material as the sessions rolled).
The band sang and played their hearts out and many of the numbers were instantly memorable – like the debut 45 ‘Money is No Friend of Mine’ with its stomping chorus line, dexterous mandolin work (from Lindisfarne’s Ray Jackson) and Poole’s jangling Rickenbacker riff – or the gentler country rock of McGeeney’s ‘Closer to you Now’ with BJ Cole’s sweet pedal steel.
‘Going Down’, the opener meanwhile ripped along with intent and featured some powerful guitar breaks – the first of which by Poole especially was a cracker. Songs like the Moby Grape-style rocker ‘50/50’ and ‘Nobody Home’ (the second 45 taken from the LP) should have lit up the radio and torn up the charts – some 33 years later it’s hard to see why they failed to.
Undeterred by lack of sales and chart action, the band decamped to Rockfield Studios in March 1975 to make Thought Talk. This was a tighter, more together SEAL and Loggins’ production was far more assured – Thought Talk was heavier, more arranged and had the bite that the first waxing lacked – a super record that took on some serious themes.
The sometimes winsome nature of that first LP was replaced by a far more confident band – it positively oozed with studio craft. ‘Good Love’ was the slow-burning, organ-dominated opener whilst Poole’s ‘One Foot in the Boat’ was the kind of song that Roger McGuinn back then seemed incapable of writing after his Byrds heyday – and Whitmore’s ‘Fool’s Gold’ showed he was as adept as his other band mates at delivering the goods – an intricate acoustic number with a haunting cello arrangement and measured vocals, this was yet another highlight.
‘Flames in the Rain’ was the album’s epic – the kind of song that showed that the band could match its West Coast counterparts – a rousing, windswept classic with raging guitars and righteously angry lyrics.
This still manages to leave me slack jawed three decades on. The original Thought Talk ended with its eponymous title track a lyric-less jazz-based groove with soaring harmony vocals and buzzing guitars that recalled the peaks of David Crosby’s 1971 If Only I Could Remember My Name LP. Fabulous!
From this vantage point it might be easy for the uninitiated to put them down as mere Byrds copyists but Starry Eyed looked both back and forward – there was a certain innocence to their early songs that harkened back to the 60s golden age of pop, similarly they were developing that 60s sound and had they stuck it out I’m sure they’d have been at the forefront of 1978’s short-lived power pop phenomenon – was it mere coincidence that The Records ace 45 with its spiralling ‘Eight Miles High’ riff was entitled ‘Starry Eyes’? Listening now to these albums puts me as much in mind of the Soft Boys or the dbs and all those great 80s paisley bands as it does of SEAL heroes the Byrds or CSN.
This collection compiled by Tony Poole is your chance to revaluate them – bringing together both CBS albums, various Flo & Eddie sides and other sundry bits and bobs including at long last a version of their signature tune that does them full justice. I was a convert to them first time around but one listen to this now should have you equally hooked – what a fine band they were. - Nigel Cross
Led by guitarists Tony Poole and Ross McGeeney, Starry Eyed were a one-off and it’s difficult now to see how they fitted into any of the scenes that were happening in mid-70s Britain – SEAL came too late for the pyschedelic country scene of Bronco, Greasy Bear and Formerly Fat Harry of a few years earlier. Pop back then was at best 10CC, at worst the Bay City Rollers (or vice versa according to your taste!) – and they were only peripherally part of the pub rock scene, often sharing the same bills and venues with the likes of Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers. Of course had they come from the greater Los Angeles basin and been signed to Asylum, they would probably have become as big as The Eagles
Progressing from covers by the likes of Gene Clark, Jackie De Shannon, The Beatles and of course McGuinn & co, the group began to work up a formidable repertoire of original material – and with the arrival of bassist Iain Whitmore at the end of 73, the group boasted three fine writers. The classic SEAL line up gelled with master drummer Mike Wackford in early summer 1974 and they were soon recording their self-titled debut waxing. When it hit the stores that October it was a time for celebration.
Produced by Dan Loggins, it was a delight from start to finish, though it had turned out rather differently to how Loggins had planned it (cover versions of songs by Dylan, Jackson Browne and Mike Nesmith had been scheduled but ditched in favour of group material as the sessions rolled).
The band sang and played their hearts out and many of the numbers were instantly memorable – like the debut 45 ‘Money is No Friend of Mine’ with its stomping chorus line, dexterous mandolin work (from Lindisfarne’s Ray Jackson) and Poole’s jangling Rickenbacker riff – or the gentler country rock of McGeeney’s ‘Closer to you Now’ with BJ Cole’s sweet pedal steel.
‘Going Down’, the opener meanwhile ripped along with intent and featured some powerful guitar breaks – the first of which by Poole especially was a cracker. Songs like the Moby Grape-style rocker ‘50/50’ and ‘Nobody Home’ (the second 45 taken from the LP) should have lit up the radio and torn up the charts – some 33 years later it’s hard to see why they failed to.
Undeterred by lack of sales and chart action, the band decamped to Rockfield Studios in March 1975 to make Thought Talk. This was a tighter, more together SEAL and Loggins’ production was far more assured – Thought Talk was heavier, more arranged and had the bite that the first waxing lacked – a super record that took on some serious themes.
The sometimes winsome nature of that first LP was replaced by a far more confident band – it positively oozed with studio craft. ‘Good Love’ was the slow-burning, organ-dominated opener whilst Poole’s ‘One Foot in the Boat’ was the kind of song that Roger McGuinn back then seemed incapable of writing after his Byrds heyday – and Whitmore’s ‘Fool’s Gold’ showed he was as adept as his other band mates at delivering the goods – an intricate acoustic number with a haunting cello arrangement and measured vocals, this was yet another highlight.
‘Flames in the Rain’ was the album’s epic – the kind of song that showed that the band could match its West Coast counterparts – a rousing, windswept classic with raging guitars and righteously angry lyrics.
This still manages to leave me slack jawed three decades on. The original Thought Talk ended with its eponymous title track a lyric-less jazz-based groove with soaring harmony vocals and buzzing guitars that recalled the peaks of David Crosby’s 1971 If Only I Could Remember My Name LP. Fabulous!
From this vantage point it might be easy for the uninitiated to put them down as mere Byrds copyists but Starry Eyed looked both back and forward – there was a certain innocence to their early songs that harkened back to the 60s golden age of pop, similarly they were developing that 60s sound and had they stuck it out I’m sure they’d have been at the forefront of 1978’s short-lived power pop phenomenon – was it mere coincidence that The Records ace 45 with its spiralling ‘Eight Miles High’ riff was entitled ‘Starry Eyes’? Listening now to these albums puts me as much in mind of the Soft Boys or the dbs and all those great 80s paisley bands as it does of SEAL heroes the Byrds or CSN.
This collection compiled by Tony Poole is your chance to revaluate them – bringing together both CBS albums, various Flo & Eddie sides and other sundry bits and bobs including at long last a version of their signature tune that does them full justice. I was a convert to them first time around but one listen to this now should have you equally hooked – what a fine band they were. - Nigel Cross
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Netrhythms Review of 'That Was Now And This Is Then' by Mike Davies
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Shindig! Review of 'That Was Now And This Is Then' by Jon 'Mojo' Mills & Andy Morten
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Lost In The Grooves Review of 'That Was Now And This Is Then' by Kim Cooper
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POPISM Review of 'That Was Now And This Is Then' by Goran Obradovic
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Tony Poole Interview with Robert Pally
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Bucketfull of Brains Tony Poole Interview with Fernando Naporano
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