by DustyShoes » Thu Feb 04, 2021 12:27 am
My memory of when The Shadows reinvented themselves and became a vocal group made little difference to my fan boy appreciation of the band.
My fondness for all kinds of guitar music meant thar my appreciation of The Shadows became increasingly more tempered the further away from their roots in British I.R discounting the bands earlier attempts at pop music success by recording
rather prosaic and so easily forgettable vocal recordings.
Despite the advise given to the band while at Abbey Road by Beatle George Harrison that recording songs and releasing these
would surely be a more successful path to follow than a concentration of instrumental music that at the time had driven their success.
Yet for what ever reasons there was that lay behind the break up, The Shadows were to disband in 1968 and that was apparently was that - but not quite, some of their best recorded music was still to come. But not as vocal recordings. Here I'm
remembering Shades of Rock and its eventual stable mate: Rocking With Curley Leads often including contributions from some of the most highly respected studio players of the time. Although not winning universal fan acceptance these were more beefy more genuine and authentic perhaps even a homage to the genre, than what the Shadows chose to follow on with when an even greater change of direction was taken with LP records stacked to the roof entirely with vocal recording - singing songs of in house origin.
These two albums with their stark monochrome covers were right from the city, not where the bright lights shine, but where ts where it is often dark and gloomy with foreboding alleys and streets: industrial cities of Englands North.
Now we come to these three recordings that are the subject of this discussion.
MW&F - Second Opinion from the same singer song writers and a third sans the original W.
An entire trinity of singing.
Optimistic and with loyal intent I bought the debut album, MW&F, shot home on a bus to play the record.
I remember liking what I heard and played the record some more- quite a few more times over the next few weeks actually and then parked it up. Then along came Second Opinion, but this failed to give me what I had enjoyed with MW&F and so I didn't
preserver with the record. Being in possession of almost eternal hope, I bought M&F, more out of Shadows loyalty than much else. But, I didn't ever listen to the last of three and still haven't done so to this day.
Last evening and having some Shadows CD's laying around including Specks Appeal I feed that into the player as something pleasent to fall asleep to.
The first few tracks included vocal, No No Nina being one that I remember before slumber delivered me to Morphious.
What truck me listening to these songs was how clearly showed the influence of CS&N, even to the soaring falsetto voices, but the MW&F arrangements lacked any originality even if the lyrics did.
It's just that MW&F vocals were just not special enough to stand out on their own and so garnered very little success out side of the long established and loyal Shadows fan base and it just never got any better for The Shadows repurposed in 1970's threads.
But in the end it is what it is and I have no idea what seasoned players with all of their collective abilities and those of Aussie sidemen, Tarney & Spencer on-board with this project, the hope of success was to ultimately elude them all.
If you've read this far then you've done well.
Cheers
Simon.