M- 1971 PROMO MICK ABRAHAMS BAND EVENING Tull + Pig

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RARE 1971 WHITE LABEL PROMO ~

UK BLUES POWERHOUSE

 A Musical Evening With                    

            Mick Abrahams

\                            USA - A&M Records - SP 4321 White label promo

1971 original first pressing in TOP clean shape!

ex-Jethro Tull  'This Was' era guitarist and leader of Blodwyn Pig made this fine powerhouse blues rocking quartet just after Tull & Pig ...

RARE White label Promotional...

Many fans of the very first Jethro Tull album may indeed lead to a fresh listening to Mick Abrahams' subsequent output. And while Blodwyn Pig's two studio albums deserve attention and praise, it is the first album by Mick Abrahams' lesser-known, self-named trio band that I would like to share with you...

'A Musical Evening With The Mick Abrahams Band' opens with the behemoth of driving blues-rock that is 'Greyhound Bus'. Great Abrahams guitar prowess abounds ...The only 'of it's time' element of 'Greyhound Bus' is the harmony vocal of Abrahams and band mate, organist Bob Sargeant. And we'll hear more, much more, of this later.

Next up it's Mick's fine 'Awake'  the first of two stone epics on the album. It features a gospel-like, melodic verse with a top notch Abrahams' croon, before the advent of ONE HELL OF A GUITAR RIFF. Much more wild than anything even Jimmy Page could muster. It's terrific. It leads into a chorus of overwhelming heaviness and passion with an upward key change that just floors the listener. The solo sequences in the middle of the song are incredible, Sargeant's jazzy inventions preceding a echoey solo by the leader that avoids any hint of playing to the gallery and sounds all the more immense for it (great feedback too). A triumph of subtlety over show. But that riff - Jeez. By the end of the song it'll have hammered so far into your head that you'll never be able to listen to side two of 'Zep II' again without a crazed grin.

'Winds Of Change' is a gorgeous rural-inflected acoustic ballad by Abrahams, featuring more divine harmony vocals and deliciously-understated bottleneck playing. It's followed by 'Why Do You Do Me This Way', a rocking three-chord basher with harmony guitars that would grace Wishbone Ash and Aby bellowing his best Jim Morrison growl. And, just a point of interest - it sounds like prime Quo BEFORE Quo adopted the mindless boogie that made their name. But it's better, so much better.

'Big Queen' sees a return to the awesome harmony vocals and wild mid-verse key shifts, atop a rhythm section that rivals that of Tull (no small praise) for activity and attack. Have enough to drink and you can even dance to it. The adjacent 'Not To Rearrange' gives Sargeant a chance to hog the mike, in the best rural ballad Gram Parsons never wrote. Abrahams shines on pedal steel.

The final fourteen minutes are taken up with the album's second mega-track, the mighty 'Seasons'. A unison guitar and Hammond organ lick leads into a verse dripping with much melody. Then comes the second section of the song, a slow, slow harmonic (natch) call to the skies that sounds like an outtake from 'Deja Vu', before everything stops and Mick lets rip with some expert under-amplified and echo-inflected mega-guitar-licks. It's another corker, and Sargeant provides Hammond organ abuse so intense that his subsequent retirement into record and session production almost seems a crime. Then back comes The Man, this time with amp turned to eleven, with the best guitar solo trip of the album on top of still more pyrotechnics-with-heart from his keyboard partner. Overlong, overripe and over indulgent, 'Seasons' simultaneously epitomises all that is right and wrong about UK progressive rock in the early 70's. And it's a belter.

Mick Abrahams
Ritchie Dharma
Walt Monaghan
Bob Sargeant 

Guitar, Mandolin, Vocals
Drums, Percussion
Bass, Vocals
Organ, Guitar, Piano, Vocals

Greyhound Bus
Awake
Winds Of Change
Why Do You Do Me This Way
Big Queen
Not To Rearrange
Seasons

CONDITION: The thick gatefold cover is in great clean collectible "EX" (excellent) to M- with a small promo drill at top tight, otherwise solid all over, a top original copy

The vinyl with white promo label, all glossy clean, M- plays clear 

      A cool addition to anyone's music library!

SEE: SELLERS OTher items for similar cool sounds for "head" people...

EFFICIENT/CAREFUL GRADING

All imperfections are noted both cover & record