Many people consider Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, made by The Beatles in 1967, to be the first progressive rock album. All those people may be wrong, because I strongly believe the first real progressive rock album appeared a year later. I’m talking about Odessey & Oracle made by The Zombies. This album became very popular after the band had already quit. Time Of The Season, the last song on that album, became a major hit in The Netherlands in 1969. It’s a wonderful song due to the fantastic harmony vocals of Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent. The latter also showed that he is a very gifted musician on the Hammond-organ, piano and mellotron. Several years ago, The Zombies made a successful comeback on stage and they performed three anniversary shows at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. Odyssey & Oracle would probably never been performed on a live stage until last year, when they realized that forty years have past since then. While listening to the recordings of these shows, released on the new Zombies album Odessey & Oracle (Revisited), I found out that they come pretty close to the sound of the original recordings. All band members of the early years, except guitarist Paul Atkinson who passed away too soon in 2004, did a fantastic job to recreate what they already did forty years ago. Keith Airey from The Zombies live touring band replaced Atkinson. I don’t know exactly how old drummer Hugh Grundy, bassist Chris White, Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent are, but you certainly cannot hear that you are dealing with people who are far over sixty years old. During the performance of this legendary album including the encores Tell Her No and She’s Not There, they got some help from an additional keyboardist and some people of the Zombies touring band. The same band also performed a second set and these recordings appeared on the second disc of this fine release. You can enjoy well-known songs like What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted (Colin Blunstone, 1981) and Hold Your Head Up, originally released by Argent in 1972. The string quintet performing on several tracks add an extra dimension to this special anniversary show. Shortly a DVD-release of this show will be available, so you can witness this special event yourself. **** Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
