This year, the fans of FLASH had a good and a bad news. The good was the band’s new album, "Featuring Ray Bennett & Colin Carter", with the original bassist and singer picking up where they left off in the ’70s. The bad news was the death of the group’s guitarist, Peter Banks, also known as a YES first axeman. It was Banks who, prior to his passing, sanctioned the release of “In Public,” a concert tape to become a second live album after 1997’s archival “Psychosync” as well as a reason for a conflict.
Recorded on January 21st, 1973, when FLASH – Banks, Carter, Bennett and Mike Hough on drums – supported THE BYRDS, and preserved, as it turned out, for posterity on the very first mobile truck for The Record Plant, “In Public” contains the following pieces – three from the band’s self-titled 1972’s debut and three from its follow-up “In The Can”, also from 1972:
- Small Beginnings
- Black And White
- Stop That Banging
- There No More
- Children Of The Universe
- Dreams Of Heaven
No flesh flashing this time on the cover that’s graced by a Floydian cow and no musician’s images, the reason for that being explained to DME by Colin Carter:
“Somebody has a bootleg of a FLASH gig [from] years ago and wants to put it out. They don’t have the right to use our names, likenesses, songs or performances, yet they think they can do this without consulting us. I haven’t heard it so I don’t know if it’s good quality or not. We have standards we’d like to maintain so I hope we can get some control over the situation. It’s us and our music, after all.”
Sad – hopefully, the situation will resolve favorably.
