While their fans eagerly wait for a follow-up to 2020’s "Comet" that consisted, for the most part, of original material, FIREFALL seem to be in for the long game with exploring the ensemble’s kindred spirits’ creative cache. Looks like their 2023 album “Friends & Family” proved to be successful enough to warrant a sequel in which more of perennials get covered, although with a smaller quotient of pieces hailing from the ’70s, the band’s own halcyon days.
The least successful of Larry Parnes’ protégés, whose list included such luminaries as Billy Fury and Georgie Fame, it was for lack of luck rather than for lack of talent that Duffy Power didn’t deliver hit after hit, which is why the British artist reached the ’70s without riches but with a lot of respect from his peers. Signed to CBS for an album release, what the singer could put out back in 1971 was quite impressive: a record laid down in the company of ARGENT – and produced by Rod Argent and another former Zombie, Chris White, who co-penned “Hell Hound” for their elder friend – and also featuring PENTANGLE rhythm section, Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, as well as one and only Ollie Halsall on guitar. Only the platter remained untitled and unissued for decades – until now.
Galleons and planes in a single context may scream of steampunk, yet it’s all par for the course where STEELEYE SPAN are concerned, since a lot of their works is rooted in the merging of folk material with contemporary rock arrangements. Still, the veterans’ forthcoming album – the band’s first full-length studio offering after 2019’s jubilee-marking “Est’d 1969” – should take this stylistic marriage further. Titled “Conflict” and comprised of a dozen numbers, the record that’s to be out on May 23rd will pick up where four fresh cuts on 2023’s “The Green Man Collection” left off.
While JETHRO TULL fans speculate on a potential 40th Anniversary reissue of “Living In The Past” as a box set – there’s even a tentative tracklist traveling from forum to forum, – the ensemble seem to be preparing the release of the concert recordings done in Switzerland, for a TV broadcast, on November 15th, 2008. The double album titled “Live From Baloise Session” will make it to CD and vinyl on June 13th.
A stalwart of British blues scene, the great Jack Lancaster died a few days ago, and the world will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of rock version of “Peter And The Wolf” – a star-studded album which the sax player co-created with keyboardist Robin Lumley and considered one of their best works – without him. Of course, Jack was primary known as a founding member, together with Mick Abrahams, of the mighty BLODWYN PIG whose two classic platters featured such compositions as “The Modern Alchemist” and “San Francisco Sketches” that perfectly outlined Lancaster’s conceptual approach to music, but there would be many recordings the veteran blared on so melodically, although the only other prominent ensemble he took part in, alongside Mick Rogers, were AVIATOR.
