Book review: Decades – Curved Air in the 1970s by Laura Shenton

Decades - Curved Air in the 1970s by Laura Shenton

Sonicbond Publishing [Publication date 18.06.21]

Author Laura Shenton makes no excuses for compiling a series of extracts from previously published work. This includes contemporaneous snippets from the likes of Disc & Music Echo to more recent cribs from Prog magazine. In some cases this will save certain anoraks looking up their old back copies.

In Shenton’s linking narrative there is little real opinion or insight offered and in fact some of her own text is a little trite:

“When Kirby Gregory first played the guitar, he fell in love with it.”
“It is difficult to describe Air Conditioning as anything other than good music.”

I could go on.

Shenton is a music scholar but there is no academic or profound musical breakdown of Curved Air’s seventies output. Given that they melded classical and rock with some significant musicians (such as Francis Monkman and Darryl Way) this has to be an oversight.

And what about Sonja? Hot-blooded males would have had her poster from”Sounds” (one of the few contemporary music sources evidently not in Shenton’s cuttings collection) c.1971 adorning their bedroom wall. I certainly did. But there’s nothing about her sexual appeal here or that she helped pave the way for female fronted rock in the 1970s (not just in prog) culminating in bands like Blondie.

Indeed the non-musical aspect of “the Helen Mirren of rock” (my own description) was a key factor in the band’s popularity and Shenton also omits the legend of the jewel-encrusted G-string which for years was recounted by students at Birmingham University (where she filmed a television musical in the late-seventies). Sonja later gave the real version of events. (see interview link below).

The author brings the story up to date in a brief summary and there is a section on tour dates. The photo section includes the usual mix of album covers, video grabs and memorabilia. But for the now slightly less hot-blooded there is no archive photo of primeval Sonja in her kinky boots (see interview link below).

But, really, you could read Shenton’s introduction and conclusion section and glean as much as you need from this author. The inconsistent approach in this series, and in the corresponding On track… imprint, continues. **1/2

Review by David Randall

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Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024

ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
S8NT ELEKTRIC XTC (Long Branch Records)
ARCANA KINGS Here We Go (Curtain Call Records)
KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

Featured Albums w/c 11 November 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)