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Cherry Red [Release date 28.10.22]
Quite some Cactus boxset. Cherry Red have repackaged all of the Blues Rock legends’ releases into a sturdy 8 CD box. It contains the 4 studio albums recorded 1972-74, and 4 albums’ worth of live material, never before bundled together.
The band was formed by two ex Vanilla Fudge musicians, Carmen Appice on drums and Tim Bogert on bass. The line up was rounded out by revered guitarist Jim McCarty, ex of Buddy Miles Express and The Detroit Wheels.
Amboy Dukes/ Damn Yankees guitar man, Ted Nugent said of McCarty “Remember his name… he is as important as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry… a god on guitar”. McCarty’s hollow bodied jazz guitar features large on these recordings, both studio and live. It’s those big, full fat chords that drive the music.
Nugent’s erstwhile bandmate, Rusty Day became the Cactus vocalist just prior to the recording of the band’s self titled debut album.
Day’s grainy, miles-on-the-clock vocals regularly wrapped themselves around some of the great blues rock songs from the pre-rock’n'roll era. Covers of Mose Allison’s ‘Parchman Farm’ and ‘You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover’ – rock blues pioneer Willie Dixon’s infuential slice of street philosophy – are the album’s foundational tracks.
The same is true of follow up album, One Way Or Another. Covers of Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ and Chuck Willis’s ‘I Feel So Bad’ are the glue that holds the band’s own blues rock gems tight. Those gems – ‘No Need To Worry’, ‘Let Me Swim’ and ‘Big Mama Boogie’ – stood tall in that company and all became popular components of the Cactus live set.
Third album, Restrictions, reinforces the band’s credentials as a bona fide, born on the Bayou Blues Rock band, with the stomping, wailing ‘Token Chokin’, ‘Evil’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ steamrollering over everything in their path.
The band’s fourth and last studio album of the seventies, Ot’N'Sweaty, is exactly that. Even the fact it’s flavoured with a distinct twist of Memphis doesn’t disguise its muddy, meat and potatoes’ blues.
In fairness, the band had undergone considerable line up surgery since Restrictions. McCarty and Day, the duo who helped build a locomotive boogie sound onto Appice and Bogert’s bolted to the floor rhythm section, had both departed. They were impossible to replace.
Of the new tracks, only ‘Bedroom Mazurka’ and ‘Bad Stuff’ were genuine contenders.
The 4 CDs of live material comprise the band’s Fully Unleashed, The Live Gigs Volumes 1 and 2. Previously released, but not in this fully self contained form.
2 CDs to each volume.
Volume 1 consists primarily of the band’s final show at the Ellis Auditorium in Memphis (1971). Cactus were an incendiary live act, fast and loud, always peppering their stage set with with the usual suspects… ‘Evil’ ‘Big Mama Boogie’, ‘Bag Drag, and inevitably, ‘Parchman Farm’ and others, in front of an audience already sold.
Volume 2 is another ‘Final Show’ recording (by Eddie Kramer, producer to the stars…Hendrix, Stones, Kiss etc etc). This time at the now defunct but once world famous Gilligans in New York State. We were still in 1971. The original band was still intact.
This from Bill De Young, journalist of the time, and prolific liner note writer (Chicago, Black Oak Arkansas, 38 Special): “This was Cactus at its take-no-prisoners peak. There was never anything ‘showbiz’ about them; the goal, both onstage and off, was to rock like there was no tomorrow.”
Say no more. *****
Review by Brian McGowan
Album review (The Birth Of Cactus 1970, 2022)
Album review (Tightrope, 2021)
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THE MERCURY RIOTS LA Girls (indie)
RENDEZVOUS POINT Presence (Long Branch Records)
MINE ROAD Tightrope (indie)
SAINT TRAGEDY Asking For A Ghost (indie)
THE HOME TEAM Walk This World With Me (Thriller Records)
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09:00-12:00 ATLANTIS DRIVE (Pride & Joy Music)
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