Album review: PATTERNS ON THE WINDOW – The British Progressive Pop Sounds Of 1974 (3 CD Boxset)

Grapefruit (Cherry Red) [Release date : 16.02.24]

1974. The UK seemed to be locked into an endless cycle of political and economic crises. The 3 day week. Fuel shortages, and an unheralded post war recession in full swing.

Hardly a scenario for pop music success. And yet… out of the gloom, many artists, solo and band, emerged with upbeat, high quality and indeed memorable material.

The year saw genre giants like Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry (his classy cover of Dobie Gray’s ‘The In Crowd’ is here), Rod Stewart, UFO (Doctor, Doctor, written by Phil Mogg and Michael Schenker, is here), Procol Harum and Manfred Mann (‘Be Not Too Hard’ is here, written by Playwright / activist/ poet, Christopher Logue) go marching across the fast changing landscape of the UK singles’ chart, toe to toe with upstarts like Thin Lizzy, Bebop Deluxe, Cockney Rebel and Sparks, bands whose durability was yet to be tested.

For Status Quo, ‘Break The Rules’ was a significant divergence from the pop psychedelia they had launched with, but it paved the way for a long and illustrious career.

Nazareth’s ‘Shanghai’d in Shanghai’, taken from the band’s fourth album, Rampant, built on the success of their hit 1973 version of Joni Mitchell’s ‘This Flight Tonight’.

Hard Rock had its place, and so did other forms of Rock… the ex Fairport Convention team of Richard and Linda Thomson’s ‘When I Get To The Border’ is a gleaming piece of artistry, cherry picked from their “debut as a duo” album, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight.

Naturally, there’s a lot of retro flavoured rock here. Marc Bolan’s fabulous mix of trademark Glam with starry eyed funk on ‘Venus Loon’ met with a love/hate reception at the time. Even now, it still sounds futuristic.

Like Bolan, Georgie Fame and Billy Kinsley are class acts who successfully migrated from the Sixties to the Seventies: Fame does a singularly sensual cover of JJ Cale’s swampy, bluesy ‘Ever Lovin Woman’, featured on Disc 2, sandwiched between Roy Wood’ ‘I Can Feel The Fire’ and Cozy Powell’s ‘Na Na Na’.

And in the preceding year, Kinsley, ex of The Merseys and Liverpool Express, released ‘Make My Bed’ which avoided commercial success in the UK, but sold well on mainland Europe. Both songs are here.

As always, there is a scattering of “one hit wonders”, some of them making a dent in the charts through their novelty appeal. Others, like ‘Tell Him’, by Hello, and ‘Touch Me’ by Fancy, fronted by Penthouse Pet, Helen Caunt, were simply great pop songs, with wide international appeal. And others again, like Ronnie Lane’s ‘The Poacher’, in reality, the hit that should’ve been, but never was.

3 CDs, 67 tracks, 4 hours of vintage pop/rock. All in all, a definitive auditory history of a year in popular music, patiently stitched together and perfectly annotated in immersive detail by David Wells, a leading member of the Cherry Red team.

As we’ve observed before, just like movies, hit singles are memories – they capture our lives. One listen to an old favourite, and we’re back in that moment. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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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)