Wait, wait, wait … what’s this?
Is this a #VinylTwosDays pairing appearing on Friday instead?
Thorough readers — and thank you very much, you’re why I bother Instababbling — might have noticed a footnote on my previous post indicating I’m unshackling my chronicle of A&M Records from once-a-week confinement. Haven’t decided yet what hashtag (if any) ought to replace #TuesdaysWithJerry, in tribute to late label co-founder Jerry Moss. But that’s really no reason to stop me from plowing ahead.
Especially since I keep expanding the scope of this series.
I foolishly assumed I’d somehow get from Herb Alpert to Sting in mere months — and probably could have if I’d stuck to the highest of highlights. That would mean skipping past scores of notable albums, however, from names both (in)famous and obscure. What’s the fun in that?
Now that this retracing of releases has reached the late ‘60s, at which point A&M’s roster tripled in size year after year, my compulsive desire to dive deeper has amped up hard. We were just about to kick off the ‘70s with this spotlight on the seminal yet oft-overlooked English group the Move, but expect to see considerably more LPs from ’67-’69 before we get anywhere close to revisiting Cat Stevens and Carole King.
That said, this twofer is chronologically all over the place.
‘The Best of the Move’ (’74, bottom right) is inaccurately titled, although it’s hardly a lousy gateway into their catalog given the compilation’s first half is a full repress of the band’s ’68 debut, when they sounded like Birmingham’s answer to the Who on terrifically Mod artifacts like ‘Fire Brigade,’ ‘Yellow Rainbow’ and (my fave) ‘Walk Upon the Water.’
How it is A&M managed to issue that set when they couldn’t the first time ‘round, well, you’ll have to dig up someone from legal for that answer.
‘Shazam!’ (’70, upper left) was the sole Move-ment A&M put out stateside simultaneous with its UK release on Regal Zonophone. (My copy is a Music on Vinyl repress from 2016.) By this time Roy Wood had emerged as the group’s primary force, forging a feel less indebted to Pete Townshend & co. and more reflective of then-current strides in progressive rock. Not that this was how the Move was considered at the time, but in hindsight it isn’t such a stretch to think of them as a more approachable version of King Crimson or Yes at that time — equally epic, occasionally more tuneful, definitely less complex.
Lineup changes ensued after each new work, labels too, which is why the remainder of their thoroughly excellent four-album discography — ‘Looking On’ (’70) and ‘A Message from the Country’ (’71), both featuring an increasingly involved Jeff Lynne — landed on Capitol in the US, Fly or Harvest in the UK.
By the time of ‘Message’ Wood and Lynne were already at work assembling the first edition of Electric Light Orchestra, though Wood would only last one record with that lot before breaking away to form Wizzard. All of which helps explain why the second half of ’The Best of the Move’ — which arrived once ELO and Wizzard were both flowering — is such a hodgepodge.
Principally comprised of stray but key singles like ’Night of Fear’ and ‘Blackberry Way,’ it largely skips the final two albums apart from the single version of ‘Brontosaurus,’ a hefty slice of proto-glam-rock that marks Lynne’s only appearance on this retrospective.
’Tis a shame A&M didn’t have licensing rights for the band’s final, post-‘Message’ singles, ‘California Man’ and ‘Do Ya.’ The latter would be redone (and improved) by ELO in ’76 on ‘A New World Record’; two years later the former tune was memorably remade (and improved) by Cheap Trick for their ‘Heaven Tonight’ album.