Album Reviews

In the early '70's, with the second great rock era in its death throws, the rock intelligensia hungered for something, anything that might reinvigorate the softening musical firmament.

It had to be more than a space oddity like David Bowie's reincarnation as Ziggy Stardust and it had to be something that might once again shake the culture the way The Beatles had back in 1963, setting off the second rock era. Nothing less would do.

And since the first rock era was born in America and the second in the U.K., justice and symmetry demanded that third one should originate back where it all started.

Thus the 'power pop' of The Raspberries, Badfinger and especially Big Star seemed to fit the bill. Rock critics jumped onboard, hoping to encourage a movement that might spawn a new Beatles or Beach Boys. In fact, many felt that the thoughtful, tuneful, guitar driven Big Star, signed to the tiny Ardent Records out of Memphis, TN, could be the new Beatles.

Indie label Mercury Records, best known then as a classical and jazz label (though it had had great success with The Left Banke and later Rod Stewart) hired rock writers Paul Nelson and Bud Scoppa, the former as an A&R man, the latter as a publicity director, hoping to build an artist development department in order to 'grow' talent from the ground up.

Nelson had been an early contributor to Rolling Stone and before that had founded Little Sandy Review, a magazine dedicated to the early 1960's folk revival. Scoppa was another well-published writer and Byrds specialist.

Nelson's two most important signings were androgynous glam-rockers The New York Dolls, who went on to have greater notoriety and influence on the next wave than they had record selling success, and Blue Ash, a Youngstown Ohio-based power-pop outfit (a bar band, really) influenced by The Beatles and especially The Who.

Despite terrific support from supposedly influential rock critics at all of the major and minor music magazines and underground radio airplay (I played the shit out of it at WBCN-FM) and despite being a terrific, high energy album, filled with memorable tunes, Blue Ash and its debut album No More, No Less, came and went, barely making a blip on the culture or the charts, though the band toured extensively, opening for many big names.

Inexplicably, though No More, No Less went on to attain worldwide legendary status among power rock fans and songs from the album were extensively covered by others, the album was not reissued on CD until this new Collector's Choice release.

Paul Nelson, who was also credited as executive producer on the original, passed away in 2006. Bud Scoppa (associate producer) is still active in the music business, having gone from Mercury to A&M, to Arista to Zoo to Sire Records (which he left in 2000).

All of the original band members are alive and still good friends, according to bass guitarist and vocalist Frank Secich, who wrote the CD's liner notes. They reunited in 2004 and played half a dozen live gigs after Not Lame records issued a 2 CD set of unreleased demos and outtakes.

So what will you hear should you choose to buy this CD reissue? Well, first of all, you'll hear an incredibly fine, dynamic recording produced at Youngstown's Peppermint Productions, recorded and mixed by Gary Rhamy. The songs jump from speakers with clarity, body and definition, each instrument and voice in a well-defined space.

There's nothing 'moldy' about the sound and especially about the songs and the spirited performances. Blue Ash specialized in crisp, three part harmonies and short, tightly arranged pop tunes. If you grew up on '60s pop, the opener 'Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her?)' will produce an adrenalin jolt as the boys throw many familiar, but long since abandoned musical gestures into the mix, including guitar licks, screams and drum fills—all delivered with tremendous precision and enthusiasm.

The second tune is 'Dusty Old Fairgrounds,' an otherwise unrecorded tune supplied to the band by Paul Nelson, who got it from a folkie he befriended at the University of Minnesota in the early '60s, who then went by the name Bobby Zimmerman.

There's a spirited cover of Lennon/McCartney's 'Any Time At All,' and more significantly a collection of originals written mostly by Secich and lead guitarist Bill Bartolin.

There's nothing of earth shattering significance here, nor was there intended to be. Just a tuneful, rocking, power-pop good time and today, that's good enough!

BTW: the original vinyl (mine's a white label promo copy) mastered by Gilbert Kong kills the CD, for which there's no mastering credit.