weidenhaus reviews
Album review from the mighty John Dexter Jones ❤️👍
He was metal you know. They were metal. 80s proper metal. New Wave of it. They’ve still got
their umlaut. They rocked the Marquee, and Baz kept on rocking, and he played with the
bloke from Quo in that Quo, and he had wit and verve, and the music was in him.
I knew him from the days of The Pegasus. Music meets playing Who’s Who in the back-
room of a place that looked a lot better under the subdued light and the mirror-ball, than it
did in the cold light of day. And we hit it off. Two the same. Upfronters. Actually not so
upfront in reality. I didn’t see him for years, but social media re-connected us, and then it
took a death to put us together in the same room. Les Payne had passed. That was an era.
Les brought so many people together. And like that thing everyone says about old friends -
you just start talking and decades dissolve. He told me a story at that funeral. Told me it
was nailed on to be his. But it wasn’t. No way. He survived. The story he told was honest,
graphic, wrenching, and left nothing out. About illness, about state of mind. About truth and
survival.
This is a thoughtful album. It’s not too long, it carries no baggage, it makes no pretence, its substance is the mortal remaining, not the divine intervention.
You ride this album. You get on it and take its trip. You rock and roll down the A4 with an open-face, on a Wednesday Evening, you slow right down at the lights, you stop in a lay-by for reflection, a fag, or a cup of tea, and you KNOW that this isn’t ‘just’ the blues, it isn’t ‘just’ that beautiful connection with music that feels so familiar. It’s more than that.
But why is he telling us these things. Loads of people get High. So what? But what High is he talking about? Everyone loves to see her in the morning. So what? But who does he love to see? Why is he telling us this? People write songs about their sisters. Yeah. But what sister are we talking here? All the while as you listen to Baz, something in the back of your mind won’t settle. What if some of these songs had come from somewhere beyond the fucking pale? From a place that everyone dreads. What if some of these songs had risen against all the odds from the pit to soar above everything? What if this was an album that was born from considerable pain to share joy and love and thanks?
Baz said he set out to record an album like it was the 70s. They went in a studio and played each song a couple of times. But that doesn’t mean they threw it down. It means that there’s just enough tension to go with the close attention, a touch of fragility that retains every shred of emotion, and there’s a craft to every dynamic. Every rise and fall gets you. Every change of tone. Oh and the voice? The one on High that says “I cannot fight anymore”... but did.
After one minute and thirty four seconds of opener, She Said, She Said, a vocal harmony that more than nods at his times playing with John Coghlan, could lure your ‘instant’ critique up a blind alley. Don’t be fooled. Look behind, move out, overtake, open out, attack the corner. What’s round the corner?
If you like rock and blues and boogie, what are you waiting for? (And by the way, if you think that blues rock deserves a tag of superficial easy listening, then I pity you). If you like songs, if you’re careworn, if you’re new to it all, if you’re lucky, if you saw a million bands in a million pubs and dirty clubs and sodden festival fields, if you shook your head at the front, if you turned your lights down and listened to BB King and Peter Green, if ALL your music means a lot to you and speaks to you about life, if you play, if you hung around record shops, if you’ve ever just been ‘THERE’ when it happened...
I love this album. The music’s still in him. Nicely done Baz, and Charles, Jack and Steve.
Go and find it. It’s on vinyl, too.
Album review by the brilliant Julien Deléglise at Blues Again. ❤️ Read the original review here http://www.bluesagain.com/p_selection/selection%201220.html
Translated by the legendary Bruno Quofrance 👌
Predatür's history dates back to 1976, when a handful of Status Quo maniacs commissioned by guitarist-singer Baz Barry decided to form a band. Becoming more serious in the early 1980s, Predatür found himself in the New Wave Of British Heavy-Metal bath, releasing a single self-produced EP in 1982. Since then, the band has continued to tour, and even released two albums: the excellent Mean in 2005 and In Your Garden in 2007. Predatür took the habit of skimming the conventions of Status Quo fans, and for good reason, Barry having a tone of voice strongly resembling that of Francis Rossi in the early 70's, and Predatür playing an energetic mixture of hard blues-rock and nasty boogie. Barry was also a member of John Coghlan's Quo and Rain, two tributes to the Quo, the first with the group's historic drummer. The cover of this new album surprises, showing a bearded Barry, wearing a big wool sweater, making him look more like Moondog than a dangerous hard-rocker. Weidenhaus is a more blues-rock album, but is obviously loaded with references to Status Quo. This time, Barry plunged into the obscure period 1970-1971, when the Quo had rocked blues-rock, with psychedelic reminiscences, and sought its audience. The sound was less intrusive, the boogie appeared more subtle, more heady than violent. Already, the track in German, Weidenhaus, is a reference to a joke from the Quo of that time who liked to laugh at German-sounding words (the track "Umleitung" on the 1971 album Dog Of Two Head). Weidenhaus's music is therefore kneaded from the two Quo albums of this period (Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon from 1970 and Dog Of Two Head), but also from English blues-rock. The tracks ‘2.38’ and Song For A Sister ’are wonderful sonorous nods to the instrumentals of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac (Man Of The World). Barry surrounded himself with excellent musicians: Charles Grear on guitar, Steve Jones on bass, Jack Capon on drums, all young and far from having known the Quo period Frantic Four on stage. Weidenhaus is a real success, lovingly recorded and assembled, without the slightest weak point. The tracks follow each other with delight: the heady 'She Said She Said', 'High', the very blues 'Wednesday Evening', the boogie 'Lovely Day' and 'In The Morning Part 2'… I particularly like these two first boogie albums from Quo, this new album from Predatür has succeeded in resuscitating the spirit and the music, with Predatür's very personal touch as a bonus. Let's hope that the group won't wait ten years to give a successor to this excellent album, but that it is the starting point of a new fruitful era.