BOC: Allen Lanier on HF

[John A Swartz]

>                  has it struck anyone else that AL's contribnution to HF
is really not very large? What with both Eric and Bck also playing keys on
it, and a credit to an additional keyboardist also, for how much of the
album is Allen actually there? I can't help thinking that 'In Thee' is
there mostly to give the other member of 3OC a writing credit which is
otherwise lacking. Is he still a presence as normal live?

Lanier's contributions to Heaven Forbid are about as much as they have
been on the last few BOC albums.  There were words spoken a few years
back to the effect of "Allen has started writing again" so there was some
hope that a Lanier composition would be on the album.  But, his last
songwriting credit was on Mirrors, I think (I might be wrong - but as you
can see, it's been awhile).

I suspect that several of the songs, Buck's in particular, were worked up
individually, so the reason you have Buck and Eric with keyboard credits
is probably because their original keyboard parts that they worked up
on their demos may have been retained.

As for Allen live, he is as much a presence as he always was - he's playing
a bit more guitar now it seems, and I suspect the reason (and this is just
my theory) is that with Buck doing more of the vocals, or rather Eric
doing less, Eric has been doing more keyboards - so Allen (who I believe
is a much better guitarist than Eric) is handling more guitar work.

I'm somewhat suspicious about the reason you cited for including "In
Thee" - I wondered about that too.  Whether or not there were ulterior
motives for adding this track I don't know, but I still contend it's a
nice addition to the CD (although another Eric-sung song would have been
nice for a bit more vocal balance).

John

PS:  The one thing I don't understand is why the band didn't consider some
older unreleased tunes to add to the CD - at least if the fanclub newsletter
is to be believed, there are some true musical gems that the band never
put on an album because they weren't either right for the particular
album they were working on, or didn't fit the BOC "image".  One song in
particular, a Buck tune called "Night Flyer" I've heard is excellent (
although now that I think about it, I seem to recall that it stared as a
Joe Bouchard piece).  At least with tBS we get to hear some of these
ideas brought to fruition (Soul Jive, Sally, Hansel & Gretel, and Gun
to name a few).