HW: Re: Alan Davey - Live And Beyond + Al Chemicals Lysergic Orchestra

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Alfred Kössl wrote:

> Has anyone here on this list still bought those 2 CDs of Alan Davey ? How
> do they sound ? Are those recordings good ?

        Didn't yet get the latter, but I did the former and a little while
ago wrote this review of it (for another forum, hence the explanatory
detail), which may be of interest to you:

"Bedouin - _Live and Beyond_

        "A pretty misleading package this, being sold at Bedouin gigs
before they had their new album out and still available from
<http://www.bedouin.info>. It looks like a Bedouin live CD-R, Bedouin of
course being the fearsome space-rock three-piece who also double as a
Motorhead covers band, fronted and backed by Hawkwind bass-player Ali
Davey. What it is is an unlabelled gold CD-R with two live Bedouin tracks,
and then two each solo studio tracks from Bedouin's three members. Not in
any way the Bedouin live album it looks like. And for this you pay a
tenner. Be warned.

        "So, having been foolish enough to buy it, what do you get? The
two Bedouin tracks, one of which is actually two, have all the punch and
attack you'd expect and the bowed-guitar solo in `One Moon Circles' which
the new guitarist added to it since that was recorded. So this is pretty
good stuff, and one of the tracks was even new at the time, a sneak
preview. The solo stuff on the other hand is all pretty ropey or
so-so. The two Ali Davey tracks are mostly uninterestingly programmed with
occasional tinny guitar overlay and though I don't dislike any of his fast
bouncy space-rock, it's very definitely home studio in sound and nothing
better than baseline output. The guitarist (Glenn Povey's) tracks are like
Vai out-takes without the ability. Some flair, some precise technical
axe-mangling which doesn't go on too long but no real tunes either of them
and very boring programmed drums which sap it of any suppleness. No vocals
either. The two tracks by the drummer (Danny Thompson, son of Danny
Thompson the Fairport-connected upright bass player) are by far the
longest, but oddly listenable. Danny's a good drummer, which he didn't
use to be, and has a lately-acquired background in American aboriginal
music, and though this doesn't really come through in these percussion-
only pieces they are quite peaceful pieces of meditative rhythm. The most
interesting tracks but not the most musical. The others are however much
less exciting than they ought to be. A poor bag when two live tracks and
seventeen minutes of drumming is all that's worth the playing. 5/20"

        Yours,
                Jon

ObCD: Jethro Tull - _Benefit_
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)