Jeff Beck Group - Truth
Jeff Beck Group - Beck-Ola
And in the WTFWIT category (was I thinking) comes my recent appraisal of these two Rod Stewart-fronted Beck group albums, the first of which, used to be in at least medium rotation in my high school years. And for some reason, I came out of all that thinking the album was as weak as one of those early Deep Purple albums with all the bad covers. So I was happy to have my 8 turned into a provisional 11 due to what seems to be a damn strong rock record. Not to mention all the Led Zeppelin riffs on the album :) Beck-ola I’m not sure I’d heard before but it’s more of the same sort of thing, maybe slightly weaker, although perhaps its too early to tell. Suffice it to say after doing a lot of spinning of Rod’s early solo work, that I’m really starting to warm to the guy, even though the recent television commercials of his latest tour was making me think of Rod in the wheelchair on South Park. These albums, on the other hand, feature a lot of powerful and early, bluesy rock.
Beggars Opera - Pathfinder
I swear I used to own this album, but don’t remember listening to it and never graded it, perhaps I just heard it in the store when I bought the Line Waters of Change. And if you look at the Gnosis grades, you’ll notice an almost full point drop off. It sounds like they switched their vocalist for the album, as that up front, “Time Machiiiiiiine” guy seems to have either calmed down quite a bit or left. Musically this seems to be even closer to Fruupp or Jonesy in a way, a little less hard edged, a tad slicker and quite a bit less campy. Altogether, it seemed a lot better than I would have expected.