Sunday

free

...roundabout late '66/'67 as the R'n'B combos of merrie olde england changed into psych and got tangled in deadends with a music style a lot didn't really understand or in many cases actively loathed though chose to go with the flow and try their hand at LSDpop, a new younger heavier brand of blues rocking cats came through to fill the gap in late '67/68 and the chaps in question here debuted with a real cool sound that melded blue eyed soul rocking with a blues swagger that belied their age...a spiffing 1st wax that captured more than a few young heads looking for a rough and ready sound that they could call their own... with a powerfull live set things were looking well nice in freeland as the year of '69 got underway...
...sob...

...late '69 sees this combo building on the small but strong success of 'tons of sobs' with this self titled 2nd wax...gaining in confidence with their abilities to rock the house on live gigs, a funky vibe has taken over from the swaggering bravado their young age had afforded them on the first disk...things are definitely looking up as the old decade drew to a close...
...wax 2...

...third outing for the free chaps and this one had the 'all right now' single which had somehow found favour with the general populace who made it a smash in the summer of 1970...what the normal record buyers who may have been tempted to lay out dough for the LP wax thought has not really been recorded for posterity, so their collective reaction to the world weary tunes that were visiting to the dansette player is largely unknown, though its a safe wager that the moody construction and sad atmoshere emanating may not have been quite what they imagined this 'new' group that had sprung into the hit parade to actually sound like...it was a different stance with the newly arriving grammar school hooligans, the ever growing teen heads dug this groove, these were the sounds of their very own bluesmen and the journey of free continued, they were able to command bigger gigs, gaining massive exposure on the airwaves but the great downturn was unwittingly setting itself in motion as more distractions seperated them from the blues rocking noise they were born to purvey, the music business would eventually destroy them with drugs and ego problems and general bad vibes...but for now the seventies were starting and free were charting and hope was lingering awhile...

2 comments:

dray said...

because of years of AOR dross and the utter scmaltzing of Bad Company by the likes of Simon Bates and Mike Read i'd forgotten how good Free actually were....those two old toss pots did a lot of damage to my musical taste... if they liked it then i was sure to loathe it with a venom..... heh heh...so thanks for these

mind you Our Tune was good wasnt it?.... surely one of the major causes if ever there was one of 1970s punk riots.... rock on....

spacedsaviour said...

as is usually the case the earlier works are the best...it seems you need to stay well away from the electric wireless machine, probably an easy task nowadays...