14 March : Egg

I had never heard Egg, or even heard of them, until Mont Campbell was a featured talking head on the BBC’s excellent Prog Rock Brittania: An Observation in Three Movements in 2012. Since then I’ve heard their second and third albums, but never their self-titled debut. Until today.

Reader, I love it. I can hedge that round with caveats and comment, but that’s the plain fact of the matter.

This is the sound of three talented musicians (Mont Campbell, Clive Brooks and Dave Stewart) doing exactly what they want with little or no regard for fashion, commerciality or, indeed, the audience. As such it is much more reslient to the passing of time than more self-consciously ‘happening’ bands at the time. And they were very musical. The compositions demonstrate working knowledge of jazz, the avant garde, rock, r’n’b and classical while still sounding very much their own thing.

Richard Williams’s review (left) is pretty much right I think, although I’d probably be less snippy (and although he notices Greig he misses out Stravinski).

You might listen and say it is pretentious, and you might be right, but I don’t regard that as a bad thing. The song titles and lyrics, on side 1 particularly, indicate people who take the music but not themselves seriously.

Once this virus has done its thing in the country I’ll be off to buy this, I think. Meantime I can social distance myself with it on Spotify. It’s probably on YouTube too, but I got too many hits when searching :-/