donn (11/27/82)
I like album and book reviews... so to do my part here's some more stuff from my collection. I give the title, group, record company, serial number and recording date (when possible). NATIONAL HEALTH. National Health, Visa Records IMP 7002 (April 1977) OF QUEUES AND CURES. National Health, Charly Records CRL 5010 (June 1978) D.S. AL CODA. National Health, Europa Records JP2008 (October 1981) There's progressive rock, and then there's progressive rock. There's ELP, and Yes, and Genesis, and... National Health? This screwy band does it right when the bigger bands have done it wrong. None of these albums have produced hit singles, much less been hits themselves, and a total of three tracks from three albums have singing on them (no lyric sheet provided), a sure sign of commercial trouble. But the music is uncompromisingly inventive and interesting and I keep playing the Health long after I have tired of the others. National Health was formed in 1975 from members of two earlier bands with a similar character, Gilgamesh and Hatfield and the North. The original band was Alan Gowen (keyboards), Dave Stewart (keyboards), Phil Lee (guitar), Phil Miller (guitar), Mont Campbell (bass), Bill Bruford (drums) and Amanda Parsons (vocals). After some reorganization the band produced its first album with Alan Gowen, Dave Stewart, Phil Miller, Neil Murray (bass) and Pip Pyle (drums); the cover has Dave, Phil, Neil and Pip clustered around a hospital bed covered with bric-a-brac, with the photograph taken by the patient.... The first album establishes the group's wonderful eclectic style. Stewart's 15-minute piece TENEMOS ROADS has most of the group's trademarks: a complex, irregular beat, a fondness for quick variations in texture and dynamics, an all-stops-out orientation toward soloing, a tongue-in-cheek musical vocabulary. Gowen's alternately delicate and sprightly BRUJO has so many shifts of theme that it's hard to keep track of it on the first hearing, but it has grown to become my favorite on the album. Stewart's BOROGOVES [Excerpt from Part Two; Part One] is just plain funny, a hundred musical tricks. For the second album, OF QUEUES AND CURES, Alan Gowen is gone and John Greaves replaces Neil Murray at bass and Amanda Parsons at vocals. The hilarious jacket comments are just a prelude to some hilarious music. THE BRYDEN TWO-STEP (FOR AMPHIBIANS) [PARTS 1 AND 2] (Stewart) book-ends the album with another tribute to Charles Dodgson, while THE COLLAPSO (Stewart) parodies certain traditional and non-traditional music and SQUARER FOR MAUD (Greaves) is a musical numinosity detector. BINOCULARS (Pyle) balances a beautifully solemn organ and a flighty flute solo against John Greaves' dry crooning of a love song to a TV set. PHLAKATON (Pyle) is the best drum solo I have ever heard (and at 8 seconds in length, possibly the shortest). After making this album, National Health broke up. Dave Stewart joined Bill Bruford with the group Bruford and the other band members went their various ways. So why is there a third album, D.S. AL CODA? As it turns out, Alan Gowen died of leukemia in May 1981 and left behind a lot of music which he had written for the Health but had never performed. (This seems to explain the cover of the first album...) The band reformed in order to record the music as a tribute. Despite the depressing circumstances, the album is quite a lively one and displays all the usual Health trademarks. BLACK HAT is a jazzy, catchy tune with vocals from Richard Sinclair, while SHINING WATER plays games with beat and texture, and FLANAGANS PEOPLE is an aggressive vehicle for improvisation which segues into TOAD OF TOAD HALL, which is a soft (but false) denouement. This album has more of a synthesizer flavor than the earlier ones, perhaps due to the experience Stewart obtained while playing with Bruford. More reviews on their way, if people like this. Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn