Egg

Great music ..great notes definitely worth a punt

Brilliant

Excellent album glad its on CD now .

This is a great record from a great but little known band...not least for some of the most pretentious sleeve notes of all time. That apart, it is a really exceptional collection of real 'music'.Unusual time signatures, just organ, drums and bass (no electric guitar) and intense and witty vocals ...'while growing my hair'.....and enough variety of jazz/rock fusion to create sustained interest.I saw them play at the Marquee once....they were awesome and LOUD....and I am very pleased that this CD release has come out to replace my very old vinyl copy thats been played to death.Even if you've never heard them....buy it!As unknown to jazz rock as Nick Drake originally was to folk...and look at him now!!I'll stop now before I turn into the sleeve notes!! :-)

I came to Egg via a friend who knew of my penchant for keyboard-based 70s prog bands, although he warned me it was mere `juvenilia' from 1970 , considering the impressive pedigree these three chaps would amass in the following years (Campbell moved into professional music education and recently made a delightful contribution to BBC4's Prog Britannia programme, Brooks joined Groundhogs and other top-flight rock bands and Stewart joined a million other respected bands and projects).I can sort of see his point: it's certainly not as focused, confident and commanding as Egg's follow-up, The Polite Force, certainly is. Nor is it as tempo-terrifying as things got on The Civil Surface. It's as if the band were trying to find their sonic identity as they went along -- and there's an over-reliance on freak-out noise and the kind of studio effects that must have seemed fun to make, and fun to hear the first time, but nowadays, removed from the times they originated, seem just a little random and time-consuming.But before I sound like I'm down on the album, I should say that it is excellent, with great highlights and at the very worst, a groovy, late Sixties feel.In the spirit of a band trying to find their own voice, much of the good stuff on Egg sounds like someone else, but oh boy, these guys stole from the best that was around at the time. Consequently, I Will Be Absorbed reminds me of nothing if not Kevin Ayers  Joy Of A Toy  and Fugue In D Minor is exactly the sort of classical reworking one could find on a Nice album  Ars Longa Vita Brevis . In fact, comparisons with The Nice (and ELP) are inevitable, what with the line-up consisting of bass/vocals, keyboards and drums, but there's none of the bombast that often accompanied both those bands: instead, things tend to stay more jazzy, poppy and gently ethereal in places (save for the single, see below!). There also seems to be a slight aura of Soft Machine  Out-Bloody-Rageous - An Anthology 1967 -1973  hanging over the proceedings -- betraying their closeness to the Canterbury scenesters of the late Sixties/early Seventies -- and again, this is no bad thing.Happily, for owners of the original album (and indeed the old CD pressing), this reissue restores the `missing' movement from Symphony No2 (removed for copyright reasons) and best of all, as with the old Decca CD issue, the debut Egg single Seven Is A Jolly Good Time b/w You Are All Princes (only in mono tho') is retained. The inclusion of the single tracks alone increase the magnificence of the album, as both cuts are excellent, tautly-played, fun tunes, clever without being smug and (particularly in the case of You Are All Princes) cocky, strutting Prog Pop.If you like it, you'll be delighted with both The Polite Force (the follow-up)  The Polite Force ~ Remastered  and Arzachel (the band/album that preceded it, with Steve Hillage on guitar) Arzachel (Digipak)  - although if you're reading this because you're wondering which Egg album to buy first, I'd still recommend The Polite Force. Then you'll want this.

The Egg link on this page takes you to a very different band call 'The Egg'. Not the organ, bass and drums trio that produced this album and a couple of others. The founding members of the group were Dave Stewart who played organ (not David A. Stewart of Eurythmics), Mont Campbell on bass and vocals and drummer Clive Brooks.Original albums Egg (1970) The Polite Force (1971) The Civil Surface (1974)Compilation albums Seven Is a Jolly Good Time (1985) The Metronomical Society (2007)

Fantastic album