HOLD YOUR HEAD UP

In the early 1970's Argent were for a while one of the top British album bands. They found singles success with "Hold your head up" and "God gave rock'n'roll to you" (later covered by KISS), but retained their credibility as a prog band. Their music was based on the keyboards of Rod Argent, whose preference was organ and occasional piano. The real kingpin of the band however was vocalist/guitarist/song-writer Russ Ballard. He and Rod Argent tended to share vocal duties, but Ballard was noticeably the better singer. His real forte however was in his songwriting, something which would be all too evident after he left the band.

"Hold your head up" is a collection of their generally more pop orientated tracks, and is thus designed to appeal primarily to those who only remember the band for their singles. The tracks are all taken from albums made when Ballard was still with Argent and thus John Verity and John Grimaldi who both replaced him do not appear at all here.

The collection would have been improved if one or two tracks from their debut album had been included ("Dance in the smoke" is the obvious omission). Russ Ballard's dramatic "Tragedy" from "All together now" is also notable by its absence. While the excellent "Nexus" album contributes two tracks, "Love", a rather insipid ballad, was the weakest track on the album. Either "The coming of Khoutek" or "Music from the spheres" would have been far more worthy choices. On the other hand, the album would have been improved had the uninspired "Christmas for the free" and "Rosie" been left off.

Argent's original albums can be quite hard to track down these days, so this collection offers a reasonably satisfactory summary of some of their early work. It does however fall someway short of being a definitive collection.