REALITY

Have been pondering giving this one the big 5 stars, but it falls just below what I'd call a masterpiece, so 4.5 for this great album. Much more of a long lost psych classic than prog (it was only 1968 when made) A real mixture of influences can be heard. Vocals reminicent of late 60's Arthur Brown. Musicianship sounds akin at times to Hendrix or maybe even the Small Faces, though not quite as tight or well produced. Dont let that put you off though, despite the sometimes sloppy musicianship and muddy sound lies some highly interesting tracks, all of which have a certain amount of added humour and general weirdness to make this the gem it is. More keyboard dominated than guitar, the album goes from flower power style to doomy freakouts. Some tracks even benefit from an orchestral backing which works well. In my opinion, any fans of Late 60's Floyd, Arthur Brown, or generally anything underground from '67-'69, would LOVE this album.

The debut album from Second Hand which was released in 1968 and called Reality is a pretty psychadelic experience.

The music is heavily influenced by rock/ blues bands like Jimi Hendrix and Cream but in addition to that sound Ken Elliott´s vintage keyboards are a trademark in Second Hand´s sound. His voice is very strong and humourous. This music seems to be made while having lots of fun and probably under the influence of various drugs.

Most songs are fairly ordinary rock songs with a psychadelic touch while Mainliner Reality is a 15 minute long song with lots of string arrangements. The most progressive track on Reality for sure.

The musicianship is allright but a bit sloppy. The production is muddy and far from clean but I guess that´s the way the band thought it should be ( or maybe they just didn´t have enough money to buy themselves a better sound).

If your introduction to Second Hand was their second and most known album Death May Be Your Santa Claus this album probably won´t blow you away. But on the other hand if you liked Death May Be Your Santa Claus this is a a nice way to see how they started out. I´ll rate Reality 3 small stars. It´s a good psychadelic rock album with vintage keyboards and a great singer, but not much more than that. I´ll recommend that you start with Death May Be Your Santa Claus if you´re curious about Second Hand.

It kind of pains me to give a small rating to this album. The tracks Mainliner and Reality are ambitious prog/psych epics with some very good instrumental sections.

But these guys were a new band just taking their first steps.They were barely 18 when laying this stuff down. Most of this stuff is 60's pop-rock, but really quirky. In the remastered CD I have Ken gives a little detail in the notes about what the songs are about. Well he may know what he's saying, but I can't figure out what he's saying. He's a weak singer in the first place and when his vocals get lost in the mix that doesn't help either. The best of the quirky pop-rock gems is the opening cut 'fairy-tales', some that ensue have good riffs and a semi-respectable chorus, but to over-analyse this album too much is silly; this was their 'starting point', and they were supposed to build on this. Remember the first Genesis album? You get my point.

Some people have come back to this album and claimed it to be a 'masterpiece', which is wrong. Like the music critic says in the liner notes "Second Hand are a group with a lot of potential". This is not a group 'at it's peak', yet the liner notes where Ken says that this is a wonderful album and it failed 'cause good music doesn't succeed is a bit rich. No sense of self-criticism or reflection? Maybe if you had done that, you might have realised that this music was very flawed. It has a lot of potential and has buckets and spades of artistic ambition, which is a good thing, but the band aren't gelling well, and the music sounds 'drunk' and the lyrics are very hard to understand. Work on those problems and you might have come up with some winners, oh well you released another four albums, but a lot of the bands' problems never went away.

Still, this album shows the band has a lot of potential, A LOT, but without proper guidance or record company interest, they never really achieved the potential.