WELL KEPT SECRET

There comes a time on every journey, no matter how loosely planned, that one acknowledges it's time to bail, whether it's rats off a sinking ship, that year round post graduation trip with the friend to whom you weren't speaking 3 months in, and everything in between. For my blow by blow set of JOHN MARTYN reviews, that time is now, not that I won't necessarily revisit some of his later albums at a future date. It's been a 4 step drop from the visionary "One World", with "Well Kept Secret" his new nadir, and we can't even blame PHIL COLLINS for this one. I still can't award 1 star for this early 1980s R&B drivel by an erstwhile folkie, from which there is no identity to steal, for his increasingly BOWIE influenced deep bass vocals may have themselves influenced other Scots like BIG COUNTRY and SIMPLE MINDS, and a host of other of the more accomplished from the middle of that decade. In addition, both "You Might Need a Man" and "Back with a Vengeance", as infantile as their lyrical messages might be, hit the sweet spot for this style between which it and I have no love lost. At this point it is indeed a well kept secret that this was his highest charting UK album, because its success was ephemeral in contrast to MARTYN's secure legacy.