FAMILY

"Old Songs, New Songs" is a compilation album by UK rock act Family. The album was released through Reprise Records in March 1971. It bridges the gap between the band's fourth and fifth full-length studio albums "Anyway" (November 1970) and "Fearless" (October 1971). "Old Songs, New Songs" is a rarities type compilation album featuring single tracks (which had not been included on the previous album releases), some re-recordings of early tracks, and a couple of remixes of previously released tracks ("Hung Up Down", "Observations from a Hill", and "The Weaver's Answer" from "Family Entertainment" (1969)).

Stylistically the material is in the standard rock/psychadelic rock style of the previous releases by Family, which of course isn't a surprise, since many of these tracks have been released in other versions on some of the preceding releases by the band. This is great, organic, and at times quite adventurous rock music, featuring a lead vocalist in Roger Chapman who has a distinct sounding voice and delivery.

Upon conclusion "Old Songs, New Songs" doesn't add much to the discography of Family and it's certainly what you'd label a "fan" release, but since the material is of a high quality and some of the re-recordings/remixes do add something to the original recordings (and some of the rarity tracks are nice too), a 3 star (60%) rating is still warranted.

Family is just another case of those promising bands from late 60s that never became prog. Their nicest moment is Family Entertainment, which is one of the best "one song of each style" that was characteristic of late sixties (see Beatles' Abbey Road, for example, another masterpiece of this kind). The music doesn't sound like what later would be easily recognizable as prog, but it has lots of elements that would feature on future 70s progressive rock, just not on one song. I believe that was mostly due to the influence of Rich Grech and Jim King because, when they left, Family became less adventurous. For example, in the following album (without them), there is a song of 9-minutes, but no hints of prog: it is less "prog" than even the 10-minute songs from yacht rock bands from late 70s.

Instead of going on a song-by-song basis describing which instruments are played, which I often find misleading, what I want to put in this review is that Family managed to make a collection of songs in many different styles and almost no letdowns (maybe the only "weaker" song is the oldies R'n'R song Second Generation Woman, not because it is bad or R'n'R, but because their attempt of doing the same in the following album is more interesting). In this album, you have the contrast of songs like Weaver's Answer and Hung Up Down, which are typical Family songs with strong rhythm section, Chapman's darker vocals, with folkier songs (Observations from a Hill, Processions), western- influenced (Summer of 67, Face in the Cloud), jazzy and acid (How-Hi-The-Li), with classical feel (From Past Archives) and even countriesque (Dim). All the songs are well-crafted and the string arrangements and extra-instruments are put to a great use, like the string arrangements in Summer of 67, From Past Archives and Processions, or the Sitar in Face in the Cloud and the banjo in Dim. The contribution of King with flutes and saxes was to be missed in the following albums, because his use of the instruments blended pretty well with the music they were doing at the time.

I have a penchant for albums that have this format of a collection of very distinctive songs (when it is done well, obviously, since this is a recipe for a trainwreck in unskilled hands), and Family Entertainment is one of my favorites, and, in my opinion, by far the best Family album, a real masterpiece.

— First review of this album —

British psychedelic, bluesy, highly personal and, at least in the beginning, innovatively eclectic rock band FAMILY (who sadly never really matured into a proper good prog band, IMHO) debuted with a non-album single Scene Through the Eye of a Lens / Gypsy Woman before releasing their charming and amazingly original debut album Music in a Doll's House (1968). The band had several features making them quite unique, perhaps the most notable being the vibrant voice of Roger Chapman. The arrangements on the debut had a lot of variety due to multi-instrumental approach of the members. Bassist Rick Grech played also violin and cello, and Jim King played keyboards, soprano/tenor sax and harmonica. Chapman added some harmonica and tenor sax too, and guitarist John "Charlie" Whitney used also pedal steel.

That said, Music in a Doll's House is not all the time very [proto-] prog oriented or interesting for a prog listener like me who doesn't really enjoy blues. This single showcases Family's rougher blues rock side. 'Old Songs, New Songs' and 'Hey Mr. Policeman' are perhaps my least favourite tracks on the whole album. Apart from the high-pitched chorus "Old songs, new songs / Keep on singing" that probably mocks religious choir music, there's not much for me to say about these songs. Naturally they do their share to increase the brave eclectism of the album, which luckily avoids the blues flavour on its finer pieces.

Family's second album boasts the same lineup as Music From a Doll's House, and came out a mere 8 months after that debut. Perhaps the rush to feed a market hungry for psych-prog magic led them to rush this one a little, because it doesn't quite hit the heights of the original. It feels a bit more homogenised this time around - whereas Music From a Doll's House reeled from mood to mood in a dizzying whirl, this time around the band seem to be gunning for a bit of Serious Prog Credibility and their songs tend toward their more serious moods as a result. Still, Roger Chapman's voice retains a certain charm and the songs aren't incompetent - I just miss the whimsy which the previous album possessed and the cheeky cover to this one seems to promise.

With the loss of both John Wetton and multi-instrumentalist Poli Palmer (and the arrival of bassist Jim Cregan and keyboardist Tony Ashton) the Family lose their progrock potential and the art-rock arrangements (already deficient on Bandstand), and still leave the arrangements of strings and horns to Del Newman.

The band that record It's Only a Movie is now worn down by the continuous changes of the group players and the creative effort made in 6 very different albums (published in 5 years). And yet Chapman and Whitney are not content to record a classic rock album, and still they try to explore new territories, ending up in the parody of country-western and soul genres, and in goliardic songs in style Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

"It's Only a Movie" is a goliardic song, with saloon piano, that pretend to be a soundtrack of a western movie. Nice but not serious. Vote 7+. "Leroy" Is another parody of country-western, with harmonica and saloon piano and strings; in this case the track is more melodic and romantic than the previous. Vote 7,5. "Buffet Tea for Two" recalls some instrumental passages of "Tommy": is an orchestral song based on rhythm, with an art rock approach; maybe the most proggy song of the album. Vote 7,5/8. "Boom Bang" is very pumped (vote 7,5) and sung with grit. In this side the quality and the seriousness of the songs are increased.

"Boots and Roots" opens side B with goliardic mood (again). The presence of Tony Ashton is noted: the piano is present in this album in greater doses than any other album of the Family. It is a lazy and ironic ballad (vote 7+), with a swing arrangement. In the end, "Movie" is more art rock arranged than Bandstand!

"Banger" (vote 6,5/7) is an instrumental song with mood soul and horn arrangement. "Sweet Desiree" is another song arranged in a funambulistic way (vote 7,5), combining latin rhythms, music soul and horn arrangement. In fact it is a Latin-jazz piece. "Suspicion" (vote 7+) mix soul music, with horns in the foreground, with blues rhythm and piano saloon: the effect is a funky song mixed with the bluegrass. The Family continue to amaze for their eclecticism. "Check Out" is the piece that ends the album, with a syncopated rockblues (similar to "Burlesque" but faster) too forced and pulled for long. Vote 7.

Even when the Family strive to give their worst, they are not able to produce a bad record, and they end up astonishing for their inventiveness in mixing different musical genres, with always original art rock arrangements. In this record, which does not present any memorable song, that is the less unitary, the most ramshackle in their career, the Family do not write any bad song and avoid any banality, churning out original songs, as often goliardic and parodistic, ie they have no ambition to become memorable pieces. The album suffer because the songs are not connected to each other with a sequence that has a studied sense, and because the songs are not "serious" but still remains a disc more than decent.

Medium quality of the songs: 7,31. Vote 7+. Three stars

Just as after the experimental and progressive "Music From a Doll's House" a more classic album has arrived ("Entertainment"), even after the creative effort of Fearless's eccentric art-rock arrangements, a much more conventional album has arrived, Bandstand.

The Family entrusted Del Newmann with the orchestral arrangement of the strings, and limited themselves to producing rock songs with the classic strophe-refrain structure showing off the technical virtuosity of their singer, Roger Chapman, and of all the musicians. The songs on this album are split between prog songs and blues-funk songs.

"Burlesque" is a syncopated funk (vote 7,5/8), with a lazy rhythm, which comes alive thanks to the Whitney guitar and the hoarse and vibrato singing of Chapman. This initial song brings the disc to the black sound that characterizes half of his songs, and heralds the style that Chapman and Whitney will adopt in the Streetwalkers, the group that they will create after the breakup of the Family. "Bolero Babe" (vote 7+) completely changes sound and mood, being a slow progressive orechestral ballad, where the arrangements are a simple accompaniment of Chapman's voice in the verses, then "pump" the refrain.

"Coronation" (vote 7+) is more spontaneous and less constructed than Bolero Babe and sees John Wetton's collaboration in writing, usually left to Chapman-Whitney. It is a progressive ballad with a rather bare arrangement, which gives the best of itself in the refrain. Until now, the album has shown three songs of medium-slow rhythm, the first aggressive, the other romantic and subdued. At this point comes "Dark Eyes", an abortive song, one minute and 46 seconds, that fades without being developed, after a good intro of Palmer's piano (no vote).

"Broken nose" (vote 7,5) reshuffles the tone of the album thanks to a frenzied, almost noisy, funky rhythm, supported by some frenetic chorus, in which Linda Lewis takes part. The song has a paroxysmal "crescendo" a bit forced, which becomes sensational (in this as in two other songs on the album) thanks to the sound of the keyboards (synth?) and piano.

Here ends a first non-memorable side.

"My Freind the Sun" is a prog-folk song (vote 8+) with in the foreground the voice of Chapman, here splendidly delicate, tender, and the acoustic guitar. Wetton sings the harmony vocals. The song is simple but very inspired. "Glove" is one of the top rockblues of the Family (vote 8,5). It's a piece that has little of progressive and a lot of the singing of black shouters. With a progression of piano, drums and electric guitar where even the bass is high in volume, the track reaches a remarkable pathos, penalized only by the fact that the sensational production due to the "wall of sound" of the arrangements prevents the voice of Chapman (which rises in a fantastic performance) to be fully audible. "Ready to Go" is another funky piece, very supported, without the excesses of "Broken Nose", more conventional (vote 7,5) but well done.

The last song, "Top of the Hill" (vote 8+) is the longest, and also the most progressive song of the Lp. The first minute, instrumental, is interlocutory, and seems like a way to increase its duration. then, when the piece explodes, we listen to another song with a sensationalist progression (where in the background it seems to me to hear the vibraphone), and where the strings support an ever more engaging rhythm that ends with a great climax. With this song ends a great second side.

Bandstand is an album only partly progressive, however, equipped with 8 very good songs, partly rock, partly blues / funk, with a good first side and an excellent second side. The Family seems that with this effort they have exhausted their creativity, their repertoire and, in fact, after being one of the progressive antesignan groups with their debut masterpiece (1968), only 4 years later, in a year where the progressive has broken the charts and touched perhaps its maximum splendor (1972), they give us a more conventional album, although very good, which seems to archive their most progressive and experimental phase. In fact, undecided about which direction to take, so eclectic to risk being without a true identity, with the next album "It's Only A Move" (1973) will definitely come out of the world of progressive rock and will melt for lack of inspiration.

Medium quality of the songs:7,78; Vote album: 8,5. Four stars

Anyway is a project divided in half: the first part is recorded live, and unfortunately the sound is blurred, far away, as if it were a bootleg. The second part is recorded in the studio and presents songs from the arrangement similar to "A Song For Me", which is a folk rock guided by guitars and violin, ranging from the acoustic ballad to the hard rock song.

The first song, "Good News Bad News", is one of the band's masterpieces, a powerful rock where the Family show their cohesion in concert. The voice, the electric guitar and John Weider's vibes solo are all very effective. Who knows how beautiful it would have been if we could have heard it registered with all the trappings in the studio. Vote 8,5.

The second song, "Willow Tree", is a slow piano ballad that features folk instrumental parts guided by the violin (Vote 7+). The third returns to be more sustained, but as the second does not fully convince (Vote 7+). So we arrive at "Strange Band", one of the battle horses of the second formation of the Family, the one with Weider, which here shows off his skills to the violin in a beautiful hard- colored folk rock. Again the listening is penalized by the bad sound, which penalizes above all the bass and the rhythm section listening. The song reaches in some moments a very powerful pathos, such as "Good New Bad News", but it is not fully developed and suffers from its short duration (Vote 7,5).

Overall, this live side A, both for the bad recording and the sequence of the songs next to the first, does not allow us to fully appreciate the power of the legendary live performances of the Family.

The second side opens with an excellent blues ballad driven from the bass ("Part of the Load", vote 8) which is a novelty in the repertoire of the Family, continues with a minor acoustic ballad ("Anyway", vote 7), and then, as in the previous record (A Song For me), as a penultimate song puts a folk acoustic instrumental piece. Unlike "93's O.K. J" this instrumental song ("Normans") presents a beautiful melody led by the violin, which acts as a refrain and makes it the most melodic track of the album. The LP closes with "Lives and Ladies", which alternates acoustic moments with electric moments, trying in some way to represent a synthesis of the entire album; Chapman is able to show off his powerful raw vibrato but the song is not fluid, it does not flow in a casual way and appears somewhat forced (Vote 7,5).

Anyway is a more than discrete album, but that does not contain any particular news compared to A Song For Me (plus the lack of being less unitary): it confines itself to confirming the Family as one of the most creative progressive band of folk-prog.

Medium quality songs: 7.625. Vote 7.5 / 8 Three stars.

The third period of the Family opens with the arrival of John Wetton on bass, and the abandonment of John Weider, whose violin had greatly influenced the two previous albums. Fearless is the masterpiece of the maturity of the Family, in the name of an eclectic creative art-rock that however can rightfully be considered progressive rock. The first side is simply fantastic: five songs one more beautiful than the other.

1) Between blue and me (vote 8+): rock ballad with before sweet and then powerful singing of Chapman (wonderful), and electric guitar sound. 2) Sat'd'y Barfly (vote 7,5): second song with eccentric arrangement, grotesque mood, with the brass to make the melody. 3) Larf and Sing (vote 8): short song with the vibraphone, sung in falsetto, progressive rock choirs: Beautiful. 4) Spanish Tide (vote 9): masterpiece of the album, for what can be considered a mini-suite of 4 minutes, alternating tender moments, acceleration funk rock, renaissance melody painted with Spanish guitar; the singing pass through delicate moments (Chapman) , grit soul (Wetton) and hard rock power (both). 5) Save Some For Three (vote 7,5/8): like the second track, it has an exuberant band arrangement, but in the middle there is a beautiful melody, carved by the voice of Chapman.

End of a first side full of creativity and musical arrangements with endless inventions.

6) Take Your Partners (vote 8): it opens the second side with a new electronic sound: the synthesizer is in the foreground for the whole song, and weaves its warp with many variations on the theme, leading the song over 6 minutes. It seems to hear a different record from that of the first side, but when the voice of Chapman and the percussions arrive, we find the identity of the Family, which ends with a high volume, pyrotechnical end.

7) Children and 8) Crinkly Green (vote 6,5) are two brief tracks. Perhaps to breathe a sigh after the sound orgasm of the previous song, two acoustic moments arrive, the lightweight but very simple ballad called Children, and the instrumental piece by Palmer with the vibraphone. Overall they are 3 minutes of simplicity detached from the highly sophisticated art-rock arrangements of all the other songs. Despite being the weakest moments of the Lp, qualitatively lower than the other pieces, in the economy of the whole record these two tracks do not disfigure. 9) Blind (vote 7,5): very loud rock song with hoarse singing, and ending with bagpipes. Great creativity. 10) Burning Bridges (vote 8+): Fantastic ending with a melodically beautiful song, with a wonderful sound of guitars, very atmospheric, with hypnotic renaissance tones and then with the voice of Chapman to embellish everything.

Fearless is a small masterpiece (with a great song in place of Children could become an absolute masterpiece) halfway between art-rock and progressive-rock, which highlights the enormous inventiveness and originality in the songwriting and arrangements of the Chapman -Whitney duo, who have never embraced a specific musical genre and have always moved according to their creativity and inspiration regardless of any boundaries.

Medium quality: 7,86. Vote: 9. Five stars.

The second album by Family, although touching a huge variety of musical themes, like the previous one, is less experimental than Music from Doll's House, less progressive: it contains songs that are slower and more meditated, that develop closer to the conventions, without continuous changes of rhythm and arrangement.

The first piece (The Weaver's Answer, vote 9,5) is epoch-making, a song that gives the chills for the rhythmic progression and for how it is sung by Roger Chapman, who reaches here peaks that few singers can afford. The second (Observations From a Hill, vote 7+) seems a sort of relaxing break (and King's voice does not raise it) that would not have found a place in the previous album, where every song had continuous surprises. The third (Hung Up Down, vote 7+) song is a rock ballad with melodic insertions. The album has dropped dramatically after the brilliant beginning, but here comes a fantastic instrumental piece (Summer '67, vote 8), which brings together gypsy, indian and blues music, violin and saxophone chasing each other in what is a fantastic piece of Indian fusion. The first side closes with a long, romantic melodic ballad (How-Hi-The-Li, vote 7,5), sung in a fantastic and tender way by Chapman.

The second side opens with the hard rock of "Second Generation Woman" (vote 7,5), written and sung by Grech, who has a good rhythm, but for sound and arrangement is detached from the rest of the album. It follows a very original melodic song (From Past Archives, vote 7,5/8), which reserves the swing instrumental pieces, and then a more conventional, but pleasant country song (Dim, vote 7+). "Processions" is again an acoustic melodic ballad (vote 7,5) with a country flavor, embellished with a very sweet sound thanks to the piano phrases. Following is a song (again Grech on vocals) with sitar (Face in The Cloud, vote 7), an oriental ballad, a little lazy; the best parts are still the instrumental phrases. The final, grandiose, is left to the piano ballad of "Emotions" (vote 8,5), where the drummer and the voice of Chapman are very clearly, which reaches the climax in a melodic refrain with an epic and solemn impact. Masterpiece.

"Entertainment" is an album that does not develop the progressive solutions of the previous one, in fact it consists of more homogeneous pieces, mostly acoustic ballads. It has its peaks in the first and last song, two pieces with epic crescents. The first, in particular, "Weaver's Answer", remains one of the most striking pieces of the entire sixties period. In between there are country songs, hard-rock, swing, Indian, all cute, but no great songs. These songs are not connected by a fluid sequence that makes them feel a unique whole, like in "Music From Doll's House". It is a heterogeneous album, which presents the weak points in the songs of Grech, but overall it is very inspired and various, although not as revolutionary as the previous one.

Medium quality of the songs: 7,73. Vote album: 8,5. Four stars.

The Family with this album have influenced the Genesis, the singing of Peter Gabriel, the Jethro Tull, the Yes, the Gentle Giant and who knows how many other progressive bands. It was 1968: the Beatles published the "White Album", the Rolling Stones "Beggar's Banquet", the Procol Harum "Shine on Brightly", the Kinks "Village Green Preservation Society"; the Pink Floyd "Saucerful of Secrets".

The Family published a collage album where there was rock, folk, blues, space rock like Pink Floyd's sound, symphonic music, and gypsy and Indian sounds: in fact, with this album the Family invented the various genres of the progressive rock. The Beatles of Sgt Pepper and the Floyds of The Piper were completely overcome in the progressive sense: nothing is trivial here, nothing is pop, as well as arranged, as in those two albums of 1967.

The first song (The Chase, vote 7,5) is a manifesto of progressive rock, with choirs, pressing rhythm and instrumental ending. The second (Mellowing Grey, vote 7,5/8) is a classic piece that may have inspired the songs with the violins of the Gentle Giant, although this is devoid of the rhythmic basis of rock. The third (Never Like This, vote 7,5) is a folk rock with the harmonica; "Me My Friend" (vote 7,5/8) has a martial rhythm with a sound of saxophones and psychedelic voices.

Until now there have been songs of a little more than two minutes, and now the latter is infused with an instrumental fantasy of 23 seconds (Variation Mr. Policeman), followed by "Winter" (vote 7,5), two and a half minutes of an epic rock with a piano beginning and strings. Then starts, with a darker atmosphere, the only "long" song of the first side (Old Songs, New Songs, vote 8), which exceeds 4 minutes: a blues rock ending with a long jam of wind and guitar wah wah, which is dissolved in the instrumental finale of Breeze Variation. Vote side A: 9.

The second side contains songs on average longer, and begins with the funky syncopated rhythm of "Mr. Policeman" (vote 8), where the voice of Chapman can be appreciated in all its nuances. "See Through Windows" (vote 7,5) is a psychedelic space rock of almost 4 minutes which makes the sound harder.

After an oriental intermezzo (Variations Me My Friend), debtor of Sgt Pepper, two masterpieces follow, two pieces that are mini suites that will influence Genesis and Yes: the short "Peace of Mind" (vote 8+), with epic theme of violin and sensational ending, and the great masterpiece "Voyage" (vote 8,5), also guided by the violin, a cosmic rock which is an inextricable hybrid of musical genres and rhytms. At This point, the listener realize that music and voice are close to sublime. This is pure inspiration, pure invention.

The Family make in 3-4 minutes what in the following years the pivotal groups of the progressive will try to chase with 20-minute suites.

"Breeze" (vote 7,5) follows, a bucolic ballad, and then the grand finale, "3 x Time" (vote 7,5/8), rock ballad with roaring fantasy band, melodic piece and new band piece, ending with 15 seconds of parody of "God Save The Queen" (Gentle Giant will copy this idea in their first record). Vote Side B: 9,5

Epoch-making album, seminal for progressive rock, comparable for historical importance, and for quality, to "Valentyne's Suite" by Colosseum and "In the Court of ..." by King Crimson.

Vote Album: 9+. Five Stars.