THE MASTER'S APPRENTICES

The people who make these decisions have chosen to categorise Masters Apprentices as 'proto-prog', but in truth they were latecomers to prog, even by Australian standards. They began in the mid 60s as one of Australia's best R&B/garage-punk bands, set apart by the rapidly maturing songwriting skills of original rhythm guitarist Mick Bower. This album catches them towards the end of their garage stage. Like most Australian albums of the period, it is a collection of previously recorded single sides, and a few hurriedly recorded filler tracks. The filler includes five cover songs, generally the lowlights of the CD, particularly the dreadfully insincere cover of "My Girl". The remainder of the album is made up of Mick Bower originals - four previously released single sides which represent their hard-edged garage-punk side, and three newer songs which show a more sophisticated pop side (including "But One Day", which maybe sounds a little bit too much like the Yardbirds' "Still I'm Sad"). Not a strong album, and not even remotely prog - on it's own merits, as a garage/R&B record, it probably deserves 3 stars, but for a prog site, it gets only 2.

There is apparently a later version of this album floating around which leaves off some of the covers and includes a few later single sides - the track listing on this site appears to reflect that version. It's probably a stronger album for those changes. The Aztec re-release restores the original track order, but adds their subsequent 1967-8 single sides as bonus tracks, including the classics "Living In A Child's Dream" and "Elevator Driver". It also includes a bonus CD of demos and rehearsal recordings from 1966,