MOGUL THRASH

For years I wanted to listen to this album. Well, I did it yesterday. MOGUL TRASH was a short-lived band created by ex-Colosseum`s guitarist James Litherland with John Wetton and other very good musicians, and they played together for about eighteen months between late 1969 and early 1971. In an interview done some years ago with Wetton, he said that in this band there was a bit of conflict about the musical direction of the band, with him being more in favour for the Progressive Rock elements in the music and with Litherland more interested in playing Jazz and Rock arrangements, but the horn players were more interested in the Funk elements of the music. This things, along with very important problems with the manager, led to the split of the band. The horn players later joined the AVERAGE WHITE BAND while Wetton joined FAMILY for two albums. It seems that Wetton was somewhat impatient to be the front man and lead singer in a band, so he also didn`t last for a very long time with FAMILY and he became in 1972 the lead singer and bassist with KING CRIMSON, on which band he also became one of the main composers, a thing that he also wanted to do a lot. But in MOGUL TRASH he was mostly a backing singer and a very good and heavy bassist. In fact, in this album the lead singer and main composer was Litherland, but as a whole this band sounded very well, in my opinion, with some very heavy arrangements and playing, sounding like the album was really recorded "live in the studio" (with a few notable guitar overdubs), with a lot of freedom but fortunately no mistakes can be listened in the final product. Even if this happened, Litherland in another interview said that recording engineer Eddie Offord edited the tracks and that the band liked the results very well. It is similar in some ways to Colosseum in musical style, something that is very obvious due to Litherland`s presence. But I think that a line-up like this (a guitar-bass-drums trio plus a horn section but no keyboards) was a bit unusual combination of sounds. Producer Brian Auger played a bit of piano on one track and Litherland said in that interview that Auger gave to them a lot of freedom to record in this album. Well. The album as a whole sounds a bit dated, but it is very good anyway.Maybe there are some influences from bands like BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS and CHICAGO, but the music is heavier and more "raw", in my opinion. Litherland is a very good guitarist and lead singer.