PLEASE MIND YOUR HEAD

As the Adams had left SDT, Grahame Smith was left to rebuild the group from scratch: this was a group of relative unknowns, but all of them seemed to be seasoned veterans and the group became very quickly different. Note that the new drummer Colin Fairley has no relation with their older drummer Billy Fairly. Their first album did not augur well for progheads with the ugly artwork and once the disc on your turntable, your fears are confirmed: their new sound is completely different, vastly different from the folk-induced prog: this is downright mostly AOR, with only Smith's violin to make a slight difference.

The first side of the vinyl is a typical AOR sound that will dominate the second part of the decade and is largely forgettable, even if Josephine and Without You have catchy hooks. Mrs O'Reily is Supertramp-sounding with guest pianist McDonald. Actually it is fairly surprising that he was not a member of the group as his keyboard works are on almost every track of the album. The second side starts out much the same with a fairly amusing Black Eyed Queen and its doo-wop chorus. But things change quite a bit with Timpani For The Devil, where Grahame Smith starts a lengthy Paganini-influenced violin solo ending in an electronic percussion/violin duo. Easily the most interesting track on the album, but hardly enough to warrant a search for the album, unless really interested in Smith's works. The album closes on a Stevie Wonder cover, which happens to be the next best tracks to its predecessor.

So the album ends in a better mode than it started, but when the second best track is a Stevie Wonder cover, one gets a good idea on how interesting the album is for a proghead: you guessed it, not much ;-) . As far as I know this album and its follow-up have not received a CD reissue and believe me, you are not missing much. At most a 2-on-1 would suffice for completist. Not much can be said in favour of this version of SDT as Smith is the leader but does not participate to the songwriting (except for his showcase Devil piece) and the others are clearly not very adventurous.