MASTERPIECE

I'm happy the Masters Apprentices are on this site, but proto-prog is the wrong place for them. They actually spent the 1960s jumping on every bandwagon except prog - garage R&B, psych pop, and hard rock - while other bands such as Levi Smiths Clefs, Tully, Tamam Shud, Copperwine, Sons of the Vegetal Mother, and even (briefly) the La De Das and Chain did more to get the prog ball rolling locally. The Masters finally caught up with developments when they released Choice Cuts in 1971 - admittedly they caught up in great style, releasing a couple of the best albums to come out of the Australian scene in the early 70s, but they were hardly the pioneers.

Masterpiece was recorded in late 1969, with a couple of single sides from 1968 also thrown in. It captures them at the height of their psychedelic pop period, and is basically a collection of very gimmicky songs with very gimmicky production, the biggest gimmick of all being the use of annoying orchestral interludes to link the songs on side one. If you need an international comparison, then they were probably aiming for something like Forever Changes or Odessey And Oracle or The Who Sell Out - it's not proto-prog unless you want to argue that the use of orchestra makes this Australia's answer to Days Of Future Passed. Nevertheless, it has it's entertaining moments, and on it's own merits probably deserves three stars - but not on a prog site.

Sounding like a completely different band on their second album the lineup of THE MASTERS APPRENTICES completely melted down leaving only vocalist Jim Keays left standing and carrying the band to the next level. While it took three long years to follow up their garage rock / freakbeat debut the times had obviously changed and while the 1967 debut was pretty much playing catch up with the styles that were popular in the UK around the 1964 and 1965 timeline, on the band's sophomore album MASTERPIECE once again it sounded more like 1968 than 1970. Scaled back to a quartet, THE MASTERS APPRENTICES adopted a completely new style that rocked the upbeat sunshine pop hooks with psychedelic touches and a touch of freakbeat leftover from the early days.

The band spent the majority of the time between albums was spent reorganizing the band and transforming it into a completely different creation. During the three year gap newbie Doug Ford and Keays stockpiled numerous songs and released a few singles and endured a heavy touring schedule but all this hard work and exposure paid off as this classic lineup is the same that would deliver the band's following pair of albums which would finally seeing them find their own unique sound based in progressive rock. At this stage though no prog to be found and all the tracks featured are steeped in bubblegum pop hooks with bluesy guitar licks and boogie shuffles. The band signed to EMI and had a larger budget for production but at this stage despite an entire album of all original material, THE MASTERS APPRENTICES sounded like this second album was supposed to come out when the first one did back in 1967.

Alternating between bluesy rockers and poppy folk, MASTERPIECE featured a rather cheesy orchestral backing that made it sound like it was trying to emulate The Moody Blues' classic "Days Of Future Passed" but far from the crowning achievement or cutting edge brilliance of that famous album. On this album the band wasn't very focused and as a result the tracks are all over the place as far as uniformity is concerned. The pop folk "A Dog, A Siren and Memories" emulates the great Simon and Garfunkel while the following track "Linda Linda" featured an old-timer music hall style possibly inspire by The New Vaudville Band's hit "Winchester Cathedral" form 1966. The piece even featured a kazoo! It was clear the band was trying to cop a bit of Paul McCartney's showtune style from The Beatles. "Isabella" adopts a Spanish guitar theme and features a chorus that just repeats the name "Isabella" several times!

Some tracks like "Piece Of Me" are pure generic bubblegum pop and not even good at that. The band at this stage was clearly aiming for the teenie bopper crowds and wanted to be the next Ohio Express or The Monkees or something! The music is really awkward at some points with the track "Titanic" standing out as pretty hilarious. Not only does they sing the title in a funny way but The Chiffons provide a very mediocre backing not to mention the track features real ship noise samples. It's about as cheesy as it gets really! It was also a sign that this band was a sinking ship and that if they didn't get their act together then they would be history.

Luckily the band got the memo and found a much needed break from touring and let their prog-tinged hard rock fantasies run wild for their next album "Choice Cuts" which found the band evolve leaps and bounds beyond this collection of head-scratching 60s leftovers. It's an ok album but extremely awkward and really not good enough to recommend unless you really love cheesy bubblegum pop from the late 60s but not good enough to find the ear worms haunting you for days after. It's an interesting glimpse into the band's missing years and how they would come back with a hodgepodge of material but as an album it's actually pretty weak and ill-conceived. It's hard to believe Columbia let this slip the quality control and it's often considered the band's worst offering. Despite the album's title being MASTERPIECE, this one is far from it.