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ALL TOGETHER NOW

Argent

Crossover Prog


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Argent All Together Now album cover
3.55 | 105 ratings | 10 reviews | 13% 5 stars

Excellent addition to any
prog rock music collection

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Studio Album, released in 1972

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Hold Your Head Up (6:20)
2. Keep On Rollin' (4:34)
3. Tragedy (4:50)
4. I Am the Dance of Ages (3:46)
5. Be My Lover, Be My Friend (5:22)
6. He's a Dynamo (3:50)
7. Pure Love (13:00) :
- a) Fantasia
- b) Prelude
- c) Pure Love
- d) Finale

Total Time 41:42

Line-up / Musicians

- Rod Argent / keyboards, vocals
- Russ Ballard / lead vocals, guitar
- Bob Henrit / drums
- Jim Rodford / bass

Releases information

LP Epic EPC 64962
LP Epic 31556
CD Epic 477373 (1994)
CD Koch International 37941 (1997)

Thanks to ProgLucky for the addition
and to Joolz for the last updates
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ARGENT All Together Now ratings distribution


3.55
(105 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(13%)
13%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(49%)
49%
Good, but non-essential (31%)
31%
Collectors/fans only (5%)
5%
Poor. Only for completionists (2%)
2%

ARGENT All Together Now reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by Easy Livin
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
4 stars Argent return with heads held high

Argent came of age with this album, thanks in no small part to the huge hit single "Hold your head up". The version on the album differs from the single edit by including a fine organ solo by Rod Argent

The band had decided to give this album more of a rock feel than previous more eclectic outings, and many of the tracks have a solid beat behind them. Russ Ballard contributes some of his finest songs, the best of which are "Tragedy" and "He's a dynamo", the latter being a tribute to Rod Argent. "I am the dance of ages" is a slower but very powerful song, with soaring choruses and a heavy plodding backbeat. The song was destined to become a great live track, as witnessed by the band's "Encore" album.

The closing track "Pure love" is in four parts, and lasts over 10 minutes. It's very much a Rod Argent suite, being heavy on the keyboards and with Argent taking the lead vocal. I find it to be something of a disappointment for a feature track, the four sections not really flowing well together, and the long third section (the only one with vocals) meandering and appearing unfocussed. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad track, but it not up to the standard of the rest of the album.

"Pure love" aside though, an excellent album with a relentless pace, which sees the band taking a major stride forward from their previous albums.

Review by Sean Trane
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk
3 stars After the encouraging second album where clearly their prog potential was starting to ooze out of their pores, the band's third album All Together Now became a huge success with the amazing (but not very complicated) Hold Your Head Up single (although it was abridged compared with the 6-min album version). While the bland gatefold artwork was nothing to warn fans that the group was indeed taking a prog turn, the group was indeed maturing, but they were definitely not finished the metamorphose.

Past the opening huge organ-drenched Hold Your Head Up, came a full-out Rock And Roll track, which would also become a live favourite. Another superb track is the slow-paced Dance Of The Age, full of drama and filled with inspired lyrics! This song was to be yet another live milestone in their concert receiving superb elongated versions lasting up to triple its original length. Ballard comes through with Tragedy, the slightly too long Be My Lover and Dynamo, but while Russ would one day write Argent's most enduring hit single, he's not yet reached top form here, even if Tragedy does hold its own. But most of the flipside is held by the four-part 13-min Pure Love mini-suite. And unfortunately I must say that the promises that this was proposing are not really held. Heavy on the organ and light on everything else, there is not much substance in this failed experiment. The one thing that became apparent is that while a good songwriter, Rod's virtuoso qualities being un-denied, his inspiration is a little too obvious and unfortunately he appears derivative (avoiding to say the next step upwards on this scale).

Definitely not yet at cruising speed, but well on the way there, Argent's ATN is the first of the classic album, but I wouldn't call it essential just yet.

Review by ZowieZiggy
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars After some ups (their debut) and downs ("Ring of Hands"), "Argent" comes back with another good album.

The highlight is of course their excellent hit "Hold Your Head Up", which features a fantastic and heavy keyboards solo which is just fabulous. This extended version is on par with the greatest "Heep" or "Atomic Rooster" ones.

The funky rhythms are back with "Tragedy": it could have been featured on their second opus. Great bass and organ play, but vocals are quite annoying. It is a pity because if you'd take "I Am The Dance Of Ages" vocals here are quite decent and the hypnotic beat is a real killer. One of my fave.

Of course, some songs from a band like "Argent" were just milk and honey for me, since I was quite keen on such music (and alike) in those days. The band had of course much less exposure than the big ones (or legendary ones), but it is really worth investigating for younger generations. If you enjoy these heavy organ sounds, "Argent" is for you (as "Atomic Rooster" of course).

Good old rock'n'roll is not forgotten. No less than two revival tracks are available: "Keep On Rollin" (indeed) and "He's A Dynamo". Maybe not the best songs from the album though.

The central part of this work is the epic "Pure Love". Some imposing church oriented keys to start with, more bombastic ones to follow. The world of Emerson is wide opened. But Rod Argent is rather alone to entertain us. I would have hoped some more contribution from his band mates. This prog intro is followed with some bluesy and vocal parts later on during the "Pure love" section which sounds rather flat to be honest.

Even if he wasn't a member of "Argent" (he used to play in "The Zombies"), the work of Chris White is truly fundamental in the song writing: five out of seven tracks are co-written with Rod Argent (he is also mostly influent on other "Argent" releases).

The last CD version (1997) features no less than seven bonus tracks (good for thirty minutes of music). Some tracks being from earlier releases ("Celebration" or "Rejoice") other ones being released later on ("God Gave Rock'n'Roll" or "Christmas For Free").

Some unreleased studio album tracks like the psychedelic "Kingdom", the profoundly "Free" oriented "Closer To Heaven" (written by Ballard) or the second part of "It's Only Money" are worthwhile and welcome. They don't raise the level of this album which I would rate with three stars. A solid heavy rock album.

Review by ozzy_tom
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars It's very difficult to choose the best album of this band. All of their LPs (especially from classic period 1971-1974) include fantastic prog gems, but also some amount of pop/ (pseudo) hard rock stinkers usually composed by Russ Ballard. However if I had to pick up one, particular record from their discography it would be "All Together Now":

1. "Hold Your Head Up" - album starts with this real classic of heavy prog genre. Organ drenched tune with memorable rythm and melody (but not popish!) makes this composition a fantastic opener and one of the best song in Argent's catalog. Organ solo in the middle is perfectly long and truly splendid in the best tradiditon of Jon Lord or Vincent Crane.

2. "Keep On Rollin'" - first awful filler of this record. Piano-oriented woogie-boogie. Avoid as a plague!

3. "Tragedy" - after miserable previous track Argent serves as another classic heavy rock tune. Very good, catchy - almost heavy metal-like -screaming vocals and of course lots of roaring Hammonds delivered by master Rod including another perfect solo.

4. "I Am the Dance of Ages" - definitely one of my favorite song of this band. Really hypnotizing melody which give me shivers everytime I listen to it. And this monotonous (but at the same time very captivating!) march/funeral-like drums... Organ "noodling" in the middle of the song build great atmosphere. This song has less than 4 minutes, but when you listen to this, it sounds like 10+ minutes epic ! (of course it's a compliment for progheads like me :-).

5. "Be My Lover, Be My Friend" - mainly straightforward hard rock composition which can't be distinguish from so many similar songs played in 70' by classic rock bands. However this track includes one of the best organ solos from band's leader which saves it from medicority. (BTW it's quite typical situation for Argent. The same phenomena you can observe in such songs as "Cast Your Spell Uranus" or "Pleasure" from their previous album "Ring of Hands").

6. "He's a Dynamo" - second serious bump of the album. Stupid rock'n'roll song with simple piano, which would be a filler even in some early 60' R&B record.

7. "Pure Love (Fantasia/Prelude/Pure Love/Finale)" - after previous horrible (but fortunately short) stinker Argent presents us my favorite composition: 13 minutes, 4 parts suite "Pure Love" which sounds like a beatiful hommage to all great organ players. This epic starts with fabulous section of dreamy church-like organ playing (but I suppose it's still Hammond organ, maybe without Leslie cabinet this time?). Seems to be tribute to J.S. Bach! However after 5 minutes drums join and music turns into The Nice/ELP/Triumvirat direction. Perfect! "Pure Love" sequence seems to be out of place here with it's more simple rock'n'roll attitude. But hey, I still like it here. Mixing more straightforward rock patterns with symphonic prog is a trademark of this band after all! Anyway "Finale" ends the suite with another magnificent, powerful organ performence. Real gem of this album and this band's discography in general.

To summarize: 3rd Argent's album contains 4 fantastic tracks, 1 good but not essential hard rock song with phenomenal organ solo and 2 absolutely horrible farts. (Anyway still big improvement after "Ring of Hands" which had much bigger amount of medicore songs and only few really prog tracks.)

By the way, it's a must-have album for Hammond organ lovers! 4,5 stars for me.

Review by Progfan97402
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Argent is hardly new to me, although I am way too young to caught them when they existed as I was born in 1972, I first remembered hearing "Hold Your Head Up" in 1988 when I was 15 and loving it, but it took me a year later to get some info on this group (at the same time I knew of the Zombies, so I figured Argent was Rod Argent's post-Zombie project). It took me until quite recently to buy any Argent albums because I knew they had to be very inconsistent, and from listening to All Together Now, which includes the famous hit, I was proven right, it is very inconsistent. A lot of blame goes between the division of Russ Ballard and Rod Argent with Chris White, with the more adventurous and often proggy material going to Argent and White. The album starts off with the famous hit, which isn't Russ Ballard (a couple websites credited this song to Ballard, which is incorrect), but Argent and White, which isn't too surprising, this song is just too proggy for anything Ballard to come up with. A wonderful piece of prog rock that became an FM rock classic. I especially dig those extended organ solos, which was the same way I felt at 15 years old (at that time I didn't know what progressive rock was, but turned out a lot of the music I liked, even then, was progressive rock, just didn't realized that until a little later on).

The rest of the album, well, it's all over the place. "Keep On Rollin'" is just plain awful, '50s style rock and roll boogie is just so out of place on an album, especially since the previous song was a prog rock masterpiece. Strangely it was Argent and White responsible for this disaster, so it's a big surprise that Ballard gives us a great rock piece, "Tragedy". Might not be prog, but still a great rock number. The prog tendencies are kept to a minimum, since this is Ballard's song. A great piece of heavy rock. Argent and White gives us "I Am the Dance of Ages", which is a sorta heavy prog number, but Ballard's "He's a Dynamo" is as bad as it sounds. When people speak of bad Argent songs, Ballard is often to blame, and this song (to me) is one of them (after hearing my share of Argent albums, I've come to the conclusion there are Argent/White songs I like and those I don't, and same goes for Russ Ballard, who gets little love in the prog community). "Pure Love" is a prog suite, which is obvious who wrote it (Argent/White), which is how not to do a prog suite. It starts off actually quite good, with great organ passages, but it seemed they wimped out towards the end when the vocals kick in, instead of doing something grand or simply mindblowing to end it. At least Argent did a much better suite on Nexus with "The Coming of Kohoutek", even if were disguised as three separate songs (and surprisingly, it was a full-blown symphonic prog piece).

Argent has certainly done better albums than this, like their debut (very good, even if it's not particularly progressive) or Nexus ("The Coming of Kohoutek" suite is full-on symphonic prog, something Argent never done before, with lots of great Moog, organ, and Mellotron), so you'd probably should try those albums first. As for All Together Now, it gave them commercial success they never had before, but not a favorite, but still has good material to warrant three stars.

Latest members reviews

4 stars Argent's third album "All Together Now" is one of the classic prog albums of all time. For some reason I never see this album getting the love it deserves but, nevertheless this album is wonderful. After their more eclectic/proggy sophomore album, "Ring of Hands," they turned to a more rock approach ... (read more)

Report this review (#2883046) | Posted by AJ Junior | Saturday, February 18, 2023 | Review Permanlink

4 stars Hold your head up woman! After the uneven if occasionally brilliant Ring Of Hands, Argent enter their imperial phase with the much heavier and more consistent All Together Now album. This was their most commercially successful album ever no doubt helped by the massively successful and much c ... (read more)

Report this review (#2710535) | Posted by Lupton | Thursday, March 17, 2022 | Review Permanlink

2 stars "Man, what a drag!" as I recall my brother's reaction after hearing the album All Together Now by ex Zombie leader Rod Argent's namesake band for first time back in 1972. Was it really that bad? Let's listen again and see. Mmm...the album starts off with that killer song "Hold Your Head Up" th ... (read more)

Report this review (#1741833) | Posted by SteveG | Saturday, July 8, 2017 | Review Permanlink

3 stars Centered round the former Zombies Keyboardist Rod Argent and strengthened with the talents of Russ Ballard on guitar and vocals, Bob Henrit on drums, and Jim Rodford on bass, Argent establishes themselves as a band with this album. Great mainly Rock and Roll album, with great keyboard solo's r ... (read more)

Report this review (#39971) | Posted by DeathRow | Friday, July 22, 2005 | Review Permanlink

5 stars With "ALL TOGETHER NOW" I discovered ARGENT. This collection has some magic and mistery i still can not explain. It has a perfect combination of two completely opposite talents: ROD ARGENT vs RUSS BALLARD. One is the progresive master and the other one, favored rock. It is an inteligent combin ... (read more)

Report this review (#26640) | Posted by | Sunday, December 19, 2004 | Review Permanlink

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