EDDIE JOBSON

EDDIE JOBSON's reputation is such that he deserves the dignity of consideration for those rare "solo" releases. This loose band effort appeared a couple of years before the new age album "Theme of Secrets", and it couldn't be more different. Unfortunately, their common ground resides in mutual mediocrity.

While a sequel "Pink" was rumoured, it's just as well that the ZINC project ended where it started. This is a dated synth pop album with prog aspects reminiscent of what YES and STEP AHEAD were doing at the time but not as inspired. For the most part the keyboard work sounds like what JOBSON might have played right after plugging in a new toy with nobody listening. His violin isn't dusted off all that much either, but occasionally salvages a track, as in "Listen to Reason". When his biggest asset is his somewhat thin vocals that curiously suit the music, you know there's a problem. Luckily, "Green Face" is an ebullient rocker that deserved better than to be interred by its fellows. This demonstrates that, even within the artificial environment of so many contemporary releases, a strong composition and arrangement prevails. That's where Jobson's strengths seldom lie.

I admit I'm probably in the minority but I don't think Jobson ever did better keyboard wise than on "Metamorphosis" by CURVED AIR when he was 17, so maybe I have been punishing him unfairly ever since. Still I'm not alone in giving this one the green thumbs down.

Silly me! being an old prog head from the 70's I had heard of UK and other bands this "kid" was in. But I never ever really heard him play until I started doing a lot of research into him. A prodigy if there ever was one, this kid started out in the big times by getting sucked into Curved Air at the ripe old age of 17 replacing Daryl Way. Eddie was already an excellent classically trained violinist and stringer (cello, viola) and a piano player. He was trying to get accepted into the Royal Academy and they qualified him but he was too young at 16.

Curbed Air led to Roxy Music and he replaced both their violinist and Brian Eno on keys. His playing was amazing! Being a huge fan of Tony Banks, Wakeman, Emerson and others Jobson can easily hold his own with all of them. Just watching him play in UK and Jethro Tull on the A tour shows a young man who has amazing depth and talent. If you want to see an amazing bit you can find him with Tull in 1985 Jethro Tull performing Bach Double Violin Concerto with Ian Anderson on flute. He plays both keys and violin and has the entire movement on sheet music right there. His Roxy Music days took him to the States and he met Zappa in LA during a show and Zappa jammed with him in a dressing room and then drug him onto the stage with no rehearsal and he was able to perform as if he had been part of the band.

All this being said I have not heard anything he played on that I didn't like. This album was long due and it is amazing all the way through. He sings vocals on this album as well. The textures and variety of the songs is great. His playing is top notch. I would have loved to see him play live on these songs or in UK. Excellent musician! I was blind not to have noticed him before.

The performances are good but the quality of the sound is questionable. Being from a variety of sources, the sound is good in some numbers but only fair in others. Drums sound tinny and the mix is murky. Jobson is a great player and he attracts top quality band members. However, getting good live recordings has always been an issue. If you really interested in a good live recording, I would recommend "Four Decades". This recording traces his career all the way back to Curved Air. The recording is excellent and, if you can find it, the DVD is equally recommended. It might be on you tube......if so it is worth a look.

Unfortunately, Four Decades is not easy to find. It is not on any streaming service that I am aware of and I had to get the CD from Japan. It cost big bucks!! Eddie Jobson live is good but not essential. Go for Four Decades, it will give you the live essentials.

Both eighties and progressive!

The Green Album is one of the few records released in the eighties that reflects the aesthetic of the early giants. Jobson certainly left his stamp on the excellent U.K. albums, composing much of the material and playing keyboards and violin on those albums with a high level of virtuosity. With his own band, Zinc, his creative and unique style pushes through the constraints of the increasingly controlling music industry, and is reflected in the sound creation, composition, singing, incredible playing, and production of this record. There is certainly an eighties tinny sound to the The Green Album, but the tone of the lyrics Jobson wrote and his voice and singing style are perfectly suited to the sound. The result is a very unified and unique musical masterpiece. It is a shame that Jobson's brilliance in all aspects of musical artistry coalesced during a time of such paucity of opportunity.

I highly recommend Through the Glass as the best track of the record. Jobson displays his piano chops on Prelude, and plays a beautiful violin melody on Nostalgia. Walking from Pastel and the introduction to Resident are colorful instrumentals.

Aside from Yes's Drama and King Crimson's Discipline, this is the best of the eighties.

Eddie Jobson's keyboard and violin work on the U.K. albums was jaw-droppingly awesome, so I was naturally seeking out something more from him, without venturing back into his side work with Zappa, Curved Air, Jethro Tull or Roxy Music. While his chops are still on fine display here on his first solo studio album, one sees a little different side of Jobson here than with U.K.

According to outside sources, this "Eddie Jobson - Zinc" album was originally meant to be titled "The Green Album" and credited to the band name Zinc. Probably a good move by the record company to "mess things up", as Jobson is clearly the star here, and no one else is a name player besides Gentle Giant's Gary Green (hmmmm...Green....) who only plays on the final two tracks. Three other guitarists split the axe duties, two guys share bass duties, and a Michael Barsimanto plays some decent - but fairly 1980's-sounding - drums.

The music itself? Well, the "Transporter" bookends to the album are short, spacey instrumentals. The rest of the album alternates between prog/synth-pop songs (in an Alan Parsons sort of style) and almost "new age" instrumentals, roughly tied together by sub-par lyrics that regularly reinforce the Green theme. I view tracks 4, 5 & 6 as a sort of "new age suite", as the songs have similar coloring (unintended pun) and blend into each other. Favorite songs include "Resident", "Turn It Over", "Green Face" and "Through The Glass", as they sound more like solid prog/pop to me.

Jobson does all of the vocals; a cross between Jon Anderson and whoever sang "Eye In The Sky" for Alan Parsons Project. I like them well enough. I wish he would have featured the violin more on this album, but his keyboard playing is top-notch (with passing nods to U.K. in a few spots). Certainly enough to enjoy here, and I still spin it on occasion. With so little recorded output from this virtuoso, you really should try to find this cd (or even a nice vinyl copy on eBay).

I'm still not quite sure why he focused on the color green so much. And isn't the element zinc blue in color?... 3-1/2 stars

Ignore the pallid three-star rating for a moment, and consider instead the unfulfilled potential in the career of Eddie Jobson. In a better organized universe his reputation would stand tall beside Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, and any other keyboard god in the Prog Rock pantheon...none of whom, by the way, could boast an equivalent dexterity on a second instrument, in this case the electric violin.

Jobson was a prodigy who tasted success at an absurdly young age, joining Curved Air while still a teenager, and co-founding UK before his 23rd birthday. But despite his extraordinary talents and striking visual cachet (remember the transparent violin?) he never quite blossomed into a genuine celebrity, in part because his best years were spent supporting other bands with more assertive figureheads: Bryan Ferry, Frank Zappa, Ian Anderson et al (UK might have been his ticket to fame, if the group hadn't arrived so late or imploded so fast).

What was left? A solo career that never gained any traction, followed by the dead-end paycheck of TV and film scores, and sporadic live appearances leading toward this belated return to the limelight in Japan, on November 9, 2013. It was billed as a Special Concert, and in retrospect was exactly that: a forty-year career retrospective gathering 27 songs, presented here on two lavishly annotated compact discs (the deluxe package adds a concert Blu-Ray disc, plus a book and t-shirt).

All the music was carefully chosen and played in chronological order, with Disc One devoted to Jobson's primetime '70s collaborations, from Curved Air through Roxy Music and Zappa to UK. The second disc concentrates on later material, less familiar to casual fans but more thrilling in context, and brought to vivid life by a very tight backing band. Further endorsement, and the icing on an already appetizing cake, was provided by guest appearances from Sonja Kristina and John Wetton, both in fine voice after four decades.

The concept, arrangements, set-list, and performances all add up to a coulda-shoulda-woulda-been, once-in-a-blue-moon classic. But the recording itself is terrible, rendering a five-star event with frustrating two-star fidelity (at least on CD; maybe the video disc is an improvement). Have you ever heard music while swimming underwater? That's more or less the effect here: a flat mix, curiously muffled and totally lacking any concert dynamics...it's almost as if some of the microphones went dead on stage without anyone noticing.

For lack of a better scapegoat, let's blame the constraints of a tight budget from a strictly provincial label (Ward Records), which likewise didn't have the resources to market the results outside Japan (I was astonished to discover the CD at my local library in backwoods western New York). With an uncompromised production this would have been an essential experience: a thrilling late-career victory lap by an unsung superstar who never received the acclaim he deserved.

I really don't understand the low score for this impeccably wonderful piece of work.

To me this album encompasses the ultimate of the ultimate form of progressive music. Just like the Rupert Hine-trilogy (not on this site), Edwin finds a way to combine pop, rock, jazz, fusion, avant-garde, minimalism, ambient into an adventurous album, which I keep coming back to.

The album features some progressive rock-song with vocals but has some short instrumental interludes as well as an intro and outtro to the album.

Edwin may not be an excellent vocalist, but I prefer him to John Wetton. The most beautiful part of this album is the three-song epic Prelude-Nostalgia-Walking From Pastel wich features gorgeous piano and violin work by Edwin.

The songs Easy for You to Say, Turn It Over, Easy for You to Say and Listen to Reason are the most pop-rock influenced songs, bu with some really progressive/fusion elements.

The songs Resident and Through the Glass are the most difficult songs, especially drummer Barsimanto is a star in these songs. Other musicians on the is album include Gary Green (Gentle Giant).

As said the music has elements of progrock and jazzrockfusion. I want to add synthpop to it. So maybe it has a "dated" sound. But I really like that sound. As with Rupert Hine's trilogy of the same day and age.

I can really, really recommend this adventurous album and must emphasize it's an absolute masterpiece.

I really did not know anything about this single released by EDDIE JOBSON as soloist in 1976 until it was included recently in the Prog Archives`s discography database .It was recorded and released after ROXY MUSIC`s split in 1976 and before he joined FRANK ZAPPA`s band in the same year. Maybe this solo single by Jobson is very hard to find now. Anyway, I could listen several times to both sides of this single in the web, so now I can write a review about it.

Both sides of this single are instrumental musical pieces.

"Yesterday Boulevard" : it has keyboards (mainly a clavinet a a few synthesisers) and electric violins playing a repetitive riff. This musical piece has a more or less fast beat, and it sounds to me like Jobson was trying to have an almost commercial musical piece for this single. The main musical style of this musical piece is Jazz-Rock with some Funky music influences, very related to some of the music which was played in the mid seventies in the radio. I also could find some inevitable similarities and /or influences from some of the music from JEAN-LUC PONTY , maybe more due to the use of the electric violins. Simon Phillips does a good job playing the drums. It is a good musical piece, a bit commercial in sound, but good anyway.

"On a Still Night": the main instrument in this musical piece is an electric piano. It is a slow musical piece on which Jobson also played electric violin. Phillips also played drums. Again, this musical piece sounds very mid seventies in musical style, very Jazz-Rock influenced, with also some musical influences from JEAN-LUC PONTY .

A good single. Maybe a bit outdated.

Frank Zappa wasn't the only progressive musician who produced synclavier-based albums in the 1980s - Eddie Jobson also turned his hand to it on this solo album, which sounds less what you might expect a Jobson solo album to sound based on his classic 1970s violin playing and more like a rejected Tangerine Dream soundtrack, which might explain why Peter Baumann contributes liner notes. To be honest, the album offers nothing that any of the many similarly uptempo New Agey electronic albums from the era don't also offer, and has little to nothing in the way of individual personality, so I genuinely struggle to see what Eddie was attempting to accomplish here. One for uncritical fans only.

A long time went by for Eddie Jobson, since his first Tour with UK in the late seventies! So, by passing through a lot of experiences as a session man and producer as well (here including also three solo albums and a new work regarding a sort of "Reunion" concerning the UK ensemble- entitled UKZ "Radiation"...), such a versatile musician shows his ability to gather some different session men (such as Tony Levin at the stick and Gregg Howe as a guest guitarist), with the collaboration of John Wetton!! Naturally He doesn't make us complain about this live project...in fact, first of all you have to forget the original ensemble, as the sound has been updated in comparison to the original feature characterizing the first two albums (a couple of vynils enriched by means of the analogic keyboards, like the famous polyphonic CS-80); then a lot of nostalgia is able to characterize our first approach to the present live, above all when you can listen to all the classics by UK, even though We miss the sound of A. Holdsworth and especially the versatility/skill by Terry Bozzio (here replaced by Simon Phillips on drums, being very good as a session drummer anyway...). This way, all the tracks by UK are still quite fascinating after 30 years; instead in the experimental tracks by King Crimson (like for instance "Starless" and partially also "One More Red Nightmare") I miss Robert Fripp on guitars and the intelligent drumming by Bill Bruford, despite the good new arrangements...so probably four stars in the evaluation is too much, but your collection regarding the prog live gigs all over the world, can be enriched by means of a modern "Carryng No Cross" within DISC Z (if you love the 70' s analogic synths and appreciate the best style by John Wetton on vocals) plus the best tracks by Eddie as a keyboardplayer, those are "Alaska" and "Presto Vivace", which alone probably are worth the price regarding DISC U!! Then, talking about DISC Z, probably "RED" is the second tune, after the mentioned above "Carrying no Cross", being well worth to be checked out in their particular arrangements!! Besides the tracks taken by Eddie's solo albums are interesting, even though not properly unforgettable, but nevermind...actually I'm so sorry about the fact that the reunion of the original ensemble by UK has never been realized so far, but the session men involved in this strange live project have performed a good job in the recent times anyway and for me that's enough!