EXCLAMATION MARK

Before Black Widow were BW, their first name was Pesky Gee and the line-up bears much resemblance to the first BW album, except for singer's Kay Garrett's disappearance. A band from the midlands, PG was already a very different group by the time of release of their sole album in 69, when compared to the two- singer soul music line-up of 66. Indeed, psychedelia affected the group and they started covering many groups of that time. Their album "exclamation mark", released on the Pye label is full of those covers (including one from VF) they did on the circuit. Covers, mostly covers. like the Fudge, right??? Well not quite! While VF did covers, they took the song apart and reconstructed them, and when they tried to write a song themselves they often succeeded, but not always. PG doesn't try to write, but took the wild bet to cover a VF original >> read later.

Actually, PG's sound might remind most of older proghead something of Affinity, drawing from the same blues and jazz roots, with a good soulful screaming babe up front (Kay and Linda Hoyle's voices sound much alike), with the exception that PG never wrote a track of their own for their album (it wasn't Affinity's strength either, but they managed a few). Starting with another Country, the pleasant surprises starts right away (PG is a fun to listen group), with Clive Jones' sax sounding like VdGG's Jaxon, even before David was anywhere a studio record. Not only a great sax sound, entertaining guitars and an ever- present Hammond organ are the main features besides the double vocal attack. While the group sounds very jumpy and fun, a bit like Colosseum would on The Kettle or Walking In The Park, it is really in the more sombre moments I find them more interesting: tracks like Season Of The Witch, the great Piece Of Mind (from Family) or Born To Be Wild are good successes, while the group misses out a bit on the Piece Of My Heart (just too risky after Janis, IMHO) or the Vanilla Fudge's Where Is My Mind (This might've been interesting to speed the track up by a twofold to see how it would fared, but they played it safe) and others might seem a bit pointless, while remaining quite fun: Tull's Dharma For One.

Included the tracks that were released on the single, Place Of Heartbreak is a very effective drama piece, but as mentioned above the VF track was a bit f miss in the possibilities. Hardly an essential album to say the least, but a charming record nevertheless. One that won't affect your love life, because I don't think many women could resist such a fun album. Just for that fact alone, RUN for it, you progheads!!!