Not necessarily the “best” records of the 70s, but those that accompanied us, that we loved: we start with Shazamfrom The Move, a magical record, almost alienated…
The story of The Move is moving in more than one way, if indeed we recontextualize a decade where the sustainability of underground places was dependent on the existence of channels other than the press and national radios. It is through radio waves that Radio Caroline in the United Kingdom, Radio Campus in France, emit dissident music. London is the musical capital, emblematic of its concert halls, although some have not survived (L’UFO which saw the birth Pink Floyd closed in 1967).
After a first album strewn with singles which popularized The Movethe group, led by the charismatic Roy Woodtakes a new turn, in line with the progressive music movement where the duration of a title extends beyond that of a single. Following the length of its compositions, the album stacks the guitars until it becomes filthy, the drum breaks of Bev Bevan fall like a pack of anvils. On stage, The Move had fun smashing television sets, and it is even said that the group played so loudly that the public looked for a corner to protect themselves from the riffs and feedback coming out of the amps.
But what is the reason for choosing such a record to open the brilliant musical decade that will be the 70s? It’s that Shazam is not just his magical interjection, it is a temporal caesura, which takes the listener into another dimension. From the pop and psychedelic base of the previous eponymous album, the group offers itself a new musical identity, the gap has widened. Unlike progressive groups, there is not a single keyboard or organ added as ornaments.
Hello Suzie gives the illusion of a very classical composition, but retains this So British side in the formulation of the words. Except that the tone has hardened, there is suddenly this strangeness which oozes in the background from Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisitedfrom the introduction, we are trapped in a padded cell, sheltered from the world, the key to escape has been thrown into the abyss. The song of Carl Waynesupported by the voice of Roy Wood takes the form of claws in which the soul seems to be reduced to nothing.
Borrowing from classical music with passages from Bach et Tchaïkovskischizophrenia increases tenfold until the moment of grace that is Fields of People, 11 minutes where conversations with anonymous people are recorded as an introduction, until a finale perhaps too exaggerated by the omnipresence of a sitar. The first part of the piece is the climax of the album, all the personifications come together in a single mass, a maze for the soul which sails over an immense expanse where it ends up disintegrating (the Raga of the sitar here n is not saving, on the contrary, it is nightmarish). The composition is attributed to Wyatt Day et Jon Pierson of the American group Ars Nova.
Then comes the resumption of Don’t Make My Baby Bluewith heightened violence, before the record concludes with the very logical The Last Thing on My Mind (of Tom Paxton) whose guitar parts go completely out of control. We are right in the triangular of Power Trio and Art Rock. Oddly, the trio only presents their compositions on Side A. The schism with Carl Wayne is such that Roy Wood grows a beard and hair, like the members of Black Sabbath or from John Lennon.
The only major obstacle is The Move benefits from very little recognition on the American continent, and Shazam is the last of an original line-up, before Jeff Lynne joins the group. Gradually, The Move will move towards proto-Glam music. History will decide otherwise, with the slow formation of the future Electric Light Orchestra.
Franck Irle
