Willard's Wormholes

puffinrandy

Wow! I was just looking for something like this yesterday after listening to Introducing Eddie & The Falcons & Mustard. It’s kind of like you were reading my mind. Thanks Cap’n W.

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  Willard
  February 20, 2013 - 14:08 | Permalink

  I was going to post it yesterday but got sidetracked, so… maybe so.

  Reply

Joe

Very cool, thanks! I was just listening to Mustard & the Wizzard album you shared recently. The Beach Boys influence is undeniable throughout Wood’s stuff – but w/a distinct British flavor – e.g., bagpipe solos! Such strange, wonderful things!

Jeff McKee

A wise man once wrote, “Try explaining Roy Wood to someone.”

Wait – that was you… and therein lies Roy’s appeal and his problematic past (at least as it relates to reaching an American mass audience.)

In a world where products are sold to consumers in units of 30 and 60 second bites in which the message is “this is what the damn thing is and here’s why you need it,” imagine being the guy who has to connect Roy with his potential audience.

While I’ve witnessed first-hand some of Roy’s frustration as he experienced a lack of what he (and I and many of our like-minded brethren and sistren) believed to be an appropriate appreciation of his huge talents and the attendant fruits of his labo(u)rs, thankfully, I believe that as he looks back upon his remarkable career, he’ll feel a great deal of pride that he stayed true to his unique vision and that in doing so, he reaped enough love and financial remuneration to feel a great deal of satisfaction.

Willard, while this collection, in and of itself, is a joyous collection of songs, I’m afraid that if one is first attempting to understand the artist it does as much to add to the confusion as it might serve to illustrate all of his disparate abilities.

Cause, as a wise man once wrote, “If There’s Anything Stranger Than A Roy Wood Album… It’s A Roy Wood B-Side.”

Oh, wait, that was you attempting to introduce this intriguing assemblage of tracks.

Thanks to your generous offerings the past few days, a rock and roll detective, looking for clues to piece together who this guy is and what he’s all about might still be no closer to solving the mystery than when he began.

And that’s to be expected as the stuff that defines his best work is still missing.

Considering the wealth of the material that you’ve shared, that says worlds about this guy’s prodigious talent.

For me, what Roy accomplished with The Move should be all that would be needed to guarantee him a place in the rock and roll hall of fame – not Jann Wenner’s rock and roll hall of fame, but mine.

And in my hall, there’s room for most of Jann’s busts and exhibits, but there’s also space for the singular souls who used the same tools, i.e., influences, instruments, technologies, to create an alternate dimension of songs that are every bit the equal of the big guys, but for myriad reasons, they didn’t share the same size spotlight.

Roy’s music, in addition to expressing an individual point of view that’s every bit as appealing as anyone who has worked in the same medium, also serves to demonstrate how one can integrate all of the bits, pieces, riffs, sounds, ideas, etc. that has been mixed, matched and morphed into the 60 years history of the rock and roll thing of ours and continue to create something new.

It’s as if each of the inductees has been asked to contribute a slice of what made them who they were and then all of those contributions were tossed into a blender.

Then, instead of drinking the slurry in the blender, you listened to it, you’d hear “See My Baby Jive, ” or “Forever,” or “The Last Thing On My Mind,” or “California Man,” or…. perhaps you’d be edging closer to figuring out the Roy Wood mystery.

But let’s add one more thing; once upon a time, 4 guys from Liverpool reinvigorated America’s music & the American rock and roll generation by taking what many dismissed as disposable pop culture, and by adding their own exotic points of view, showed us, and in time, the world, that there was so much more to rock and roll than was first believed.

They held an enormous mirror in their hands and it reflected the American experience and it said, “do you guys know how valuable this stuff is?”

The cultural byproducts of the overlooked and dismissed; the poor, the young, those whose skin might be of a different color and those who wear their emotions on their sleeves and through their music – The Beatles, The Stones, The Zombies, Manfred Mann, The Animals…. it was through the efforts of young men from England that America and eventually the world came to realize the true worth of the music created by and for young Americans.

Ultimately, Roy Wood’s music is a manifestation of his love of American music, translated through his very British filter.

And since we here in America had our love of rock and roll transformed by those young English lads, the music has become the universal language of a certain type of person.

If that person is you, given exposure and time, there’s a whole lotta Roy for you to enjoy and enrich your life.

dandor

My two favorite Roy Wood songs (compositions, more rightly, and actually two of my favorite songs of all time) are:

The Move: Looking On (title track, 1970)
Roy Wood Wizzo Band: Life Is Wonderful (Super Active Wizzo, 1977)

Both are over seven-and-a-half minutes long (*epics*) and excellent showcases for his multi-instrumental prowess (guitar, slide guitar, saxes, cello, etc.), arranging skills, and emotive singing.

(sorry for the double reply, figure this belongs more under a “best of” post)