What really separates Actual Size from Get Over It is that Actual Size tones down the blues elements and is a more slick melodic rock album. There's still quite a bit of blues-isms such as I Don't Want To Be Happy but for the majority of the record, this really brings to mind Harem Scarem. Like a mixture of the best of Believe and say some of Weight Of The World. The first few songs are really infectious, really slick and melodic, and have explosive hooks. Lost In America begins with what I call a "classic" sounding riff. Short, punchy, choppy power chords let us know that Mr. Big is taking a step back into a more familiar territory. Wake Up is an even more upbeat song that is pretty fun to listen to even if the lyrics are a bit sappy. Shine is a pseudo-ballad and I like it actually. Richie Kotzen does some lead vocals in the chorus. Mary Goes Round is a highlight musically and lyrically. I like to say this is about weed (Mary goes round, get it? Mary JANE!) and the music is sublime with its wistful melodies. Kinda has a Julio and Me Smoking Fat Dank Blunts Down in The Schoolyard from Paul Simon vibe. Anyways, she comes in every color (green, orange, purple), you just can't help but love her, when Mary goes round! The mood is so uplifting here I feel like I'm in a field of five gallon trash bags full of nuggs the size of my arm and as I fall backwards I'm surrounded by a swarm of kittens and puppies and excited flying squirrels. Suffocation breaks up the happy go lucky mood and starts the second half of the record with a super bluesy funk track. There's lots of wah pedal use and ye olde funk chord chopping. During this reacquaintance with the Kotzen years, I got this song mixed up as being on Get Over It. Well, since this obviously has Richie's influence all over it he also happens to have even more lead vocals than he did on Shine. How Did I Give Myself away begins as if it would be a schmaltzy ballad but surprisingly it turns into a shuffle. A shuffle with a fifties type chorus.
Mr. Big-Actual Size full album 11
This Complete List Of Mr. Big Albums And Songs presents the full discography of Mr. Big studio albums. Billy Sheehan fantastic band Mr. Big was formed in the late 1980s. They have remained an all star group of musicians also featuring Eric Martin on lead vocals. They have their own style of music that falls somewhere between rock, metal, jazz, funk and pop.
The set improves as it goes along, principally at the point where Shaw and Keen 'switched over' to psych/pop, a few tracks into the second disc, but even their soft psych material isn't really that engaging, to be honest. Maybe there's a reason most of this stuff wasn't released at the time. Anyway, an unknown sessioneer plays Mellotron flutes on In The Sky and the bizarre Laughing Man, with strings on Rain Rain Rain (Alternate Version), barely enough to give the lengthy set a full T. Men From the Ministry is by no means a bad album, just a rather ordinary one, although fans of the style will go ga-ga over it, I've no doubt. Three Mellotron tracks out of thirty-five just isn't enough to make it worthwhile on those grounds, though.
Hiroshi Miyagawa (1931-2006) was a 'Japanese pop songwriter and arranger', according to Discogs, with the better part of forty albums to his name, according to the same, not-that-reliable source. 1982's Space Cruiser Yamato - Synthesizer Fantasy (not to be confused with '77's Space Cruiser Yamato) is an album of instrumental synthesizer versions, recorded the same year, of the music he composed for mid-'70s anime Space Battleship Yamato (depending on translation), apparently one of the earliest animes to tackle serious issues and, in return, be taken more seriously. Unfortunately, it's difficult to take the music, or at least these versions of it, that seriously, as it's all a bit Nippo-fusionesque, at its best on the brief Iskandal and White Comet and its worst on the cheesy The Eternity Of Love.
The band released their sole full album, Labyrinth, in '88. Opener Touch The Ground sounds a lot like '70s Floyd this time, unfashionable though they are amongst psych fans, although the band unblot their copybook with Tapestry, which could be an outtake from More or Ummagumma. Some of the material actually sits more in the progressive than the psychedelic camp, notably the fantastically-titled instrumental Stealing Cake (To Eat The Moon) and closer Who'll Point You. Practically no obvious credited Mellotron (from Kazas again), sadly, with possibly background strings on Surprised and flutes on Who'll Point You, though the instrument (if that's what it is) has been mixed so far down, it's very difficult to tell.
To be honest, I don't know an awful lot about Molesome, only that Änglagård drummer Mattias Olsson is heavily involved (it's Mattias' proud boast that there's Mellotron to be found on every single album he's played on, which has to be applauded...). Like most of his recent work, such as Geller and Pineforest Crunch, A Night at Raji's (sort of) falls into the 'intelligent, offbeat pop' category, which can be no bad thing. Mixing programmed instruments with good old-fashioned acoustic ones, it's actually effectively instrumental, although with some spoken word parts, so I suppose it isn't 'pop' at all, really. Narcotics is particularly good, with an amusing exchange on the subject of, er, 'substances'. Mellotron flutes on both Naples and 22nd March, with a couple of pitchbends to let you know it's real (as if...), along with the glockenspiels, tremolo guitar etc. A Night at Raji's is a pretty cool, modern record, which even died-in-the-wool prog fans may find acceptable; I've no idea if the band is an even remotely full-time proposition, or simply another one of Mattias' projects, but a whole album of this stuff would be most welcome.
You know when they say, "Be careful what you wish for..."? Three or so years later, what should fall onto my doormat but a full-length Molesome album, Songs for Vowels & Mammals. Is this generally available? Depends on your definition of 'generally available', I suppose; I believe it is/was available on Mattias' Roth-Händle site, if you can actually gain access to the thing. It's weirder than its predecessor and is clearly a Mattias solo project this time round, featuring the usual array of cranky old keyboards; drum machines and what's more, I have no idea what (if anything) any of the tracks are called. What is undeniable, though, is that the man has a way with a tune; many of the tracks have beautiful melodies, usually played on MiniMoog or Mellotron, though possibly more in an 'art-house film soundtrack' way than a 'worldwide hit single' one, which is probably a good thing. Moments of humour rear their ugly heads here and there, too, Track 8 being a worthy successor to Raji's Narcotics.It's likely that some of the 'programmed drums' are actually Mattias' old Chamberlin Rhythmate, which, since it's a tape-replay device, should count as a Chamberlin, but unless/until I'm informed as to what is and what isn't, I really can't comment. As far as more standard Mellotron stuff goes, while I'm certain to miss some of the sounds used, particularly when they're stacked up in the mix, this is what I can actually hear: Cellos, flutes and strings on track 1, strings on 4 and some gorgeous, upfront flutes backed with cello on 5. Flutes and strings on 6, cellos on 10 and ghostly choirs (are there any other kind in Mellotronland?) on 11, with unidentified orchestral something-or-others on 13. 15 features flutes through a Digitek Whammy pitchbend pedal, making for some interesting octave effects, with a final Mellotronic appearance from the cellos, strings and flutes on Track 18. Now go on, tell me what I've missed.
2007 and it's another Molesome album - of a sort. Dial is the sort of thing that lazy reviewers might call 'ambient', only ambient music isn't meant to be this discordant and all-round odd, I suspect. It largely consists of moaning synth with random brass stuck on top, vocal samples and the odd bit of piano thrown in, so it would seem that 'intelligent, offbeat pop' no longer applies. Actually, this doesn't sound entirely dissimilar to Julian Cope's very odd Odin, only shorter and with slightly more variety. Mellotron? There's something stabby around the sixteen-minute mark, background choirs a few minutes later and definite flutes and strings around twenty-four minutes. When suddenly... twenty-six mins and full-on strings! Almost rhymes, too. That would appear to be your lot. Incidentally, Mattias reissued the album on Roth-Händle Recordings in 2017.
Mona Lisa are often, unfairly, labelled Ange copyists. OK, so they're a loosely Genesis-influenced French progressive band from the early-to-mid-'70s with a theatrical singer. And? They actually sound very little like them, at least within the prog oeuvre, although occasional Genesis comparisons do hold up. 1978's Avant qu'il Ne Soit Trop Tard was their fourth album, following hard on the heels of their classic, the previous year's Le Petit Violon de Monsieur Grégoire (****), actually holding up very well in comparison, given that the two-pronged punk/disco attack had hit in their homeland, too. This is a full-on progressive album, no obvious concessions being made to modernity; y'know what, though? Maybe the band saw this as 'modernity' at the time. The most anyone can do is spot trends and most of us can't even do that, so if Mona Lisa had an audience who went wild for what they were doing, why would they try to conform to a new set of media-imposed rules? Anyway... Keys man Jean-Paul Pierson is credited with Mellotron (the band had never used one before), but it's only to be heard on Souvenirs De Naufrageurs, with background choirs near the end, making you wonder why they bothered. It doesn't feature on the live version added to Musea's CD release, making it highly likely that a studio machine was fired up for the sole track. 2ff7e9595c
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