Track Listing

1. Wicked Messenger
2. Devotion
3. Shake Shudder Shiver
4. Stone
5. Around The Plynth
6. Flying
7. Pineapple And The Monkey
8. Nobody Knows
9. Looking Out The Window
10. Three Button Hand Me Down

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7334 in Music
• Released on: 1993-09-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

CD Description
The Small Faces offer a rare example of a band that underwent significant changes in personnel and musical focus yet succeeded in both incarnations. Founding singer/guitarist Steve Marriott left the band in 1969 to start Humble Pie. His replacements were a singer and a guitarist--in the individual persons of Rod Stewart and Ron Wood. The band continued as The Faces, their first outing retaining the "Small" adjectivefor the sake of continuity.
Where the original Small Faces had been a quintessential British mod band, the reconfigured group instantly emerged as a boozy party band. FIRST STEP perfectly captures this new direction. All five members contribute to the songwriting in various capacities. The only outside material on the album is Bob Dylan's "Wicked Messenger", which slithers out of the gates with dirty slide guitar, sexy organ, and thundering drums. The Faces went onto enjoy the stateside success that had eluded their earlier incarnation. But Stewart's burgeoning solo career relegated the band to the shadows, and The Faces eventually dissolved.

Customer Reviews

First Step in the right direction
In hindsight debut albums can provide a tantalizing insight into what might have been, musical styles that were and those that could have been developed, avenues that the group could have explored etc.
The Faces debut album "First Step" has all the components of a seasoned sixties R&B mod-pop band in the Small Faces who were capable of crafting the perfect pop song (minus Steve Marriot here of course) and half of the Jeff Beck Group from which Ron Wood and Rod Stewart got the sack.
"First Step" has all band members writing material in various combinations of partnerships - Ronnie Lane's sole compositions, the folkie "Stone" and "Devotion" a soulful bluesy low number and "Nobody Knows" written with Ron Wood are amongst the strongest melodies on the album. On the manically mixed "Around the Plynth" Ron's slide guitar playing sounds like he has thoroughly read "First Step - How play to the Guitar" (see album cover) and made a successful transition from playing bass with Jeff Beck to lead guitar with the Faces - never likely to better Jeff Beck but good enough for the Faces and the Stones!
It's all here on this debut: bluesy ballads, folk, pop, funky Booker T and the MG's- type instrumental workouts all played tighter and with a lot more muscle than some of their later work, in particular the Faces treatment of Bob Dylan's "Wicked Messenger".
Well the Faces went on to massive success, especially stateside, and became the boozy party band, OK live but sloppy at times, their recorded output became uneven affair and suffered from a lack of quality tunes.
The Faces ended up being billed as Rod's backing band in the States, Ronnie Lane saw the writing on the wall and left to tour the English countryside with a circus big top tent!
Rod's first four (some would say ultimately divisive) solo albums had the better songs and earned him the "Prince of Folk Rock" crown - until the formula became tired and he took that transatlantic crossing, went big-haired leotard disco, then schmaltzy and ended up singing American song books (don't want to think about that too much!). But it all started here!

Old times revisited
This is what made the Faces a band to listen to and a welcome return to my collection.

Not the pasteurised rock of todays standard just good honest jamming with Rod at his rasping best