Track Listing

1. What You Want To Know
2. Down On The Floor
3. Hammerhead
4. I'm Thinking
5. Flight
6. What You Want To Know
7. Hammerhead
8. Red Man

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28485 in Music
• Released on: 2007-09-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
Rare Bird are perhaps best remembered for having the distinction of being the first act to be released on Tony Stratton Smith's gloriously eclectic label Charisma records (also the home of GENESIS, THE NICE and VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR to name but a few) and for their excellent 1970 hit single Sympathy.
Like fellow future Charisma stable mates Van Der Graaf Generator, Rare Bird was formed around the principle of keyboard dominated progressive rock which eschewed the use of guitars.

Following the success of their debut album and single `Sympathy'), the band recorded this classic album in the Summer of 1970. "As Your Mind Flies By" featured the epic "Flight", a legendary piece which dominated the albums second side. An excellent work, the album met with much success, with Billboard magazine in America declaring Rare Bird to be in the top ten best new acts of the year.

Customer Reviews

Bird hits new heights ...
A treat for fans of Hammonds, harpsichords and Mellotrons in the rock idiom, this follow-up to an acclaimed eponyomous debut ramped the quality stakes up more than a few notches. Compositionally poppier content was eschewed for the voguishly progressive and coupling this 'new' thinking to the band's classically-underpinned, keyboard-dominated sound delivered something altogether meatier. A suite of melodic rock songs with dramatic instrumental passages builds to a career tour-de-force in 'Flight'. A genre archetype, replete with choir, a spirited dip into Ravel's 'Bolero', it took up all of side 2 of the original LP release. The album packed wow factors to take Rare Bird to new heights but when contract hassles prompted mainman Graham Field to leave at the end of the year, the rest of the band brought in guitars in a bid for mainstream. More commercial perhaps, but rendered less rare, the act went the way of the dodo in 1975. This superior reissue adds single versions of the plangent 'What You Want To Know', the Van der Graaf-ish 'Hammerhead' and previously-unreleased ballad 'Red Man' and tells the Rare Bird story intelligently. 'Where are they nows?' on all but Fields, whose self-titled release on CBS remains his only further recorded output, lends a little enigma. Where is he now?

A PHOENIX PERHAPS!
Bit of an oddity Rare Bird in that just like baroque n roll classmates, Procol Harum, they came to public prominence by virtue of the singles chart, rather than the album chart path much trodden by other prog-rock acts. The single in question 'Sympathy', which you will find on their first album, has stood the test of time thanks to a soulful vocal by Steve Gould and stunning Hammond playing by Graham Field/s. This album though is the classic and if a sample had been taken amongst me and my contemporaries around Dewsbury, West Yorks in the early seventies, this would probably have rated close to the favourite prog album of all time! Just about everyone I knew had a copy and listening to it again, I can see why.

Many albums from this period sound pretty dreadful forty years on, but this album still sounds great. Unfortunately I haven't got the expanded version but it rates five stars on the strength of the original issue.

Keyboard player Graham Field/s (credited in both singular and plural spellings)jumped ship soon after this was released and produced a brilliant album under the name 'Fields' on the CBS (now Sony) label. To the best of my knowledge this has never been available on cd, so someone please licence and release it, as vinyl copies are extremely rare. Rare Bird became more guitar based and signed to Polydor where they released two albums; 'Epic Forest' and 'Somebody's Watching'. Despite being very good records and despite being heavily promoted neither album made much impact and rare Bird sadly went the way of the Great Auk!

Won't attempt a track by track appraisal, as others have already done that quite adequately. Just whack this on your system, crank up the volume and wallow in some great music from better days.

A band in full flight
What a relief when this was released last year, I played my vinyl copy to death back in the seventies, and had been patiently waiting to get it on cd.
This keyboard driven art rock band never really received the recognition that their efforts on the debut album and this deserved, 1969/70 was still pretty much guitar driven, yet when Graham Field departed, guitars were added to the mix at a time when keyboards were becoming prominent.
Steve Gould's vocals deserve a mention, his strong throaty, raw edged voice seems to be generated from deep within, and is perfect for this kind of music, plus on 'Down on the floor' he shows his lighter side. I rate him with Purple's Ian Gillan and Martin Griffiths of Beggars Opera as the best rock vocalists of the time.
With the exception of the rocking 'Hammerhead' the tracks on side one of the original album are slow to mid tempo, melodic and well arranged.
Side two (track 5) is home to 'Flight', a four part piece incorporating some experimental work recreating the sound of a vacuum alongside a choral section all nicely fitted in to some mid to uptempo rock.
Bonus tracks are seven inch mono single versions, which are ok but not as good as the album versions plus a song called 'Red man' which sounds different, but believe me it grows on you.
This album is a must have for anyone interested in early seventies rock!