Track Listing

1. Dean
2. Avenue
3. Things To Try
4. Live Life
5. River
6. Dream
7. Milestones

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76117 in Music
• Released on: 2005-03-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording remastered, Import
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

CD Description
Terry Reid, famously, turned down the opportunity to be thesinger in the nascent Led Zeppelin, instead hipping his friend Jimmy Page to a little-known guy in Birmingham named Robert Plant who Reid felt would be more suited for the job. Over the course of Reid's peripatetic solo career, his intriguingly off-kilter musical choices proved that he was right toturn Page down. For example, 1973's RIVER, Reid's first album in nearly four years, is a loose, mellow exercise in southern California folk-jazz, very close in spirit and execution to what Van Morrison, Tim Buckley, and Joni Mitchell were doing around the same period. The seven songs are lengthy, meandering grooves powered by David Lindley's dobro and slideguitar parts and featuring Reid experimenting with Morrison's incantatory vocal style alongside his own familiar British blues wail. The 2006 Water Music reissue adds two previously unreleased outtakes from the RIVER sessions, "Anyway" andthe hypnotic seven-minute jam "Funny."

Customer Reviews

"I'd have a thousand dreams that would turn blue anyway.....
I bought the album after seeing Terry Reid on "The Old Grey Whistle Test" New-Year's special. Terry bopped from foot to foot, grinning like a maniac whilst singing something totally undecipherable. The song was "Dean", the opening track from "River".

Possibly the greatest ever singer to emerge from the British Isles, the voice still sends shivers down the spine to this day. The original vinyl version of the album was split into two distinct halves: side one, a strange mixture of loose funk and slide guitar which became more and more frantic from the opening "Dean" to the closing "Live Life".

Side two opens with the beautiful acoustic shuffle of the title track and closes with the almost free-form, multi-layered voice trip that is "Milestones".

No-one should be without this record. A lost gem from the seventies. God bless the person who saw fit to re=release it!

A Great Album From The Quarry of Rock and Folk
Among the continuous reissuing of unbearably poor "lost tapes" and full discographies of "second row" bands, once in a while, a forgotten classic or, sometimes worse, an album which deserved much more praise than it ever got, eventually gets re-released.
"River" is one of those felicitous cases where you finally get to own a CD that either you have worn to dust in its vinyl form, or only read about for years and wondered if you'd ever get the chance to hear.
The first few songs, are particularly potent examples of vintage rock from the late Sixties' heyday, even though this album was recorded in the early Seventies, showcasing Reid's incredible voice backed by a band completely tuned in to his musical vision -specially, the legendary, and similarly under-appreciated, David Lindley providing his uncanny taste and skill.
For my taste, where the album goes from very good to truly amazing is on the three final cuts which, I understand, represented side B on the original LP. This is quite fitting, since these songs are eminently acoustic, and show Reid's as even more impressive in his capacity for melodic nuance and emotional range, made even more poignant by their spare -yet extremely tasteful- instrumentation.
As Folk goes, these three tunes can hold their own with any great music of that genre from that era -no coincidence, I guess, that Graham Nash produced another one of his albums- as much as they can teach a thing or two about intimacy and poetry to many current artists who may be even more popular and recognized than Reid has ever been.
All in all, this album is a gem. Whether you get it out of a sentimental impulse or on the exclusive advice of a prestigious review, you will congratulate yourself for spending your money.

Terry Reid's extremely impressive "River"...
I don't mean this to sound detrimental, but music journalists and Mojo magazine readers probably enjoy nothing more than pulling out examples of the 'nearly-men/women' in rock. These are the artists that never quite made it, but had the sufficient talent to make it an injustice that they didn't.

Even today, with his sporadic UK gigging and lack of new records, Terry Reid continues to tick that particular box. For real evidence of this you need look no further than his fantastic album "River".

In true vinyl tradition this is a record of two very distinct halves. The first four cuts gradually build in tempo - peaking with the wonderful "Live Life", which really stretches Reid's famous (and impressive) vocal chords. With its intricate percussion and frequent use of slide, the opening songs make this a very 'Southern Rock' sounding record. The playing is loose, but funky. From there the record gradually begins to wind itself down with "River", "Dreams" and "Milestones" all sounding increasingly ethereal and more folk-infused.

Throughout though the instrumentation is thick and heavily layered - so whilst the melodies are rich, they are buried deep in long, seemingly unstructured songs that appear intentionally to weave themselves in knots. It's a record that demands repeat listens to unpick what is going on, but overall it's all a beautiful noise. It's also quite a casually recorded album (you can hear Reid clearing his throat on a couple of occasions) which only adds more charm.

Overall, a this is impressive stuff that's well worth investigating.