The Climax Blues Band


I always thought The Climax Blues Band were a US band (they were originally called The Chicago Climax Blues Band), but they were actually British and had a fair old career putting out no-nonsense blues rock albums before their big 1976 chart hit Couldn't Get It Right. I have dabbled in a few of their albums here. 

The first, Plays On, from 1969, is pure, straight ahead blues rock in the style of Chicken Shack and Jellybread from the same era - lots of harmonica, searing guitar, throbbing bass and solid drums. The album does have one rather odd excursion into some proggy space rock and almost atonal keyboard indulgence on Mum's The Word, which does sit most incongruously with the rest of the album.

The second album, A Lot Of Bottle, the band's third, is from 1970 and is more of the same, minus the space rock. including a couple of standard blues covers. Indeed, the band's seventies output continued in this bluesy vein until I guess they felt they they hadn't anywhere else to go but try and be more commercial. 

Their afore-mentioned hit, Couldn't Get It Right, was a great song, fair do's, but the album from whence it came, Gold Plated, was, to be honest, really a tad uninspiring. It's an ok-ish listen for a discerning musical connoisseur like myself, of course, but Heaven knows what those who bought it on the strength of having heard the single thought about it. Straight to the bargain bin I should imagine...

Up to that point, though, all the albums are recommended and enjoyable servings of regulation blues rock, Tight Knit being particularly good while Sense Of Direction had hints of The Grateful Dead about it. Stamp Album shows a move towards Average White Band-style white funk, however. The better albums in this batch are definitely the three earlier bluesier ones.

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