JEFF BECK — Rough and Ready (review)

JEFF BECK — Rough and Ready album cover Album · 1971 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
as1978
I can't find a true identity for this second Jeff Beck Group.I know it's common thing but I'm a Cozy Powell fan and Jeff Beck is one of my favorite guitarists. Also here plays Max Middleton, one of the best keyboard players of that era. Bob Tench is too underrated a singer and bassist, Clive Chaman, is certainly no fallback. It must be said that Jeff Beck was a fantastic innovator and without him there would be no Heavy Metal. But it is equally true that here, in this "Rough and Ready", he drastically breaks with the past to devote himself to a sort of POP Jazz Rock that has Soul and Funk moments that I don't mind at all. Only that POP component does not help to understand this choice.And today it also destabilizes the fact that the next album, "Jeff Beck Group", is a really beautiful and compelling Blues Rock album and more in line with what Jeff Beck was known for.

Musically I think that "Rough and Ready" is more interested in an audience open to certain contaminations of Progressive Soul and certainly Blues Rock than a Jazz audience, although it is, in truth, a Jazz Rock album with various digressions in other musical genres (and well blended). In my head, although "Rough and Ready" is certainly a good album ... It just doesn't convince me as an album. Great music in general. Which convinces me, as single songs. But that leaves me very bitter in my mouth. And that makes me say "Rough and Ready" is a wrong album.
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