WAR — War Featuring Eric Burdon : Love Is All Around (review)

WAR — War Featuring Eric Burdon : Love Is All Around album cover Album · 1976 · RnB Buy this album from MMA partners
2.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
This album is a posthumous Burdon-era album, where manager Goldstein grabs all the leftover tracks from the short but fruitful Burdon-War partnership. Released in November 76, when War’s better days were past them, Love Is All around is a shameless attempt at exploitation and making a quick buck. Not that it attempts to hide it at all, but the album is not bad in itself, taking unused material from their heydays. With a newspaper artwork ala TAAB, the album deserves a listen if you’re into the classic War stuff.

Starting with the unremarkable title track, the album plunges into a shorter version of Tobacco Road, or at least they edited the lengthy jam parts. I personally prefer this version to the one in Black Man’s Burdon. Under the “Burdon reign”, War could’ve passed for a blues group given their frontman’s gift for blues. Here we are treated to another lengthy blues, but not one of their better one. With its 11 minutes, Home Dreams is a fine blues but overstays its welcome by a good 5 minutes, because some of those solos, breaks and jams are a tad foreseeable. Just two tracks on the flipside, including a cover of The Beatles’ Day In The Life, slowed down as if Vanilla Fudge was having a go at it, but here War is missing the notch by a mile…. Brain Auger And Trinity’s version is much better despite being instrumental. It’s not really a massacre, but I understand that some would hate it, even if it has its moments. And just to avoid taking sides, the other track is a live medley over the Stones’ Paint It Black with even more latitude, but the Stones’ track can take more abuse than its Fab Four counterpart, for obvious reasons. Note that this is another version than that one on Black Man’s Burdon album.

Hardly essential, but still definitely worth the odd spin here & there, this posthumous release is mainly an exploitation album, but then again, if all of those were of this calibre, we’d have to change its designation. For fans only, but it does deserve a bit more than that.

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Jazz Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

JMA TOP 5 Jazz ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
A Love Supreme Post Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners
Kind of Blue Cool Jazz
MILES DAVIS
Buy this album from our partners
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady Progressive Big Band
CHARLES MINGUS
Buy this album from our partners
Blue Train Hard Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners
My Favorite Things Hard Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners

New Jazz Artists

New Jazz Releases

Plexus Plexus Acid Jazz
WEB WEB
Buy this album from MMA partners
Return to the Joyous Lake World Fusion
FAREED HAQUE
Buy this album from MMA partners
Mother Harp Eclectic Fusion
MATT ULERY
Buy this album from MMA partners
Superblue : Guilty Pleasures, Vol. 2 RnB
KURT ELLING
Buy this album from MMA partners
Memories Dreams Reflections Hard Bop
NICOLE GLOVER
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Jazz Online Videos

Jed Levy Trio
JED LEVY
js· -41 second ago
Web Web - Apotheosis
WEB WEB
js· 3 hours ago
Skywhale - Eternal Optimist The Rat (from the forthcoming reissue of The World At Mind's End)
SKYWHALE
PQR· 6 hours ago
Lessons In Flying
MATT ULERY
js· 10 hours ago
Turn To Stone
KURT ELLING
js· 10 hours ago
More videos

New JMA Jazz Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Jazz News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed