Terry Reid: Super Lungs - The Complete Studio Recordings 1966-1969

I discovered this double CD via another Radio 3 show. Surprisingly — because this kind of thing isn't normally her bag — it was Fiona Talkington who played a few Terry Reid tracks on Late Junction in Spring 2005. I'd never heard of him before, but I was intrigued by whatever bits of his story and of those few songs I managed to pick up.

So I ordered this (new at the time) compilation from Amazon — at the same time as Present if you're keeping track. That now seems like a mistake; and not something I'd do these days. In the same circumstances now, I'd have given the album a listen or two via We7 and come to the conclusion that it's not for me. The sleeve notes want to make a comparison with early Tim Buckley, but that only highlights what's wrong with the two Reid albums included here (both recorded before he was 20). Where Buckley is concise and focused, Reid sprawls in ungainly fashion. Where Buckley's astonishing voice is disciplined and reined in, Reid almost always over-eggs the pudding — as Buckley Jr did later. He makes a godawful mess of Something's Gotten Hold of my Heart, for example. I thought Mickie Most, who produced both albums, was supposed to be a shrewd impresario, so I don't know what he or anyone else was thinking when they took Reid's cover of Bob's Highway 61 Revisited and spliced another song in the middle of it. Actually, spliced is not the word; plonked, perhaps.

It's not all bad. I like Erica. And Terry Reid has played in London quite a few times since I got the album: I was half-tempted to go and see him, but Paul said he was often too out of it to give a good performance, so I didn't. Then I think it turned out that Paul had gone himself and spoke very positively of the experience: "I meant to say he's erratic," he explained, "but when he's good, he's very good."

I think I'm going to listen to Terry Reid's later album, River, later, and see if that's any better.

MusicBrainz entry for disc 1, disc 2 Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to a handful of tracks from disc 1 at Last.fm Listen to this album in full at We7