"...Sixty Years On..."
First up - this Friday, 3 December 2021
UK-released CD compilation by VARIOUS ARTISTS called "GUS DUDGEON: Production Gems" on Ace Records/Right
Recordings CDTOP 1590 (Barcode 029667104227) is a looker (4 out of 5 stars).
It's only one of a few digipaks I've ever
seen Ace do and has a jam-packed beautifully assembled 40-page booklet with
huge contributions from many household names GUS DUDGEON touched base with (Ten
Years After, The Settlers, Michael Chapman, Magna Carta, Marsha Hunt and Elkie
Brooks are some of the notable exclusions not featured here).
Across 21 tracks and exactly 78:00 minutes
playing time, you get the world-renowned producer's personally picked faves (the
dates begin in 1964 and extend to 1992 with XTC but most are 70ts tracks).
"Production Gems" was to be a tribute album for his 60th birthday
before both he and his wife Sheila were lost in a car accident in July 2002 on his
way home from a party. It subsequently languished for almost two decades, but
now Ace Records of the UK in conjunction with The Gus Dudgeon Foundation have
supplemented the original list with some extras and produced this lavish CD.
There are exclusive written contributions in the last pages from Rick Wakeman,
Ray Laidlaw of Lindisfarne, Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone of the Elton John
Band, Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, John Reid, Elton, Bernie Taupin and many
more.
So why am I so underwhelmed? I know I should like
this, but I find the tracks choices and the 'overall' listen once you're away
from the hits to be something of a terrible let down. Sure, big names are here;
David Bowie, Chris Rea, Kiki Dee, John Kongos, The Strawbs, The Zombies, John
Mayall's Bluesbreakers LP with EC giving it some turned up axe hero and of
course three top tracks involving Elton John. And the booklet goes on and on
about them what a genius GD was. But I'm talking about the actual listen.
You can't dispute "Space Oddity" or
"Rocket Man" or "Tokoloshe Man" or "Fool (If You Think
Its Over)" or even Lindisfarne's forgotten and lovely "Run For
Home" - all wonderful - but stuff like Locomotive, Sounds Nice, Audience,
Voyager, Armatrading's early tracks and the awful Larry Smith "Springtime
For Hitler" pastiche are all very much skips. And despite my affection for
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, do I ever want to hear "I'm The Urban
Spaceman" again – not really. I would have traded any of these hit tracks
for lesser-heard GD-produced gems like "March Rain" from Michael
Chapman's 1970 Harvest LP "Fully Qualified Survivor" (with Paul
Buckmaster string arrangements) or even "Boogie Pilgrim" from Elton's
underrated 1976 double-album "Blues Moves".
Clever choices do include the stunning
"Sixty Years On" from Elton's second self-titled LP in 1970 and the
CD opens with a crystal clear DUNCAN COWELL remaster of "She's Not
There" by The Zombies (Cowell does the whole compilation, great audio
throughout). But I've already got the Kiki Dee stuff on EMI and Edsel and the
live John Lennon duet and the Ralph McTell remake of "Streets Of
London" that charted in 1974 is far better than the '69 Transatlantic
label original presented here.
I know GD was a genius and everyone in this
huge booklet tells the same story of his perfectionism in the studio, but I
just wish it would actually translate into an enjoyable playlist instead of a
bunch of tracks a genius happened to produce. A good CD then, but I really,
really wanted it to be so much better...
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