Sunday, November 12, 2023

The End - The Last Word (1969-1970)

I've already posted two albums by the excellent but obscure British band the End. They weren't together long, and this compiles their last recordings.

As I mentioned previously, the End only put out one album while they were together, "Introspection." It was recorded in mid-1968 but not released until late 1969, which was an eternity in that era. By then, musical trends had changed, and the album only got a very limited release anyway. This left the band very discouraged. Their lead vocalist Colin Giffin left the band at some point in 1969 for a solo career. This was a big blow, because he also was the co-songwriter for nearly all the songs, as well as being the guitarist. In my opinion, it's the songwriting that elevates the End above so many other obscure bands from that era. 

The songs here were recorded in various sessions in 1969 and 1970, largely after Giffin left. The band's new lead vocalist, Jim Henderson, does a fine job singing these songs. The vast majority of the songs didn't have Giffin involved in their creation, but the person he'd co-written songs with, bassist David Brown, remained in the band, and Brown worked with other band members to write the songs. The result is pretty good, though not as good as their "Introspection" album. The band's style also changed with the times, dropping most of their psychedelia and rocking more instead.

Unfortunately, the band couldn't get a record company to release their music, so these songs remained in the vault until decades later, when they were released as the album "The Last Word." What I'm posting here is almost the same as that. However, I dropped a cover of the soul classic "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man." It was uninspired, in my opinion. 

Instead, I've added three songs at the end. As mentioned above, the band's previous lead singer Colin Giffin left for a solo career. But that career didn't get very far. He only released one single before fading into musical obscurity. I've included the A- and B-sides of that single.

The End decided they needed a new start with a new name. So the same bunch of guys turned into Tucky Buzzard in 1971. They went even more into a hard rock direction, which was very popular at the time. They didn't have any big hits, but they did well enough to release five albums between 1971 and 1973, before breaking up. I listened to some of their music and I wasn't that impressed. The songs done by the End had a lot of creativity and variety to them, whereas the Tucky Buzzard stuff was generally generic hard rock. However, I did like the lead single for their first album, "Time Will Be Your Doctor," which is probably their best known song. So I've included that as a quasi-bonus track.

The album is 44 minutes long.

01 Son of Lightning (End)
02 Second Glance (End)
03 Mistress Bean (End)
04 For Eleanor [Instrumental] (End)
05 So Free (End)
06 North Thames Gas Board (End)
07 Turn On Waterstone (End)
08 Smartypants [Instrumental] (End)
09 My Friend (End)
10 Changes in Our Time (Colin Giffin)
11 When I Was So Young (Colin Giffin)
12 Time Will Be Your Doctor (Tucky Buzzard)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15927947/TEnd_1970_ThLastWrd_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact same cover as that of the archival release.

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