The Sound Vault - Spectrum

SPECTRUM PLAYS THE BLUES
Track Listing 1. I ain't superstitious 2. Good morning little schoolgirl 3. She's a woman 4. Hey, good lookin' 5. Summertime 6. On Broadway 7. I heard it through the grapevine 8. So low 9. Heartbreak hotel 10. I know there was another man there 11. Help me 12. Spoonful	NO THINKING Cat# SV0430 Spectrum Plays The Blues is to the current day Spectrum what the Indelible Murtceps was to the legendary Spectrum of the '70s. (That was when Mike Rudd found it necessary to split the band into two separate entities; the 'serious' Spectrum handled the sit-down concerts, and the curiously named Indelble Murtceps (Spectrum spelt back-to-front) went out to the pubs and danced the night away). Since then, the two founding members of the original Spectrum, Mike Rudd and Bill Putt, have been through many different band configurations, including Ariel, Mike Rudd and The Heaters, even an experimental video band in the '80s called WHY, before arriving back where they started, with a dynamic trio again bearing the famous Spectrum monicker. It was in the mid '90s when Mike and Bill decided they should demo some blues tunes to take advantage of the numerous blues festivals springing up around the country. They went to their friend Ross Ryan's studio in Glen Iris (G.I.Recorders), and the resultant sessions produced the now famous Spill - Spectrum Plays The Blues CD. Some of the out-takes from those G.I. Recorders' sessions form the basis of the new No Thinking CD, ironically perhaps, because they were originally excluded from Spill for not being bluesy enough. Although No Thinking follows the Spill formula, with a solid core of 'obvious' blues songs, the other songs on the album seem to have no particular blues affiliation. The blues is usually a mutually exclusive genre, and so it's a revealing juxtaposition of styles we're confronted with on No Thinking. As with Spill, there's a selection of classic blues tunes, (again performed with little or no reference to the originals), but this time they're nudging some well-dressed songs by some of the best songwriters in popular music; writers such as Lennon and McCartney, Hank Williams, George and Ira Gershwin et al having a long overdue dialogue with Howling Wolf, Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson. That they work together so effortlessly is testimony to the quality of the songs, and not a little influenced by the way Mike, Bill and Robbo - plus a bevy of fine guests à la Spill - have interpreted them.

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