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Hi Folks,

Watching the Davies Cup Tennis today - the crowd is very noisy. Someone was blowing a wind instrument and I thought, I can name that tune in 1. It was our old friend 'March to Drina', 14th track on the album 'Shadow Music'.

I believe the origins of this tune have been covered a few years ago on this website. It sounded to me like it may have been a traditional March of the old Austro-Hungarian empire.

Kindest regards
Christopher

Shadow Music is probably my favourite of their 60's albums, it has such a variety of styles on it and lots of the tracks are written by them.

Fenderman wrote:Shadow Music is probably my favourite of their 60's albums, it has such a variety of styles on it and lots of the tracks are written by them.

I absolutely agree.

It is miles ahead of the (in part, painful) "Dance With the Shadows" and "Sound Of The Shadows".

And if only they'd done a few vocals in their evolving style on "Jigsaw"...

JimN wrote:

Fenderman wrote:Shadow Music is probably my favourite of their 60's albums, it has such a variety of styles on it and lots of the tracks are written by them.

I absolutely agree.

It is miles ahead of the (in part, painful) "Dance With the Shadows" and "Sound Of The Shadows".

And if only they'd done a few vocals in their evolving style on "Jigsaw"...

What do you think is painful about those albums? I think both are very strong. I must admit the style of some of the tracks are different from the first two studio albums, but still good in my opinion.

One of the things I like about 'Shadowmusic' is the iconic photo on the front of the album. Its an unusual angle for its era - taken from the left, and slightly to the rear. Because of the viewpoint, it highlights things you don't usually see from the front of stage.

I think the photo was taken during a soundcheck. I didn't get a similar view of the Shads until the late 1970's, when they played at Croydon Fairfield Halls, which had seats behind the stage - Bruce referred them jokingly as "the cheap seats".

Kindest regards
Christopher

iefje wrote:

JimN wrote:

Fenderman wrote:Shadow Music is probably my favourite of their 60's albums, it has such a variety of styles on it and lots of the tracks are written by them.

I absolutely agree.
It is miles ahead of the (in part, painful) "Dance With the Shadows" and "Sound Of The Shadows".
And if only they'd done a few vocals in their evolving style on "Jigsaw"...

What do you think is painful about those albums? I think both are very strong. I must admit the style of some of the tracks are different from the first two studio albums, but still good in my opinion.

The whole style of those two albums is watered down compared to the first two albums.

But some material on DWTS and TSOTS stands out as much better than the rest.

I'd list in that category: Tonight, That's The Way It Goes, Don't It Make You Feel Good?, Fandango, The High And The Mighty, Dakota, Blue Sky Blue Sea Blue Me, Santa Ana and Breakthru'. Maybe a few more.

None of the vocals on "The Sound of The Shadows", though. They're 100% symptomatic of the "frilly shirts" period which is a large part of what I find "painful".

"Shadow Music" and certain other material (eg, Thunderbirds, My Way, Bombay Duck) marked a return to The Shadows as a semi-relevant pop band with their roots in rock'n'roll.

JimN wrote:The whole style of those two albums is watered down compared to the first two albums.

But some material on DWTS and TSOTS stands out as much better than the rest.

I'd list in that category: Tonight, That's The Way It Goes, Don't It Make You Feel Good?, Fandango, The High And The Mighty, Dakota, Blue Sky Blue Sea Blue Me, Santa Ana and Breakthru'. Maybe a few more.

None of the vocals on "The Sound of The Shadows", though. They're 100% symptomatic of the "frilly shirts" period which is a large part of what I find "painful".

"Shadow Music" and certain other material (eg, Thunderbirds, My Way, Bombay Duck) marked a return to The Shadows as a semi-relevant pop band with their roots in rock'n'roll.

I see what you mean. "A Little Bitty Tear", "Five Hundred Miles" and "Let It Be Me" are the kind of tracks, whereof people would say The Shadows had become family entertainers, as well as their participation in the pantomimes with Cliff. The majority of their tracks from the rest of the 1960's though, were (in my opinion) quite strong pop or rock/pop tracks. They even took it a step further with their early to mid-1970's albums, which were quite progressive. I do like the three vocal tracks on "The Sound Of The Shadows", but like their more powerful tracks more.

Dance with has some excellent tracks such as The Lonely Bull and Don't it make you feel good. I could have done without In the Mood or perhaps Zambesi.
Sound of is perhaps not their best album but has some standout tracks, especially the ones written by John Rostill, Bossa Roo is one of my favourites, i love his playing on the album but some tracks are pretty awful such as Let it be me or A little bitty tear (as mentioned earlier). Remember the Who and Kinks were around by this time so their music must have seemed rather 'twee' but it did sell pretty well.
The Jigsaw album is okay but i think the main problem was the lack of time they had to record it. They could only manage Sundays due to being in Panto until April (i think). If more time was spent writing some more originals it might have been better as it does contain some filler (Chelsea Boot springs to mind). But it's not that bad.
I'd place Shadow Music as my favourite and Out of the Shadows a close second.

My test is, "Can I play (and enjoy!) the whole LP without wanting to skip over any tracks?" There aren't many 'pop' LPs you can do that with. I've played Dance With... hundreds of times over the years and it still sounds great. Sound of... - I have to skip over Five Hundred Miles and Let It Be Me as Jim mentioned above (I don't mind A Little Bitty Tear quite so much) and even Blue Sky... I find a bit laboured I'm afraid to say. I love the whole of Shadow Music. Jigsaw... I can't cope with Cathy's Clown or the intro to Winchester Cathedral. But my favourite of their 60s LPs is From Hank, Bruce, Brian and John (the 'oompah/kazoo' break in Day I Met Marie notwithstanding...!)

The first two LPs are classics, of course, and I love them both; I just wish they'd chosen different vocal numbers - maybe even written a few. When they sang Gee Whiz It's You on the Final Tour I remember thinking they should have done their own version of that at the time...

Just a few thoughts on The Shadows' 60s albums. I realise that criticising track choices is utterly pointless - they are what they are, as people say nowadays. I still love listening to them. I remember Tim Rice a few years ago saying he'd rather listen to an Everly Brothers LP he'd already heard 387 times than try to get into Jessie J...

Not that my opinion is worth a sausage but Dance With ... and The Sound of ... are, and have always been, the albums I play the most: all the former, and the intros on the latter.