SHAZAM BY THE MOVE

SHAZAM, the second album by The Move, is pop schizophrenia at his best….This was band leader Roy Wood’s finest moment showing his and the band’s versatility despite consisting of only six songs

Side one is made up of three Wood originals - HELLO SUZIE, BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER, CHERRY BLOSSOM CLINIC REVISISTED….SUZIE is a raucous Cheap Trick rave-up complete with iron lunged vocals….DAUGHTER is a beautiful and McCartneyesque….CHERRY BLOSSOM is a re-done version of an earlier hit CHERRY BLOSSOM CLINIC now blown-up from a three minute pop song to a Who style performance piece with spoken word and instrumental interlude.

Side two is made up of three cover versions – FIELDS OF PEOPLE, DON’T MAKE MY BABY BLUE, LAST THING ON MY MIND….FIELDS is a Byrds-type freak-out meandering into psychedelic territory….DON’T MAKE MY BABY BLUE re-makes the Mann/Weill Brill building creation into something off of PARANOID by Black Sabbath…. MIND, Tom Paxton’s country standard, is somewhere between the two approaches heavy but with passionate vocals and some harmonies on the chorus.

The end result is a truly unique album….Following The Move’s first album which is full of clever late 60’s pop and great singles, this was the next step and showed that anything, any song or melody can be retain its full popiness despite whatever genre and instrumentation it is done up in….SHAZAM is also the high point for a band that was never popular in the USA but regardless had a lot of musical influence on the years to come.

The Move made two more albums (which unfortunately introduced the insidious Jeff Lynne) and then morphed into ELO (a band I have never liked).  Wood did make BOULDERS and a couple of other interesting, eccentric pop records.