Good, Better, Best
borde ignace | Belgium | 02/24/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Imagine all the best ingredients you can find in rock'n'roll classics. Pass this to a team of enthousiastic and gifted musicians, to whom creativity, virtuosity and versatility are genetic elements. Ent this on folk roots, with a sauce of rock and classic arrangements on superb close harmony singing, and rithmical, romantic or humouristic texts, and you get all kinds of Decameron. Mammoth Special - as a long play available since the seventies - contains very strong original songs from a variety of natures, each of them with creative and subtle arrangements, and strong voicing work by Coppin and Bell (signing up for the songwriting) and the rest of the band in backing vocals. All of them are top musicians, modest but virtuose multi-instrumentalists, and outperforming Buffalo Springfield in their version of "Rock'n'roll Women". Every song reveiling one or other surprise, the common factor is : enjoyable from the first minute, top quality compositions, and the more one listens, the more one loves it... Unknown, but top of the bill !!!"
The second part of the story
Dr.D.Treharne | Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom | 09/06/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"To date nobody appears to have got around to re-mastering and re-releasing Decameron's first L.P. "Say Hello to the band".A pity because it help to put in context this, their second album. Released on an entirely different label to the first,the band had recently been augmented by the arrival of Dik Cadbury, originally to play bass, but as the band developed, to assume more and more lead guitar, edging Al Fenn out of the role he'd had since the start of the band. The songwriting partnership of Dave Bell and Johnny Coppin were at their creative height on this release.Inexplicably the re-release misses out the whole of the insert that came with the vinyl vesion, which explained the context of each of the songs. The telling of the story before the song was a big part of Decameron as a live act. The tracks that work best here are "Mammoth Special" (written for a Belgian menu!) " A glimpse of me" ( an idea to be revisited on the third and fourth albums) and "The empty space". The band used John Halsey as a drummer throughout, and "The Cheetah" uses a percussion section led by Dudu Pukwana.Special mention too for Geoff March - originally the Cello player, but here expanding the range of instrument to include organ and sax. It was at about the time of this album that their alter-ego "The Magnificent Mercury Brothers" started to appear on stage.U.S listeners, who never had the benefit of any of their releases could discover the depth of their talent by listening to their version of "Rock and Roll Woman" to see what five blokes from Cheltenham Gloucester could do when they were on top form, as they were here. Highly recommended, even to the unitiated."
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1