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Regular Album Tracklisting: | Big Change Is Gonna Come
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 5:04 | Say That You Want To
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 4:02 | Heart Of Stone
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 4:43 | You'll Be Sorry Someday
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 6:32 | Tribal Dance
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 5:31 | Burglar
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 5:55 | Turn Your Love Away
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 5:20 | Madison Blues
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 3:40 | I Can't Help Myself
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 7:00 | Indians
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 4:59 | Hiding In Shadows
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 4:41 | There's A River
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 5:23 | |
Bonus Tracks On Japanese Version Of CD: | The Brave
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 4:55 | Gambling Man
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 4:57 | |
Hidden Track: | Man Of The World
Date Performance: 1999, Running Time: 3:04
Comments: (Instrumental) |
| Guest Appearances » |
Malcolm Allison, Jennie Evans, Naomi Fairhurst, Joe Green, Debbie/Deborah Miller, Derek Nash, Kate Shortt, Guy Theaker
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| Released » |
1999-07-27
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| Format » |
Import Vinyl/CD Album
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| Other Appearances » |
Roger Cotton (Songwriter), Roger Cotton (Songwriter), Michael Dennis Green (Songwriter), Peter Green (Songwriter), Peter Green (Songwriter), Peter Green (Songwriter), Reg(gie) Isadore/Isidore (Songwriter), Elmore James (Songwriter), Will A. Jennings (Songwriter), Pete(r) Stroud (Songwriter), Pete(r) Stroud (Songwriter), Nigel (J.) Watson (Songwriter), Nigel (J.) Watson (Songwriter), Snowy (Terence) White (Songwriter), Steve Winwood (Songwriter), (Jet) Martin Celmins (Liner Notes), Pete(r) (Constantine) Brown (Produced By), Roger Cotton (Produced By), Roger Cotton (Produced By), Peter Green (Produced By), Peter Green (Produced By), Peter Green Splinter Group (Produced By), Pete(r) Stroud (Produced By), Pete(r) Stroud (Produced By), Larry Tolfree (Produced By), Larry Tolfree (Produced By), Nigel (J.) Watson (Produced By), Nigel (J.) Watson (Produced By), Matthew Ol(l)iv(i)er (Engineered By), Mich(elle) Reynolds (Management), Stuart Taylor (Management), Roger Cotton (Mixed By), Roger Cotton (Mixed By), Peter Green (Mixed By), Peter Green (Mixed By), Matthew Ol(l)iv(i)er (Mixed By), Peter Green Splinter Group (Mixed By), Pete(r) Stroud (Mixed By), Pete(r) Stroud (Mixed By), Larry Tolfree (Mixed By), Larry Tolfree (Mixed By), Nigel (J.) Watson (Mixed By), Nigel (J.) Watson (Mixed By), Richard Wheatley (Engineering Assisted By), Pete(r) (Constantine) Brown (Vocal Arrangements By), Roger Cotton (Vocal Arrangements By), Roger Cotton (Vocal Arrangements By), Nigel (J.) Watson (Vocal Arrangements By), Nigel (J.) Watson (Vocal Arrangements By), Roger Cotton (String Arrangements By), Roger Cotton (String Arrangements By), Guy Theaker (String Arrangements By), Nigel (J.) Watson (String Arrangements By), Nigel (J.) Watson (String Arrangements By) |
| Record Label » |
Artisan/Snapper Classics/DNA/Original/Crown Japan |
| Catalogue Number » |
12817/163/631/CRCL-4045
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| Running Time » |
66:10/76:06
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| Liner Notes » |
Recorded and Mixed at Jacobs Studios, Farnham, Surrey.
Mastered at Sound Recording Technology.
Management:
Stuart Taylor and Michelle Reynolds
Misty Music Management
5B Camden Road
London NW1 9LG
Phone: 0171 692 3488
Fax: 0171 692 3487
E-Mail: misty@nw10ad.demon.co.uk
Website: http://www.petergreen.com
Acknowledgements:
Jamie Crompton @ Fender UK, Bob Grumitt for guitars and mandolins, Washburn UK, Peavey UK, P.S. Basses, Remo Drums and Sabian Cymbals.
Many thanks to Arthur Anderson from Transmedia and all his crew for all their hard work and all at Snapper Music, in particular Nicola O'Donegan.
Designed by 9th Planet, London.
Honing Their Smoky Mid-Atlantic Sound: Splinter Group's First Studio Albun
The release of this album, coincidentally, comes just three years after Peter Green and Nigel Watson introduced the original line-up of their band, headlining the 1996 Alexis Korner Memorial Concert at Buxton. Several personnel changes and several hundred gigs later the group are now ready to branch out and include more of their own material on this debut studio album. A musical link is that one of the songs performed at Buxton was Nigel's "Indians" which appears on this album. In January, the band - along with co-producer and legendary Cream lyric-writer Pete Brown - spent a fortnight together doing demos of their own songs, and then a couple of months later took the best (12 tracks in all, including fresh arrangements of Elmore James' "Madison Blues" and Stevie Winwood's "There's A River") into a 32-track studio.
Peter Green: 'After this band played so well together in America, I think it would have been wrong for me or anyone else to hog the album - it's down to us all now to develop each other's playing and material.'
Nigel Watson: 'The formula of musicians now is pretty good, and we're all making this album with a lot of enthusiasm. Roger Cotton [ex- Johnny Johnson and The Bandwagon keyboardist and guitarist] is a well accomplished musician, as is our new bass player Pete Stroud, who, having previously played with us, joined the band shortly before our successful 2-week visit to the States in late summer 1998. They make a good foundation together with Larry Tolfree [ex Joe Jackson and Otis Grand] who is sensitive to our material and a caring drummer who hears every beat'.
Roger Cotton: 'The musical identity of the band has taken a more definitive shape now, hopefully we've been able to capture this on some of the tracks on this album. A smoky groove that comes from our mixed backgrounds of Blues, Soul and R&B. We never stop learning from the masters but we like to think that our Britishness lends another perspective to the music we love, we call it mid-Atlantic'.
Larry Tolfree: 'I joined the Splinter Group in November '97 and have watched it go from strength to strength. It is a great privilege to be working with Peter and like so many people, friends and fans alike, I look forward to the day he feels inspired enough to put pen to paper'.
Pete Stroud: 'Playing bass with the Splinter Group on the American 98' tour was great fun. We've developed a new Splinter Group sound which has led us onto this new studio album. Since my early playing days in New Zealand I've played this sort of music, so it's really good to play in a rhythm section that can easily handle the older material and the newer songs that we are now working on'.
Down At The Studio - The Producer's Take
Last night's session ended at 1.00am. At 10.00am the band members and co-producer Pete Brown convene in the dining room, and over breakfast they plan today's twelve or so hours studio time in this converted manor house set in stunning Surrey countryside - Splinter Group's home away from home for the past two weeks. The order of this particular day includes adding vocals by Green and Watson; mandola and mandolin overdubs by Watson and Cotton; and a guitar part by Cotton on Pete Stroud's wry look at young love, "Turn Your Love Away". And only five miles away from here, as chance would have it, stands Benifold. The mansion and one-time home studio where Fleetwood Mac mostly licked their wounds soon after Peter Green left the band in 1970 (five long years before the LA based Mac line up went on to conquer the world). Even though tracks on this album remind us of Green's Mac days, their radically changed arrangements do suggest that many musical worlds separate them from the present.
Interestingly, Pete Brown says that he approached these sessions not especially in awe of Peter Green's recording career with Fleetwood Mac: a few years ago he researched Peter's work from all eras before going on to produce the "Rattlesnake Guitar" double CD tribute to Green.
Pete Brown: 'Working with him over the past two weeks, I have seen Peter growing as a musician, daily - his guitar playing in some places is absolutely astonishing. On "Tribal Dance" it's incredibly subtle and in other places it leans towards the timing ideas of jazz, as well as drawing from Hank Marvin and Otis Rush'.
Peter Green may not have written new material as such on this album, but what you can hear are his strong contributions to other members' songs, where he has created new textures as well as intensifying musical colours from all parts of his career. Listen to his menacing blues harp on "Burglar"; and his duet with Watson on "Hiding In Shadows". Listen to the many mixed experiences in his life as told by the timbre of that voice. These are just a few illustrations of the attitude to which Pete Brown refers - growth. And so the conclusion to these sleeve notes echoes that of the first live Splinter Group album, namely, there is much to enjoy here, and much to look forward to as well.
'Jet' Martin Celmins
April 1999.
Jacobs Studios
Ridgway House
Runwick, Nr Farnham
Surrey
GU10 5EE
Tel. (+44) 01252 715546
Fax (+44) 01252 712846
All rights of the producer (or manufacturer) and of the owner of the recorded work reserved.
Unauthorized copying, (public performance), broadcasting, renting and making tramsmittable of this record prohibited.
Compact Disc Digital Audio/Recording
HDCD
Stereo
Japan Issue Notes:
Nippon Crown Co. Ltd.
Tokyo, Japan
Jasnac
(P) (C) 1999 Under license from Snapper Music PLC UK
Artisan Recordings, a Snapper Music Label
Website: www.snappermusic.com
Made in Japan
99.9.22 Y X 01.9.21
4 988007 158206
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| Reviews » |
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Add your review here.
 
Fine playing elevates bland lyrics
Review written by Richard J. Orlando, December 24th, 2004 One of the highlights of this collection is a beautiful instrumental titled "Hiding In Shadows", and it could be thought of as an apt description of this project. The legendary brilliance of Green's early years still shines bright across the ensuing decades but Green seems to find the light exposing rather than illuminating - he holds back - and the band seems unwilling to push back into the spotlight. There is plenty of fine guitar work here, but most of it is provided by Nigel Watson, with Peter Green adding texture and counterpoint. Watson is a strong player with a prononuced Mark Knopfler influence - most apparent in "I Can't Help Myself" a haunting "soul's midnight" ballad. Producer Pete Brown (Cream, Jack Bruce) provides a bright, clean soundscape - each instrument being given plenty of space to be heard - listen to the break in "Turn Your Love Away" : Roger Cotton's Hammond organ washes swirl and blend with the guitars and harmonica creating an rolling ebb and flow. Another instrumental, a re-recording of Green's "Tribal Dance" brings this style to full fruition as the band locks into a smooth groove, with Larry Tolfree's congas and percussion bubbling beneath light splashes of guitar, conjuring images of a lazy tropical river. The strengths and weaknesses of this album are encapsulated in one it's highlights: a startlingly fresh arrangement of Elmore James' "Madison Blues". Those familiar with the original, or Jeremy Spencer's covers from Green's Fleetwood Mac days, would well expect the band to finally break out here - but even with the addition of a horn section, they maintain a low boil. The song never really rocks - it swings, but it doesn't rock. The low-key style is well suited to Green's now leathery whisper of a voice. This song, and a cover of Freddie King's "You'll Be Sorry Some Day" are his two best vocals here. A pleasant surprise from Green is the strength of his harp playing. Scant attention was payed to this side of his skills in his early years, and even here, the songs are not built around the harp; it's used like much of his guitar playing, to add textures and highlights to the mix and Green's playing shows real subtly and control. In the end, the strong playing and production lifts even the weaker material, "Big Change Is Gonna Come", "Heart of Stone", "Say That You Will" to above average, with only "Burglar", "Indians" and a misguided attempt at Steve Winwood's "There's a River" with Watson on lead vocals being unsalvageable. Hiding at the end of the Winwood cover, unlisted among the song titles, is an instrumental rendition of Green's classic "Man of the World". The song's beauty and power are apparent even without it's lyrics and it serves as a fitting coda to a late night collection best experienced with only the faint glow of the stereo offering illumination.
OUTSTANDING Smooth Blues! A GREAT album!!!
Review written by Shirley (girlhowdy233@yahoo.com), December 24th, 2004
This is my FAVORITE of all Peter's albums (so far)with The Splinter Group, as it contains such a WIDE spectrum of emotions! It has songs that effectively convey just about every conceivable side of romance one can imagine(from it's joyous,playful beginnings to the literal depths of despair). ALL are done with GENUINE feeling; nothing maudlin or frivolous HERE! ENJOY!
| Comments » |
"Man Of The World" is hidden at end of "Gambling Man" on the Japanese version of the album & at the end of "There's A River" on all other versions of the album. The lyrics link for the song above is provided only for information about the original song.
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| Last Modified » |
2010-09-14 |
| Tracklisting » |
Discography entry submitted by Pete Grant & Marty Adelson. |
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