THIN LIZZY
Thin Lizzy are an Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1969. Two of the founding members, drummer Brian Downey and bass guitarist and vocalist Phil Lynott, met while still in school. Lynott assumed the role of frontman and led them throughout their recording career of twelve studio albums. Thin Lizzy’s most successful songs, “Whiskey in the Jar”, “Jailbreak” and “The Boys Are Back in Town”, were all major international hits which are still played regularly on hard rock and classic rock radio stations. (More from Wikipedia)
In 1978, Chris Spedding was a key musician in one of the most ambitious concept albums of all time (and the best selling British concert/cast album ever), Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. Actor Richard Burton handled the narration, and the musicians are a virtual Who’s Who of the British rock scene of that era: Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, bass guitarist Herbie Flowers (that’s him playing the prominent bass line on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”), David Essex (“Rock On”), and actress/vocalist Julie Covington; she and Essex had been appearing together in early performances of the rock musical Evita. The album tells the story pretty much as The War of the Worlds was written by H. G. Wells (much of Burton’s narration is word-for-word from the novel) decades before Steven Spielberg’s film basically did the same; I consider War of the Worlds to be one of Spielberg’s best movies and certainly his most disturbing.
(November 2011)
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Code Blue recorded in Van Nuys, California and also in London; changing producers along the way, their first album, Code Blue was finally released in 1980. I only have a promotional EP for their first album as shown above (also called Code Blue), but it is such uniformly excellent music that I had to include them as a UARB. Code Blue mounted a national tour, opening for Thin Lizzy (with yet another bass player on hand, Joe Read); but it was reportedly not well-received. A second album called True Story came out in 1982 on a different label, and shortly afterward, the band broke up.
(September 2012)
