Darius, Don't You Get The Feelin: 2020-11-08

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Eric Burdon & The Animals - Winds of Change (2CD) (US/UK 1967)

Size: 195 MB

Bitrate: 256

mp3

Ripped by: ChrisGoesRock

Artwork Included (US & UK)

Source: Japan SHM-CD Remaster

Winds of Change is an album released in 1967 by Eric Burdon & The Animals.

The original band, The Animals, broke up in 1966 and this band was entirely new except for lead singer Eric Burdon and drummer Barry Jenkins, who joined the original lineup when John Steel left in February 1966. With the new band, featuring guitarist Vic Briggs, bassist Danny McCulloch and electric violinist John Weider, Burdon began to move from the gritty blues sound of the original mid-1960s group into psychedelic music.

The album opened with the sound of waves washing over the title track, "Winds of Change". "Poem by the Sea" is a spoken-word piece by Burdon with a swirl of echo-drenched instruments. "Good Times" and "San Franciscan Nights" were two of the most popular tracks, the latter breaking into the Top 10 in 1967. Burdon was a fan and friend of Jimi Hendrix and wrote the fifth track as an answer song to Hendrix's "Are You Experienced", which was still unreleased at the time the "answer" was recorded.

In their retrospective review, Allmusic described Winds of Change as the band's first real psychedelic rock album. They praised the closing track "It's All Meat" and the cover of "Paint It, Black" as rare examples of psychedelic rock songs by the Animals that are strong and convincing.

Winds of Change opened the psychedelic era in the history of Eric Burdon & the Animals -- although Burdon's drug experiences had taken a great leap forward months earlier with his first acid trip, and he and the group had generated some startlingly fresh-sounding singles in the intervening time, it was Winds of Change that plunged the group headfirst into the new music. The record was more or less divided into two distinctly different sides, the first more conceptual and ambitious psychedelic mood pieces and the second comprised of more conventionally structured songs, although even these were hard, mostly bluesy and blues-based rock, their jumping-off point closer to Jimi Hendrix than Sonny Boy Williamson.

The band's new era opened with waves washing over the title track, which included sitar and electric violin, while Burdon's voice, awash in reverb, calmly recited a lyric that dropped a lot of major names from blues, jazz, and rock. "Poem by the Sea" was a recitation by Burdon, amid a swirl of echo-drenched instruments, and it led into one of the group's handful of memorable covers from this period, "Paint It Black" -- driven by John Weider's electric violin and Vic Briggs' guitar, and featuring an extended vocal improvisation by Burdon, their approach to the song was good enough to make it part of the group's set at the Monterey International Pop Festival that June, and also to get a spot in the documentary movie that followed.

"The Black Plague" opens with a Gregorian chant structure that recalls "Still I'm Sad" by the Yardbirds, and was another vehicle for Burdon's surreal spoken contributions. There were also, as with most of the group's work from this period, a few easily accessible tracks that could make good singles, in this instance "Good Times" and "San Franciscan Nights," a Top Ten record in various countries around the world in the last quarter of 1967, although, as Alan Clayson points out in his notes, the latter song was overlooked in England for nearly 12 months after its release elsewhere, and then appeared as the B-side to the relatively straightforward, brooding, moody rocker "Anywhere."

Burdon was so inspired by Jimi Hendrix's music that he wrote one of the psychedelic era's rare "answer" songs, "Yes I Am Experienced," as an homage to the guitarist; the latter's influence could also be heard in "It's All Meat," the LP's closing track, and a song that calls to mind an aspect of this band that a lot of scholars in earlier years overlooked -- the fact that Briggs, Weider, et al. had the skills to make music in that style that was convincing and that worked on record, on their terms. [AMG]

Personnel

♦ Eric Burdon - Vocals

♦ Vic Briggs - Guitar, Piano and Arrangements

♦ John Weider - Guitar and Violin

♦ Danny McCulloch - Bass

♦ Barry Jenkins - Drums

Disc 1 (Stereo)

01. Winds Of Change - 04:01

02. Poem By The Sea - 02:12

03. Paint It Black - 06:03

04. The Black Plague - 06:08

05. Yes I Am Experienced - 03:55