Search - Chris Spedding :: Only Lick I Know

The one before the big one

L. Wiegerinck | 09/16/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

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How does one share ones enthusiasm for an artist's body of work without getting smug? I'll give it a try.



If you're into the sound of early seventies pop music that was made on a budget, or not afraid of it for that matter, "The Only Lick I Know" is a record that's worth enough to check out on it's own. Here is an artist at work who knows what he wants, although he hasn't found the way to get it yet. Soundwise.



However, when you're into the (solo) work of master rock & roll guitarist Chris Spedding here you have the album that summed up all the promises he later spectacularly fulfilled on albums like "Chris Spedding", "Hurt", "Guitar Graffity" etc.

The songwriting, though not as fluid as on the records that made him famous: it's all there.

The guitar playing, from strumming a lovingly acoustic to hitting those edgy riffs and all the way to the wild and the panicky leads that he made his name with: it's there.

As a matter of fact it's all there - and if you're not afraid of early seventies on a budget, "The Only Lick I Know" is a wonderful record, the kind of album that would have cooled you out from the prog rock buying crowd of the time at that time. You'd'a been too hip for words.

You favor concise, immediate and literate with a rock & roll punch and some country rock reeling on the side, just for good measure, here's your next buy.

Chris Spedding teamed up with producer Mickie Most of RAK records for his next solo album, "Chris Spedding", from then on thought to be his debut solo album, but "The Only Lick I know" contains the blueprint for everything he did from then.

A milestone in it's own unassumed way.



Ludo Wiegerinck"