Search - Climax Blues Band :: Stamp Album

Delivering the goods

tony berry | United Kingdom | 08/24/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This fine album from 1975 captures the talented English outfit at a fascinating stage in their career. Encouraged by the huge success in the US of the FM Live double album (the cover of which, incidentally, was seen in most episodes of the Robin Williams comedy Mork and Mindy, pinned to the wall in the record store where Mindy worked, but I digress) this finds CBB in confident mood. Having stuck pretty rigidly to a blues formula for their early albums, this record sees them incorporate jazz, funk, even Latin and Cuban rhythms, to create a marvellous sound, albeit one which is sometimes obscured by the over-elaborate production. This experimentation and departure from straightforward blues resulted, one year later, in the deliciously funky worldwide smash hit Couldn't Get It Right. Peter Haycock's inspired guitar playing is well to the fore, while Colin Cooper delivers a suitably mercurial vocal on Rusty Nail/The Devil Knows. The album's stand-out track is Running Out Of Time, on which Haycock and Cooper's synchronised guitar/sax work is at its fintst. The lyrics speak of financial worries, tax worries, life on the road and the fear that the band were "running out of time". You should definitely find time for Stamp Album."