Includes 'happy Days' in this Collection of Help Yourself's Albums. 'happy Days' was Originally Included with the 'return of Ken Whaley.'
CD Reviews
Good deal for a 2 CD set and 2 great tracks
kireviewer | Sunnyvale, Ca United States | 04/25/2000
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Help Yourself was a Welsh band that played in the early seventies. It wasn't a very stable band, and had members move in and out. Some of the members also played in Man. They released 4 albums. This is a two CD set that contains the second (Strange Affair) and fourth (Return of Ken Whaley/Happy Days) albums. The fourth album was released as a double LP, but fits on the second CD. The CD has a nice booklet that includes a barely coherent history of the band.Every Help Yourself album contained one fantastic extended number, a few good songs, and some bad ones. The extended numbers are from 10 to 14 minutes and include some amazing guitar playing and sometimes great keyboards. This two CD set has two of those tracks, plus one seven minute one that comes fairly close. The rest of the tracks are pop tunes in various styles. Some sound like America (but better musically), CSN (including Steven Stills guitar), England Dan and John Ford Coley and Harry Nilsson. There are other styles that are hard to describe. Some are good and some aren't. Few of these would be worth buying on their own. But, for a good price, you get 2 CD's and close to 30 minutes of excellent music with another 80 minutes of variable quality."
Finally: Strange Affair on c.d.!
G. C. Todd | Memphis | 07/09/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"As is the case with the twofer containing Beware of the Shadow and their first album, you get a lot of excellent music in this neatly packaged two disc set. Musically reminiscent of a blend of the acoustic parts of Led Zep's third album and the Grateful Dead style on American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. Strange Affair is one of the greatest recordings of the early 70's. Unfortunately few heard the band or the lp. This album was played quite bit on the great old FM100 in Memphis which at the time was still "underground".
The second cd (Return of Ken Whaley lp plus the Happy Days ep) is good but it's the Strange Affair album that's stayed with me for over 30 years. I would go so far as to say the the instrumental called "The All Electric Fur Trapper" ranks up there with Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky" for best rock instrumental of all time. Excellent liner notes too--"
Incredible Musicians--Great Music--Why Weren't they More Rec
R. Morris | Idaho Falls, ID USA | 02/23/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"If you were to take the heavier guitar riffs of Neil Young, the best acoustic riffs of CSN, the tight vocal harmonies of CSN, add a nice chunk of phychedilia, and a few more few measures of the Grateful Dead, along with some beautiful piano-playing, you might get a general idea of what this terrific, over-looked band sounds like.
Fronted by Malcolm Morley, the Helps put out four rocking albums before disappearing. This compilation includes my favorite, 'Strange Affair', plus 'The Return of Ken Whaley' and 'Happy Days', making it a very good buy. The more you listen to this group, the more they grow on you, until you can't imagine how it was possible for a band this good to become so obscure after thirty years.
Smart lyrics, catchy melodies, and superior musicianship make this a must. Though the Helps are a hard band to categorize, I think this is a good thing. They blazed their own individualistic trails and are so much the better for it."
My troubled but rewarding relationship with Help Yourself
Jan Wiberg | Helsinki, Finland | 08/02/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Being interested in the British pub rock scene, and happily familiar with one Help Yourself song called "Alabama Lady" (not in this 2-cd package) I bought this set expecting a very good listening experience. To make the story short, I was let down at first. The music didn't welcome me with open arms, some songs were very wonderful indeed but some were just dull and distant. I listened to the cd's over and over again and found "Happy Days" a very good set of songs, light and irresistibly catchy, but "Ken Whaley" and "Strange Affair" were uneven. I started skipping the 12-minute experimental "It Has to Be", since it made my task of getting into the music even more difficult. One by one, all the songs started playing in my head, refusing to stop, and I realised I finally liked them all.
I recently found the other double-album set by Help Yourself, and listened to all 3 cd's in one go. I still hated "It Has to Be", so it's still a track I intend to skip. I'm still working on the albums "Help Yourself" and "Beware the Shadow", but this 2-cd set now has one more proud owner - me.
My favorites on "Strange Affair" are the bouncy title track, the haunting CS&N/America-type ballad "Brown Lady", and the melancholy "Deanna Call and Scotty" - and the nine-and-a-half-minute instumental "The All Electric Fur Trapper" is so ethereal in places you can't help but get enchanted by it.
On "The Return...", the best songs are the immediately catchy "Who Killed Paradise?", the ballad "Amy", which sounds like Barnstorm-period Joe Walsh, and the closing ballad "The Golden Handshake", which is so haunting you expect it to develop more during its 6-minute running time than it actually does. And "Happy Days" is wonderful from start to finish!
So, buy this set, and don't worry if you don't get turned on at first. You will!"
Track Listings (7) - Disc #1