Every time I travel through Rochester, New York I feel like I’ve
\nhit a time warp that takes me back to the 1970s. Maybe it’s the
\nrebuilt Camaros that I always spot on the road or the number of
\nguys I see that look like someone named Vinny. This past week was
\nno exception, but a little spare time found me visiting the House
\nof Guitars record shop in a nearby suburb for the first time.
\nEasily the best-stocked domestic music store I have ever been to, I
\nhad to snicker that even in that environment I couldn’t escape the
\ntime shift as I had the privilege of perusing hundreds — no
\nthousands of long box CD’s that never made their way out of the
\nmanufacturers’ shipper only a few years removed from that
\nperiod.<\/p>\n
Yes, it was a daunting experience. An “old school” shopping vibe
\nnecessitated the purchase of an “old school” rock album that I only
\never had limited exposure to previously. Angel’s
\nHelluva Band<\/i> was the choice that day and after a week of
\nlistening to it, I’m really surprised that the group known as Gregg
\nGiuffria’s first band never made an impact one way or another on me
\ngrowing up.<\/p>\n
Keyboards in the 70s had yet to make a significant impact on
\nmuch of the hard rock music of the day back in that era but
\nGiuffria used the album
\nHelluva Band<\/i> as his personal showcase. Not content to only
\noffer synthesized backdrops to the songs on the album,
\nHelluva Band<\/i> prominently allows Giuffria the autonomy to
\ntandem his solos with the same frequency as guitarist Punky
\nMeadows. The result is a pretty eclectic slate of tracks which was
\ndefinitely revolutionary for the time.<\/p>\n
For comparison’s sake, Rainbow’s
\nStraight Between The Eyes<\/i> album from 1982 has had a pretty
\ngood run on my turntable over the years and I just know that
\nkeyboardist Don Airey had to have been a disciple of Giuffria’s
\nworks from the way that album sounds.<\/p>\n
So anyway,
\nHelluva Band<\/i> easily helped define the prog-rock mold that
\nmany bands would soon come to embrace. The nearly nine-minute opus
\n“The Fortune” could easily be confused as an Emerson, Lake, &
\nPalmer work from the day as much as “Feelin Right” could be saddled
\nright alongside the Joe Lynn Turner\/Rainbow era from the early 80s
\nI just mentioned.<\/p>\n
Vocalist Frank DiMino’s voice is as soothing as it is
\ncaptivating for this style of music. “Mirrors” has DiMino singing
\nabout swords, lords and treasures with an ideal Giuffria
\nexperimentation of the mellotron accompanied by a slice of searing
\nguitar work by Meadows. The effect of the collaboration should have
\nbeen sold to the makers of the
\nDungeons and Dragons<\/i> fantasy game and marketed as their
\ntheme song, as I get the feeling listening to this track that the
\nwizards will be awakened at any time now.<\/p>\n
Otherwise,
\nHelluva Band<\/i> changes its course slightly with several
\nundistinguished rock tunes such as “Dr. Ice,” “Pressure Point” and
\n“Chicken Soup”. These are the songs that explain to me why Angel
\nnever popped into mainstream FM radio rotation back in the day.
\nIndeed, the songs are interesting efforts but not to the point of
\ngraduating from B-side material. Bands like Boston and the Doobie
\nBrothers were releasing songs just a bit catchier and more
\ncommercial at that time, keeping Angel in the shadows with the
\nsongs on this album.<\/p>\n
So am I glad to have brought a bit of the 70s back home with me,
\nyou might be asking? I’d have to say yes and it’s not for nostalgic
\npurposes. The
\nHelluva Band<\/i> album has me marveling at the talent and
\ncreativity that the musicians in Angel possessed, which in today’s
\nworld can be a hard thing to stumble upon in lesser music
\nshops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":26536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6945],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-37775","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-angel","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37775"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37775"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}