Taste

Forgot to put this one with the Rory Gallagher overdose, this one is also pretty much an overlooked semi-gem, Gallagher's pre-solo career band. The band released a pair of albums, "Taste" (1969) and "On the Boards" (1970), neither of which I have but I do have "The Best of Taste" which culls the better (I assume) cuts from both albums.

The trio lineup was Gallagher, of course, on guitar/vocals, Richard McCracken on bass, and John Wilson on drums. Gallagher played some saxaphone also on some of the tracks from "On the Boards", which could be described as "perhaps not the greatest of ideas", however, we can overlook that as we still get the earliest seeds of Gallagher's guitar brilliance (one of the best, for my money, I know many do not agree).....I'm not a fan of the jazzy experiments, although they aren't wretched, but this is Rory Gallagher, and of course we are talking about blues-rock guitar and vocals (I think he was much more than competent as a singer as well).

Some of the highlights: perhaps their best number "Blister on the Moon", the very cool "Dual Carriage Way Pain" (you can tell it's Rory from the first note), the constant-tempo changing "Born on the Wrong Side of Time", the rollicking "Eat My Words", the slower blues with some excellent soloing "Railway and Gun", oh, hell, if you liked any of the Gallagher posts I did recently, all of it is pretty damn good, Gallagher dominates the band's sound, it's easy to see why he decided the trio format wasn't form him, he was much more comfortable as a solo artist.

I recommend this one to anyone that was/is a fan of Rory Gallagher (obviously I am, why else would I have so much of his stuff? Well, never mind, I have a LOT of stuff I DON'T like that much also), but a classic hard blues rocker in his infancy here is well worth hearing, in fact worth hearing several times.

BEST OF TASTE-01 Blister on the Moon/02 Leavin' Blues/03 Sugar Mama/05 Same Old Story/06 Catfish/07 What's Goin' On/08 Railway and Gun/09 Morning Sun/10 Eat My Words/11 I'll Remember/12 I'm Movin' On/13 If the Day Was Any Longer/14 If I Don't Sing, I'll Cry/15 Born on the Wrong Side of Time/16 Dual Carriage Way Pain/17 Too Much Too Bad/18 If It Happened Before, It'll  Happen Again/19 Hail