74. The Yardbirds - The Yardbirds (a.k.a. Roger The Engineer) (1966)





















Track Listing

1. Lost Woman
2. Over, Under, Sideways, Down
3. The Nazz Are Blue
4. I Can't Make Your Way
5. Rack My Mind
6. Farewell
7. Hot House Of Omagarashid
8. Jeff's Boogie
9. He's Always There
10. Turn Into Earth
11. What Do You Want
12. Ever Since The World Began
13. Psycho Dasies

Review

Ok, excuse me if I don't make much sense, but I've just came back from a Saturday night out and I am a bit tipsy. That disclaimer done ,on with the show! Crappy fuck Eric Clapton ( who actually plays some mean guitar) left the Yardbirds before this album. And they replaced him just with Jeff Beck, so... not a bad trade. Seeing as he's great! And this album lives off his guitar talent like crazy.

This actually a pretty cool album, it is definitely rocky, but it has a lot of blues elements, Clapton actually left because he needed a more tradional Blues band as we saw in yesterday's review. Their experimentality plays off really well here and I don't know if I am crazy but I can recognise elements here of what would later be post-punk! You know, it's weird post-punk a decade before punk? But there are definitely some tracks here, particularly towards the end of the album which have a definite gothy/Joy Division type feel. If you want to check that out get Turn Into Earth or Ever Since The World Began... or even the beggining to What Do You Want, which then moves into 60's rock.

There's something weird here, either these guys are very ahead of their time or I'm just crazy. My girlfriend confirms their post-punkyness however, it's like Manchester in the early 80's and I'm scared. Props to The Yardbirds though! Still, I have a problem with the album, it loses it's greatness towards the middle, it starts and ends really well, but it isn't cohesive enough for a 10 or a 9.

Definitely buy it however at Amazon UK or US. You can also stream it from Napster.

Track Highlights

1.Turn Into Earth
2. Eve Since The World Began
3. Lost Woman
4. Over, Under, Sideways Down.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

I hate it when albums are uneven.

From Wiki:

The Yardbirds (US- and France-title: Over Under Sideways Down) is an album by The Yardbirds, released in 1966. It was the only Yardbirds album with all originally-written material. Although the record was officially titled The Yardbirds, it has since been referred to, first coloquially, then semi-officially, as Roger The Engineer, a title stemming from the drawing on its front cover, a cartoon of the record's audio engineer Roger Cameron by band member Chris Dreja. Due to the influence of Jeff Beck's experimentation with guitar distortion, the album is considered a precursor to heavy metal.