Badger
One Live Badger

Even if it were just for the splendid cover, this album is well worth being placed in any rock discoteca. The imaginative style of the cover artist par excellence, Roger Dean, for once refrains from sketching strange winged spaceships, powerful robotized and armored animals, islands suspended in the air, and rivers descending into nothingness, instead opting to focus simply on the group's name (Tasso) and drawing a sleek, yet non-science-fictional, winter landscape, with the protagonist mustelid in the foreground, guarding its den. In any case, it is an excellent record even in its content, although certainly not epoch-making.

The organizational revolution that occurred in 1970 within the Yes, a historic progressive formation that at the time already had two records but was still far from success, led to the birth of two new groups: guitarist Peter Banks, ousted to make room for Steve Howe, created the excellent Flash, who lasted for three (unmissable) records until 1974. The other outcast Tony Kaye, expelled to make room for Rick Wakeman, shortly after assembled this quartet of Tasso. It lasted even less than Flash: namely the present work, a curious live debut at the Rainbow in London (1973), followed some time later by another, this time skippable work, however, with a different lineup and different genre, that is pop rhythm & blues.

Here the genre is a moderated rock blues tinged with progressive (Kaye's keyboards, occasionally playing unison games with the guitar) and soul (the melodies and voice of guitarist Brian Parrish, slightly reminiscent of Steve Winwood's, less "clear" but the style is there). The quartet is completed by bassist and backing vocalist David Foster, a friend of Yes singer Jon Anderson who produces here, and the solid drummer Roy Dyke. The record flows with pleasure because the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic content is far from memorable, but the Badger plays it excellently! With the right passion and precision.

Only six tracks compose the album, expanded by Parrish's generous improvisations on guitar, certainly not particularly distinctive but extremely professional. My favorite is the fourth on the list "River", in which the interaction between Kaye's organ and Brian's lead guitar reaches its highest level; the chorus is very catchy, the orchestration is measured and on-point, everything rolls smoothly, nothing is surprising but the overall listening is greatly enjoyable.

Nothing groundbreaking from Badger, but good early seventies rock, fluid and pleasant.

P.S.: Tony Kaye later managed to rejoin Yes, recording with them several more or less successful records in the eighties and nineties. Banks, on the other hand, did not, and those jerks of his former bandmates didn't even attend his funeral in 2013. He was great, truly, and he deserved the success and well-being that instead fell to the good but ordinary Kaye.