Great Speckled Bird
Great Speckled Bird

THE REVIEW

My dear readers, on the occasion of my 100th review (considering only those I am not ashamed of, it would be the 51st, but there's no point in crying over spilled milk) I will review for you a truly special album: the debut album (and the only true album) of the Great Speckled Bird, a Canadian supergroup born in 1969 at the behest of Ian and Sylvia Tyson; a very interesting project that deserved much better luck but, due to the disastrous management of the record label for which it was originally released (Ampex Records) and the negative reaction from fans of Ian & Sylvia's folksy and acoustic sounds, the album was a colossal commercial failure, and most of the copies remained to rot in the label's warehouses: only over time would this album be re-evaluated and become a rarity for collectors (willing to pay up to 300 dollars for an original copy, according to Sylvia Tyson herself), at least until it was finally reissued on CD in 2006 by the Collector's Choice Music label (a rather emblematic name). As I have already said, Great Speckled Bird is not just a mere extension of Ian & Sylvia but a real band with its own well-defined sound, an energetic and catchy electric country rock, supported by the creative vein and melodic talent of its two main creators and the verve of guitarists Buddy Cage and Amos Garrett (who in 2007 participated in "The Gift", a tribute album to Ian Tyson).

The 12 songs of the tracklist, totally free of fillers, form a very pleasant album, smooth, enriched with high-class melodies, and decidedly varied and complete: while the decent rock-blues of the opener "Love What You're Doing Child" may almost seem like a foreign body, the same cannot be said for the compelling country-rock of songs like "Bloodshot Beholder", "Calgary", "Long Long Time To Get Old", and "Crazy Arms", a cover of Ray Price dating back to 1955 and also covered by Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings, or the playful cheerfulness of "Smiling Wine", "Disappearing Woman", and "Trucker's Cafe", absolutely the catchiest track in Our repertoire (all three written by Sylvia), which, forty years later, still sound fresh, enjoyable, and current, just like the impeccable elegance veiled in melancholy of "Flies In The Bottle" and the dreamy "This Dream", while ballads like the poignant and majestic "Rio Grande", arguably the album's high point, and "We Sail", a delicate choral gospel to the notes of a piano, with an atmosphere similar to that of a religious hymn, deserve their own chapter, ending the album with a brilliant stroke of creative genius.

In short, the final product, unfortunate and misunderstood like so many other milestones in music, is a very solid album no matter how you look at it, whether it's Ian singing ("Calgary", "Long Long Time To Get Old", "This Dream"), or Sylvia ("Trucker's Cafe", "Smiling Wine"), although the best comes when the two voices intertwine, as in "Disappearing Woman", "Flies In The Bottle", "Crazy Arms", and "Rio Grande", authentic masterpieces composed in a state of grace and inspiration. If one really cannot get a copy of the album, these songs are still worth a listen, they are little treasures to discover, and if they had received even a bit of publicity and media support, they would surely have a different notoriety, but perhaps, in the end, it is better this way; after all, records like this are made for those who know how to appreciate them.