Jon & Vangelis
The Friends of Mr. Cairo

THE REVIEW

Ideal for listening to and especially reviewing an album like "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" would be to follow the advice of Paul Cezanne, which is to approach a work of art as if it were the first time we're doing it. This is the answer the great painter from Aix en Provence gave to those who asked him the reason and meaning of many paintings of the same subject (the mountain of Sainte Victoire). We are indeed faced with two "dinosaurs" of the late '70s music scene, Jon Anderson & Vangelis, both at the peak, now declining, of their respective careers, who in the attempt to find new stimuli and relaunch into the musical empyrean combine their extraordinary talents: vocal for the first and compositional for the second. It would therefore be spontaneous to link to their previous wide acclaim rather than pretending not to notice, to appreciate their work.

Well, after the promising debut with "Short Stories," in 1981 comes the album that affirms their collaboration, their masterpiece that crowns the new union with success. I would like to clarify the reasoning that allows me to attribute this attribute to the album, very often overused or used improperly. Masterpiece literally represents the ultimate work, the best work of an artist or a music group as in this case, it doesn't necessarily have to be the most liked work, something that often misleads the reviewer, but the effort to push forward the artistic horizon, sometimes with choices not entirely commercial. In "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" I sense this effort, which in my opinion succeeds in at least a couple of moments.

The album was released in 1981, naturally only in vinyl form, and contained 6 tracks, obtaining great success in North America, but not in Europe, which is why the following year a second edition was released with a varied track order and enriched at the beginning with the track "I'll Find My Way Home" which is not coincidentally the most "catchy" and was probably an outtake by choice of the authors who considered it "weak" compared to the other tracks. The moral of the story is that the addition did well for "The Friends of Mr. Cairo," allowing it to achieve deserved success even in the Old Continent. However, the classiest track remains the title track, where I most recognize what is above, a mixture of everyday sounds and a subsequent melody that struggles to restore harmony to what chaotic and noisy the beginning provokes. Equally stirring is "Back to the School Boogie," a centerpiece that highlights the extraordinary technical qualities of this Polydor recording. The A-side closes with the saccharine "Outside and Inside," certainly wanted by Anderson to highlight, if there was any need, his vocal qualities which, in my opinion, stand out much more on the B-side, starting from the most successful track "State of Independence," a driving march borrowed the following year by Donna Summer for a disco version that decidedly diminishes its musical value, slightly raised by the other 1994 version by the Moodswings duo. The duo of our protagonists expresses themselves instead at a whole other level in "Beside" with Jon's rather intimate lyrics and in the final and very sweet "The Mayflower," describing the epic of the famous ship that in 1620 brought the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth (England) to Cap Cod in the New World, starting the Anglo-Saxon colonization.

I conclude with the score, only apparently inconsistent with the above, because defining an album as a Masterpiece for these artists does not necessarily mean it is at the absolute level, to get there "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" lacks continuity, some pieces are decidedly too "traditional," and the graphics are decidedly modest. Very modest, and the updates made with the second edition were of no use. Of course, it's an album worth having, perhaps only to showcase the technical qualities of your system......

Oh, finally a suggestion: Vangelis, Angelo in our language, is pronounced without the "n," just to avoid cacophony.