Review

Clive E Smith Woodstock Slim

2007

Woodstock Slim, also known as DJ MygarageissofullIcantevegetmycarin, also known as Clive E Smith, also writer, also DJ on Bush Radio, thinks this of Saves:

I’ve never not loved this band but I must admit my favorite person in the band is Stephen Timm. I believe it was him that attracted me to band in the first place. Timm plays the drums with an avante garde stylee, like a deranged Bonham. The rest of the band hit me two songs in.

…back to Saves. Saves has a few guest musicians on it this time and the trio seems to have broadened out a bit from the very stripped first album. It works great and their sound is not smothered or compromised at all. Toast keeps it going as usual with his beat poetry/spoken word in both languages and does them both justice. The tracks that will call great attention to this album will be the English track, “I want to die on a Tuesday afternoon” and the Afrikaans track, “Psalms en Gesange” between those two tracks you should find the message of Saves. It’s all there. Punk, Reggae, psychedelic rock and Buckfever.

Toast continues to paint grand vistas of landscapes and often people, situations and origins of man, his soul, his truth and things you never knew could be within your grasp. Trying to predict his next line is damned near impossible. I will share no examples. You have to eat Toast by yourself and realise the power of his words ripping through you like a rabbit punch and in the very next line delivered directly to the lonely person so deep inside you it leaves you perplexed trying to figure how he spoke to you so deeply. While Gill colors the skies with the chalky vibrations from his infectious bass guitar. Gill Hockman shows a uniqueness and intent with his Bass I have not heard since I bought my 1st Quatermass album. John Gustafson lead the band through the 70’s without a guitarist. I loved this. It is as powerful as all the albums of all the rock greats that was to follow their 1970 debut. Quatermass made my short list of best album of the 70’s. It shows no transition between the 60’s and the 70’s and neither does The Buckfever Underground with Saves. It was made timeless and it could well fit into any of the last three decades. Easily! Anywhere.

Check out his website for other fun things: http://woodstockslim.googlepages.com/