Introduction

Part of the blame could be lifted off Pye's shoulders and placed on the new band member, bass player Mike Wedgwood, who is, for instance, guilty of bringing with him arguably the least Caravan-like song so far in their catalog — the soft funk-rocker ʽWelcome The Dayʼ, which, honestly, sounds more like The Average White Band than anything Canterbury-related, and is only salvageable due to Geoffery Richardson's viola accompaniment (it is not every day, after all, that you hear a viola take an integral part in a funk rocker) and Hastings' inspired wah-wah solo, which he somehow manages to deliver with suitably hard rocking fiery aggression, though, un­fortunately, the rest of the band still sleepwalks through it while he is kicking their asses. Also, for that matter, Wedgwood's vocals are quite a heavy blow for all those accustomed to Sinclair's and Hastings' sweet, disarmingly childlike tones — Wedgwood introduces a belt-it-out arena-rock component, bringing on unnecessary associations with Foreigner way before Foreigner even formed, so there's definitely something evil going on.
Still, it was Pye who okayed Wedgwood in the first place, and it is Dave Sinclair who is respon­sible for much of the songwriting on the album, so blame it on the new times, not the new people. And, besides, why should one necessarily talk in terms of blaming? So now the band does sound, occasionally, more like Elton John than Caravan: this is particularly evident on Pye's muscular pop-rocker ʽStuck In A Holeʼ, which (perhaps, quite subconsciously, as a result of too much radio listening) borrows the rhythmic pattern from Elton's ʽPhiladelphia Freedomʼ, and on Wedgwood's second contribution, the slow, power-chord driven ballad ʽLoverʼ, where some of the vocal moves instinctively echo Elton's tragic-redemptional intonations on ʽSomeone Saved My Life Tonightʼ (is it really a coincidence that we are talking about two back-to-back Caravan songs here reflecting the possible influence of two back-to-back Elton John singles released in the same year?). But while ʽLoverʼ certainly drags, and its orchestral climax also comes out as meandering and muzak-y rather than properly climactic à la Buckmaster, ʽStuck In A Holeʼ is fun and catchy, and I am not ready to count an Elton John influence on a prog-rock band as necessarily denigra­ting — hey, as long as you are cleverly ripping off Captain Fantastic-era material, you may have any pedigree you like without dishonoring yourself.
At other times, they sound like the pompous, anthemic symph-pop of Argent — ʽThe Show Of Our Livesʼ, for the first time in Caravan history, tries to introduce them grandly and ceremo­niously, with a slow celebratory march and a genuine wall of sound. It's done with taste, and Pye, in particular, contributes fabulously melodic guitar passages; as the multi-tracked choir steps in with the final "ring the bells and sing, gather 'round and sing" incantation, we enter ʽHey Judeʼ mode, not as boldly and full-heartedly, perhaps, as should be done for full cathartic effect, but to some effect, sure. Is this «commercialization»? From a certain point of view, most naturally: a bit of straightforward grandioseness, in the age of arena-rock and AOR, could be regarded as a gamble for extra popularity. On the other hand, just how legitimate a prog-rock band could be without having at least one Big Universalist Anthem to its name?..
As to the oddly titled ʽDabsong Conshirtoeʼ, it is far from the best Caravan epic, but it's a good piece of work all the same. It has far more lyrics and vocals than their usual epics, and could, in fact, be construed as merely a sequence of autonomous ballads and rockers, but it still finds some space in the middle to incorporate a waltzing jazz-rock jam, and it also features an unusual ending: the last part is a lengthy, repetitive vamp centered around a loud, paranoid hard rock riff with quasi-chaotic walls of sonic noise gradually rising against it, before the stormy rumble ends up drowning itself in a reprise of the "ring the bells and sing" part of ʽThe Show Of Our Livesʼ. I guess this symbolizes the ultimate triumph of Harmony over Chaos — well, it would be strange to expect anything less than that from a band as naturally optimistic as Caravan.
Upon some deliberation, I'm still inclined to call Cunning Stunts a thumbs up-worthy success. It's a little slow and draggy in places, and a little out-of-their-league in others, and a clear drop­down off the Plump In The Night level, but overall, they are in good shape to survive the crisis of the mid-Seventies if you grant them the permission to move one step away from the classic Caravan spirit and incorporate all these other influences. On the other hand, it is also a transiti­onal album, suffering from a lack of clear understanding of what exactly it is that they want to be at the moment: Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's would soon be spelling out the new status in a far more transparent manner. Still, no reason whatsoever to ignore this work — as far as I'm con­cerned, it still forms an essential part of the band's «classic streak».
BLIND DOG AT ST. DUNSTAN'S (1976)
1) Here Am I; 2) Chiefs And Indians; 3) A Very Smelly, Grubby Little Oik; 4) Bobbing Wide; 5) Come On Back; 6) Oik (reprise); 7) Jack And Jill; 8) Can You Hear Me?; 9) All The Way (With John Wayne's Single-Handed Liberation Of Paris).
The first Caravan album to completely drop all pretense and be qualified as a pure pop record is naturally despised by large amounts of progressive rock fans, judasing it for all it's worth, and just as naturally ignored by the majority of pop fans — unlike Genesis, Caravan were unable to adapt sufficiently well to the new reality and find themselves an entirely new base of support. By­passed by main audiences for being too unattractive and lambasted by critics by being too slick and commercial, Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's fell through the cracks and sank like a stone. Never mind the unimportant fact that it incidentally happened to be one of the best pop albums released in the small chronological interim between the Golden Age of Art Rock and the radical change in musical fashion arriving with punk and New Wave.
There is no conceptuality here (other than four songs on Side A joined together in a single suite, but this time they are not even listed under any single title), no musical innovation, no lengthy instrumental passages, no avantgarde influences, no spiritual messages — only a bunch of pop songs with influences from music hall, folk rock, funk, R&B, and even a bit of proto-disco. But now that the transition is made complete, the band happens to embrace the new light style with verve. Dave Sinclair is once again temporarily out of the band, replaced by Jan Schelhaas, a new guy with good technique and few ambitions, being perfectly happy to simply be one of the boys and, for the most part, keeping out of the spotlight; but his playing agrees very well with Hastings and Wedgewood, and Richardson's viola and flute, though applied now to seriously different types of material, are still vital to the overall sound.
The only non-Hastings song on the entire record is Wedgewood's ʽChiefs And Indiansʼ, and it is a major improvement over his contributions on Cunning Stunts. A simple tale of discord between two lovers, it begins as a soft British music hall piece, somewhere in between Ray Davies and Alan Price, then launches into an angry funk-rock escapade with all the band members taking short, snappy solos (Wedgewood's bit of bass, eventually sliding down into a pool of nasty fuzz, is the best one, but everybody else shines as well) before returning back to music hall mode for the outro. What really sells the song, apart from all the snappy energy, is that it actually manages to sound cool — not too serious and pathetic, like ʽWelcome The Dayʼ on the previous record, but not straightforwardly comical, either. The lyrics, the vocals, the instrumental passages all have this air of sharp, witty sarcasm, and it is a defining feature of the album in general.
Take a seemingly silly, superficial funk-pop song like ʽJack And Jillʼ: its very title places it in the ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ category, and its lyrics are, indeed, a modern-day expansion of the old nursery rhyme with its potential sexual innuendos (well, leave it to Pye to find the subtext of physical romance in virtually everything — and, for that matter, the very title of the album is also a masked allusion to physical romance, spelled out in more detail during a well-audible bit of dialog at the end of the song: "what are those two doggies doing over there?" — "well, the first one is blind and his friend behind is pushing him all the way to St. Dunstan's!"). But really, the song is made by Wedgewood's spin­ning bass line and its interaction with Richardson's syn­copated viola (how often do you hear funky bits played on a viola, anyway?), implying a sort of «trickster» atmosphere, friendly and mischievous at the same time. As simple as the song is, it's got some bottom to it — both in the direct musical sense (cool bass!) and in the artistic one.
Each song has its fair share of hooks and attractions. ʽA Very Smelly, Grubby Little Oikʼ has not only enriched my knowledge of non-literary English language (next time somebody offends you, just call him a "grubby oik" in response and watch him spend the rest of his days in confusion), it also gave me a fun pop-rock riff and a catchy chorus — which then makes a masterful transition, by means of the vocal-synth merge, into the slow atmospheric instrumental ʽBobbing Wideʼ and then back into the realms of catchy soft-pop with ʽCome On Backʼ. Now ʽCome On Backʼ could be thought of as a pretty straightforward and «bottom-less» tune (although it really depends on which way you want to interpret the line "only when you come, you know that we'll be one"); but the real fun thing about it is that as soon as it is over, it is immediately reprised in the form of a gospel-pop coda, combining the melody of ʽCome On Backʼ with the lyrical subject of ʽGrubby Little Oikʼ with guest-starring Chanter Sisters providing the vocals. So is this really a four-part thematic suite about the adventures of a representative of the lower classes, or is it rather an exer­cise in sarcastic absurdism, firmly placing melodic fun over serious content?..
I have mentioned Ray Davies and Alan Price, but I think an even more substantial comparison here would be with Wings — the album shares a lot in common with McCartney's style in the Seventies, what with all the soft keyboards, sweet vocals, stylistic variety, and preference of humor over seriousness; no wonder, then, that it tends to get underrated in exactly the same ways in which people still like to criticize Wings At The Speed Of Sound or London Town, and that I, personally, find myself fond of it in much the same way I am fond of those records. In fact, the last and longest song, ʽAll The Wayʼ, starts out with Pye sounding almost like Macca at his most sentimental (think ʽMy Loveʼ?) — and then transitions into a perfectly McCartney-esque chorus, simple, instantly memorable, and so sincere and touching that looping it for a very lengthy coda just seems like the most logical decision to take (especially because it's hard to think of a perfect resolution for the rising line "better than before, better than all after", so the only thing to do is just let it roll on and on and slowly fizzle away into a quiet whistle pattern). For the record: the reference to John Wayne in the subtitle is completely gratuitous (actually, ʽAll The Wayʼ is the only song on the album that begs to be taken completely seriously, with no signs of tongue-in-cheek attitude anywhere in sight).
Overall, the correct approach here is not to get worried about the lack of challenge or experi­mentation and simply to let yourself get carried away by the waves of vocal hooks and instrumen­tal sharpness — the music, that is, and not the supra-musical ambition, for which we also have a time and a place, but different ones. Pretty soon afterwards, Caravan would finally start losing their way in a world of rapidly changing fashions; but just for this once, their fine-tuned pop instincts worked out perfectly. Big thumbs up.
BETTER BY FAR (1977)
1) Feelin' Alright; 2) Behind You; 3) Better By Far; 4) Silver Strings; 5) The Last Unicorn; 6) Give Me More; 7) Man In A Car; 8) Let It Shine; 9) Nightmare.
Okay, so if you want a proverbial example of what a «major drop in quality» truly means, look no further than the alarming gap that divides Blind Dog At St. Dunstan's, an energetic, inspired, and emotional pop album with progressive overtones, from Better By Far, a limp, mechanical, openly boring exercise in radio-friendly MOR music with no overtones whatsoever. It is always a puzzle to me how the exact same band can go from exciting to insipid in the short span separating one record from another, but yes, these things do happen.
First, this record does not rock, not in the slightest. Where Blind Dog gave us some nifty funky grooves, nicely steeped in a sharp, sarcastic attitude, Better By Far is almost completely given over to quiet, inoffensive soft-rock workouts, with completely conventional musical skeletons, generic (and heavily synth-based) musical arrangements, and energy levels that often sound pitiful compared to The Eagles, let alone the new blood of the punk movement of 1977. The opening number, ʽFeelin' Alrightʼ (not a Traffic cover), should be getting me up on my feet, cheering and clapping and welcoming a brand new day — instead, despite all the formal upbeat­ness, it feels drab and colorless, most of the «excitement» provided by Schelhaas' ugly and boring synth tone, and Pye's vocals inexplicably drowning in the sea of lackluster instrumentation instead of soaring on top of them. And that chorus? Other than a slight, predictable, pitch rise on the "feeling alRIGHT" bit, it does not even try too hard to separate itself from the pedestrian march of the verses. Awfully disappointing.
And it never gets better — all of these songs sound as if Pye and the others wrote them in about half an hour. The second song, ʽBehind Youʼ, rests on the same melodic foundations as ʽFeelin' Alrightʼ and tries to produce the exact same mood, except that it also incorporates a funky mid-section, again, dominated by ugly keyboards. The title track leads us into balladeering territory and ends up sounding even more like contemporary Bee Gees than like contemporary Wings, Pye's sweet voice being pretty much the song's only saving grace as it finally manages to elevate itself above the MOR arrangement. But all of that is nothing compared to Richardson's ʽSilver Stringsʼ, which actually seems to intentionally sound like modern Bee Gees — disco basslines, falsetto harmonies, and a silly artistic gimmick where the "let me hear the silver strings" refrain is followed by some lazy mandolin plucking.
Some of the (usually just as bitterly disappointed) reviews of the album single out the last track, ʽNightmareʼ, as the LP's high point — most likely because it is the longest, most complex, and most «progressively oriented» song of the lot (and also features the most enigmatic, introspective, and noticeably troubled lyrics on the album). My impression, however, is that it is just as boring and mushy as everything here — a slow trotter, all atmosphere and very little proper melody, not to mention zero energy: even the violin and guitar solos, though technically melodic, mostly just meander on the spot and never end up going anywhere. I mean, you'd think a song called ʽNight­mareʼ should have something nightmarish about it, right? Well, there's hardly anything more «nightmarish» about it than there is about, say, an Elton John ballad from Blue Moves.
Vainly do I try to find anything here that would even remotely repeat, for instance, the triumph of the chorus of ʽAll The Wayʼ — now there, too, was a slow, sentimental, conventionally written epic ballad, but it did sound epic: it was an anthem, played out with a winning mix of tenderness and determination, gaining more and more strength and spirit as it went by. Strength and spirit are sorely lacking on this sucker, though — and, okay, if you don't have strength and spirit, give us bleakness, weakness, and chaos, show us a shining example of depression, but do not feed us with this gray blandness. Better By Far? «Better by far» than what, I wonder? The title alone is so irritating that I have no choice other than to give the record a thumbs down — the first truly bad record in Caravan history; yes, this is definitely one of those albums that may be counted as «one of the reasons punk had to happen», except the commercial fortunes of Caravan were so low at the time that most punks probably never heard it in the first place.
THE ALBUM (1980)
1) Heartbreaker; 2) Corner Of My Eye; 3) Watcha Gonna Tell Me; 4) Piano Player; 5) Make Yourself At Home; 6) Golden Mile; 7) Bright Shiny Day; 8) Clear Blue Sky; 9) Keepin' Up De Fences.
By the early Eighties, Caravan were in a total state of flux: their Arista contract fizzled out, some of the band members quietly quit, and so it was almost by accident that somehow, in 1980, they found themselves in the studio once again — and with Dave Sinclair in person returning for the third time, no less. Now they found themselves signed exclusively to Kingdom Records, the small label of their former manager Terry King (which used to distribute their recordings in Europe), they had three of the original members, and they split the songwriting three ways, with Hastings, Sinclair, and Richardson each taking a near-equal share. Perhaps one could hope for a slight improvement over the mediocrity of Better By Far?
Well, look no further than ʽHeartbreakerʼ, the opening single (no relation to Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones), for the revelation. It opens with a broken-hearted (yeah right) bluesy riff, so muffled, so glossy, so tight-wedged in the hum-hum-humming of the synthesizer wraps, that it is clear from the first fifteen seconds: whatever melodic potential there is here, it is going to be smothered by awful production, and once again what used to be the strong side of Caravan — a sense of sentimental humility — is going to work to their absolute disadvantage. But that is only the beginning of our problems: by the time we get to the chorus, it is clear that Caravan have pretty much mutated into Air Supply, or America, or any of those limp soft-rock outfits who thought that the more shallow they made their tenderness, the more appeal it would find among those people for whom even ʽHere, There And Everywhereʼ was too deep. The hookline of ʽHeart­breakerʼ — "while with you was a heartache, without you is a hell" — is not only barely grammatical and barely pronounceable, but is also unsingable with a straight face.
Still, at least Pye's other two contributions are arguably the highest points of this sorry mess of an album: ʽBright Shiny Dayʼ has him in solid McCartney mode, with a sunshiny chorus that makes good use of his high-pitched modulation and heavier emphasis on catchy guitar licks than on the synthesizers, and ʽKeepin' Up De Fencesʼ — if you can make peace with the idea of disco bass­lines on a Caravan song (and we all knew it was coming, sooner or later... in 1980, though? what a bunch of retards!), it is the only song on this album that genuinely rocks, with a fine flashy guitar solo at the end and true proof that Richard Coughlan can keep a fast, steady, tight beat and ornate it with expressive fills at the same time.
I wish I could be just as empathetic to Richardson; but ʽCorner Of My Eyeʼ is just another one of these taking-itself-too-seriously soft-rock cornballs, not helped much by the surprising transfor­mation into rollickin' pop-rock in the bridge section — and ʽClear Blue Skyʼ is Caravan's first and last foray into the distant world of reggae, a track that they try to make more psychedelic by adding «cloudy» synth swirls all over the place, but Richardson's strained vocals are awful, his scat singing over the syncopated rhythm chords is even worse, and at six and a half minutes, the song tries to present itself as something epic when in reality it seems to simply follow the guide­line of "hey wait, we've never done a reggae song yet? come on now, everybody's done at least one reggae song! this will be fun, like a ʽBob Marley goes to Canterburyʼ kind of thing!"
Which leaves us with the Dave Sinclair songs, and I don't remember much about them after three or four listens, except that they kinda sounded like a mix of Elton John and Billy Joel (heck, one of them is even called ʽPiano Playerʼ, for Chrissake!). ʽMake Yourself At Homeʼ is ʽHonky Catʼ-like funk-pop that could really benefit from a strong singer like Elton, but has absolutely no future with these totally disinterested vocals (is that bass player Dek Messecar singing? he has no personality whatsoever).
I would not say that The Album is a significant drop down from the level of 1977 — the only difference is that here, there is not even a single superficial attempt to retain the «progressive» legacy of classic Caravan, but then, this is not necessarily a bad thing: from a certain point of view, it makes them more honest about what they are trying to do. The problem is that Caravan as a bona fide pop band, with no additional ambition, is a suicidal proposal — they never had the cockiness, the energy, the great guitar tones, the vivaciousness that should go along with a great pop band. They almost succeeded with Blind Dog, though, but then they ran out of inspiration and sheer power altogether, and now all we have is utter blandness. Thumbs down.
BACK TO FRONT (1982)
1) Back To Herne Bay Front; 2) Bet You Wanna Take It All / Hold On, Hold On; 3) A. A. Man; 4) Videos Of Holly­wood; 5) Sally Don't Change It; 6) All Aboard; 7) Taken My Breath Away; 8) Proper Job / Back To Front.
Look — a reunion! The band may have folded after The Album, but in less than two years, they are back, and look at the lineup: Pye Hastings on guitar! Richard Coughlan on drums! Dave Sinclair on keyboards! Richard Sinclair on bass! All songs written by Hastings, Sinclair, and Sinclair! It's 1968 all over again — or, perchance, even 1971?..
The most interesting thing about Back To Front is that it is heavily nostalgic. For most prog veterans, the early Eighties were not yet a time, usually, when they would look back with sadness and yearning on their glory days. Many were too busy tripling their hair volumes, learning drum machine programming, or finding other ways to compete with the new romantic youngsters on the charts (usually unsuccessfully, but at least it seemed to keep them alive at the time). With Back To Front, you can certainly sense by the production that it probably belongs in the early Eighties — but mostly it looks as if they are trying to recapture the inspiration of the days of Grey And Pink. There is even an epic track with instrumental jamming (ʽProper Job / Back To Frontʼ), although they do not dare to launch into full-scale multi-part suite mode.
I am not sure, however, that the final result would genuinely appeal to veteran fans of Caravan at their peak. Admittedly, the two-part finale is a grower, particularly the ʽBack To Frontʼ part, an ominous riff-based jam shaped as a crescendo, with the doom-struck bass groove gradually enhanced by more and more layers of keyboards, and then finally evaporating into nothing and leaving you in a state of dark anxiety — just like in the old days, when they used to end their records on suspenseful notes rather than landing them softly with some soothing Pye Hastings lullaby. Even so, the entire thing hardly holds a candle to the classic suites, since the overall sound is somehow too close to generically tepid jazz-fusion grooves: Sinclair's bass lines on ʽProper Jobʼ seem taken out of the fusion textbook, and Dave's synth tones are... well, too syn­thetic for my tastes at least.
The biggest problem is that everything else is, at best, trying to hold up to the level of ʽBack To Frontʼ, and, at worst, not even trying. The presence of Richard adds extra spice if you like his above-mentioned fusion-esque bass playing on the album (polished and perfected due to years of playing with Hatfield & The North), but hardly so if you have high hopes about his songwriting: ʽBack To Herne Bay Frontʼ is a rather non-descript exercise in nostalgia, and the wannabe-arena-rocker ʽA. A. Manʼ is really just another mid-tempo pop song with a boring anthemic chorus that cannot seem to decide if it wants to be soft and tender or powerful and angry. Dave, meanwhile, is credited for the writing of the closing suite, but he is also responsible for ʽVideos Of Holly­woodʼ, a draggy rhythmic ballad that seems to share the sentimentality, but not the charm of the Kinks' ʽCelluloid Heroesʼ, and for ʽSally Don't Change Itʼ, an even slower ballad that sounds... well, like an unfunny parody on a Billy Joel ballad, I'd say.
This leaves us with Pye, and Pye is the same Pye as he's been on the previous two albums. An oddly out of place tender rockabilly number (ʽBet You Wanna Take It Allʼ), seguing into a slow R&B ballad (ʽHold On Hold Onʼ), and a couple faceless pop numbers on the second side all seem to be rather jello-like — not hopeless choruses, perhaps, but everything sounds so silky, so fragile, so muffled and cuddled that whenever I try to concentrate on this stuff, I find myself figuratively drowning in some imaginary viscous fruit drink. Fun bit of trivia: the near-rapped mid-section on ʽTaken My Breath Awayʼ has the same vocal melody as Suzanne Vega's ʽTom's Dinerʼ — almost certainly a coincidence, since I cannot imagine Vega taking cues from a nearly unknown Caravan album. But what's up with the spelling of that title? Is ʽTaken My Breath Awayʼ an implicit tribute to AC/DC's ʽGiven The Dog A Boneʼ? That might not be a total coincidence.
Overall, the record is still a major improvement over the previous two albums — at the very least, there are no obvious embarrassments (like trying to do a reggae song or going disco at the wrong time), and that final suite is surprisingly better than I could have guessed. But it is also easy to see why the reunion did not hold up: trying to revive the classic Caravan vibe in the early Eighties was a bit like setting up a pro-Britain party in 1783. Absolutely nobody needed this at the time, and the reunited Caravan quickly split up again, even before it became obvious that the album would not sell, I believe — which, might I add, was a very good thing, because I shudder to think what the fate of a slightly cohesive Caravan could have been in the mid- to late Eighties. As it is, the Caravan finally took enough time to unpack, rest its weary legs, take a long drink, and sit out the rough times without getting into the heart of the shitstorm.