- Label: 'Think Like A Key Music'
- Genre: 'Seventies'
- Release Date: '7.3.25.'
Our Rating:
This is the first ever US issue of Ricotti & Alberquerque's 1971 album First Wind, it is also the first reissue fully approved by the musicians Frank Ricotti and Michael De Alberquerque. The album was produced by Stuart Taylor and arranged and engineered by Robin Sylvester, the band includes John Taylor, Chris Lawrence and Trevor Tomkins.
The album opens with Ratsa (Don't Know Why) that has a central keyboard riff with the sax blowing in both the left and right speakers, for this song that has a Georgie Fame feel to his questioning of what happens at certain times of day, this shifts moods in quite mad out their ways going a bit Soft Machine in places.
Lo And Behold the vibes gently draw you into a gospel inflected soul stirrer, that seems to have ben listening to Archie Shepp and imbibing on the spirits.
Go Out And Get It is encouraging a girl to Go Out And Get It in very early 70's ways, this has a funky strut to it, no matter how worrying the lyrical implications might be.
Don't You Believe Me has a very gentle intro, before the world rushes into episodic keyboards, going soft and gentle with monumental peaks.
New York Windy Day is about arriving in New York from London and finding out what the big apple was all about, a real free adventure.
Bobo's Party will for me have to be dedicated to Lawrie Millstone who was always known as Bobo, he was involved in many of the parties and activities I took part in as a kid in the 70's, he certainly had a bottle or two like the ones in this louche tune, where lots of strange things happen.
Didn't Want To Have To Do It gently makes it's point that they really didn't want to have to spoil the fun and end the relationship, softly singing over that bassline it all ends.
Old Ben Houston is a groovy gospel shouter for a real lover man who goes from town to town getting all the girls he wants, not unlike the hill song preacher who came a cropper years after this song came out.
The Wind Has No Love is gentle jazz fusion, quite laid back and breezy sounding.
The album closes with a great version of Give A Damn the Spanky & Our Gang classic that leaves me wondering what the other version of it, I know I reviewed a few years ago was, this version came out just a year after Odetta sang it as the theme song for the New York Urban Coalition League, this is a great re-working with the brass section really filling it out.
The bonus material opens with some solo singles from Michael Du Albuquerque Better Men Than Me is a jazz pop heartbreaker with Michael baring his soul for a woman who has moved on while he hasn't quite.
Burn Burn Burn almost has an Elton John ballad feel to it. This could easily be about the victims of American Napalm attacks, he shakes his head at what an awful way it is to die it is if you Burn Burn Burn to death.
Roll Him Over is a sad soul song as he goes and has to identify his dad's body in the morgue, strings add to the tension and pain of this dark tale, he asks the mortician to Roll Him Over so he can take a look.
Blind Man is another dark tale sung over rather bucolic chamber pop backing the strings helping to make the sunshine for you in a very late 60's way.
Then comes the first ever release of the pairs BBC Sounds Of The 70's Sunday Afternoon concert at the Paris Theatre on Lower Regent St in London on 22.8.1971 that after Alan Black introduces the band they go into Ratsa this version is a little bit funkier with a nice jazz odyssey middle section before he yells Ratsa and they go Soft Machine style acid drenched jazz freak out.
The live version of Give A Damn has wonderful wandering vibes sound, as the central lesson that you should all Give A Damn about your fellow man seems to be a crucial message for 2025, so sad that this is still an important song for our times as it was for the fraught late 60's maelstrom it came out of.
Don't You Believe Me has a very early 70's tv soundtrack feel in places as all the questions get asked this gets more out there as he tries to convince us everything will be alright.
The live session concludes with Go Out And Get It this version has a slow building intensity to all the pain of letting go and making clear it's your time to grab what you can.
Find out more at https://www.thinklikeakey.com/release/475178-ricotti-albuquerque-first-wind https://www.facebook.com/tlakmusic https://thinklikeakey.bandcamp.com/album/first-wind-2025-remaster
