The Original Blues Project
Reunion in Central Park
(Floating World Records)
⭑⭑⭑☆☆

THIS eclectic Greenwich Village outfit enjoyed their creative heyday during the mid-1960s but commercial success never really came their way and they finally gave up the ghost a couple of years later.

Band members such as Al Kooper and Steve Katz went on to form jazz rockers Blood, Sweat and Tears in the immediate aftermath of the break-up, but Blues Project returned to the fray with a modified line-up in the early 1970s and this highly listenable album blends the introductions and audience reactions from their show at New York’s Central Park in June 1973 with musical content recorded at a Washington gig on the same US tour.

Their set list takes Blues Project devotees on an engaging jaunt down memory lane, including two fine Muddy Waters covers, Louisiana Blues and the epic Two Trains Running.

Guru Guru
Tango Fango
(Repertoire Records)
⭑⭑⭑☆☆

THIS excellent German Krautrock collective have released more than 40 genre-busting albums since their formation long, long ago in 1968, and this splendid 1976 collaboration with highly regarded producer Conny Plank found the recently reformed band exploring the delights of Latin-tinged fusion with wit, grace and an appealing lightness of touch.

The album marked the Guru Guru debut of multi-instrumentalist Roland Schaeffer and his eloquent contribution to the success of Tango Fango simply can’t be overstated as founder member and frontman Mani Neumeier oversaw a surprisingly commercial package whose inventive melodic appeal has, if anything, grown with the passage of time.

The opening track, Tomorrow, shares the limelight with the quirkily memorable title track and Neumeier’s mildly deranged musical closer, The Living Radio.

Faces
Early Steps
(Rhino Records)
⭑⭑⭑☆☆

RHINO’s latest CD release focuses attention on some hitherto unreleased recordings from Rod Stewart and his new found cohorts in the Faces, drawing on a selection of tracks which were captured for posterity on cassette a year or so before the band’s debut album was released in March 1970.

The agreeably rough and ready contents should be an essential purchase for Faces completists everywhere, culled from their first-ever recording session at Olympic Studios in Barnes and rehearsals from the Rolling Stones Bermondsey warehouse a few months earlier in the summer of 1969, including Ronnie Lane originals such as Stone and Devotion, and raucous revamps of Big Bill Broonzy’s I Feel So Good and Willie Dixon’s Evil.