A Musical Evening with Mick Abrahams (often shortened to just Mick Abrahams) was the guitarist’s solo debut, a mixed effort that showcases his six-string skills while also revealing the gaps in his songwriting abilities. The album-opening “Greyhound Bus” offers an infectiously-funky rhythm with scraps of Abrahams’ guitar shining through the dense mix alongside Bob Sargeant’s keyboard riffs, while “Awake” presages prog-rock with its dark ambience, subdued vocals, and instrumental prowess. The fleet-of-foot “Big Queen” is similarly priggish, but with blues threads woven throughout similar to what Mountain, Bloodrock, and even Beck, Bogart & Appice would be doing a year or two hence.
However, the album goes off the tracks with the curious, weak-kneed “Winds of Change,” which is too soft-edged for blues-rock, its psychedelic pretensions a few years past the “sell by” date. Abrahams’ “Seasons” partially redeems the album’s excesses; a more straight-forward rocker with blues and prog tendencies, there is plenty of ominous keyboards, razor-sharp fretwork, and exotic instrumentation beneath the gang vocals to fill the song’s lengthy 15-minute run time. While not the most auspicious of debut albums, A Musical Evening with Mick Abrahams offers a glimpse of the guitarist’s immense talents. Abrahams would take keyboard wizard Bob Sargeant and big-beat drummer Richie Dharma with him to the Mick Abrahams Band for a single LP the following year. (Chrysalis Records, 1971)
Buy the CD from Amazon: Mick Abrahams’ A Musical Evening with Mick Abrahams
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