Chicken Shack
Album: O.K. Ken?
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.talkingelephant.co.uk

After their timely remastered reissue of British blues-boomers Chicken Shack's classic, superbly earthy Blue Horizon debut 40 Blue Fingers… just a short while back, Talking Elephant have now restored to the catalogue its followup record, the in-jokily titled O.K. Ken?

The original vinyl LP was a rather less frequent visitor to my personal Dansette in those days, for while the band's fresh, no-nonsense brand of rocking revival blues remained intact on record, the overall effect was dissipated somewhat by the disc's "recurring theme" gimmick, a running gag whereby each number was preceded by a spell of larking-about (bandleader Stan Webb had a penchant for Opportunity Knocks-style impressions of distinctly variable quality!), which rapidly became somewhat tiresome on repeated listening. But as for the purely musical content of the album, there was plenty to celebrate, with some blistering lead guitar work on tracks like Tell Me and Fishing In Your River, and the band's trademark mean'n'dirty lowdown sound, with its trademark horn section, was well in evidence on a strong new almost-as-live-sounding set that mixed some choice covers (of numbers by B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf et al.) that had become popular in the band's live shows, with originals by Stan and fellow songwriter Christine Perfect. On this set, Christine's vocal work is more impressive than ever, and album highlights include her passionate renditions of and Mean Old World (which features a guest harmonica contribution from Walter "Shakey" Horton, no less). If pressed, though, I'd venture the opinion that Christine's vocal talents were under-used, although there's some compensation in her piano playing of course, which is often well to the forefront of the band sound. Another album standout has to be the moody A Woman Is The Blues, with the pair of instrumentals (Pony And Trap and Remington Ride) also proving more than mere makeweights.

All in all, O.K. Ken? is a satisfying collection of good, honest, down-to-earth blues, whose modest commercial success was capped by the charting of subsequent single release I'd Rather Go Blind, quite soon after which - sadly - Christine and the band went their separate ways. The A-side of that particular 45 appears here as a welcome bonus track, together with its less successful - and rather lacklustre - followup Tears In The Wind, in an attempt to complete this phase of the Chicken Shack story. Indeed, the reissue format is a touch inconsistent here, for while Mike Vernon's 1993 booklet note contains a degree of essential reassessment and is thus worth reproducing, the lack of individual song credits is puzzling. It would've been a nice (and highly useful) touch to have cued Stan's "impressions" as separate bands (so they could've been skipped!), but on the plus side I still love the surreal, (literally) off-the-wall cover photo!

David Kidman