Review: 'Magnetic Waves of Sound: The Best of The Move'

Esoteric Recordings’ deluxe editions of The Move’s entire pre-Harvest catalogue comprised the grooviest reissue campaign of 2016. Early in 2017, the label is wrapping up that campaign with Magnetic Waves of Sound: The Best of The Move.

This kind of move is generally useful for less-committed fans but redundant for the more devoted who already picked up the deluxe discs of the proper albums. However, Esoteric is making this particular Best Of well worth your dollars and pounds for a couple of reasons. First of all, the CD includes several Harvest sides that were shut out of the deluxe editions: “Ella James”, “Tonight”, “China Town”, “California Man”, and “Do Ya”—Move essentials all. Secondly, there is the addition of a region-free DVD containing an hour of wild and beautifully presented Move movies that really clinches the deal.

The disc includes a promo film for “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” and extracts from the Beat Beat Beat (totally live; totally exciting), Top of the Pops (live vocals with enthusiastically mimed instruments), and Beat Club (aside from two live performances from 1970, completely canned but loaded with chroma-key fun) TV programs. Then there’s the crop’s cream: The Move’s full and full-color ten-song set caught on the BBC’s Colour Me Pop in early 1969. I’ve had a bootleg of this appearance in my collection for many years, and I’m very happy to replace that smudgy old Rorschach test with Esoteric’s vibrant and crisp new images. Despite the lack of an audience to egg on the band, The Move manages to deliver their total energy across an almost completely live set (canned renditions of “Beautiful Daughter”, “Wild Tiger Woman”, and “Something” are the odd  exceptions). There are some boffo covers too, a couple of which air out the band’s love of The Byrds.

I’m not sure if Esoteric considers this DVD to essentially be bonus material to that 21-track Best of set, but speaking as someone who acquired all those deluxe editions last year, I rate it as the main attraction of this colorful, crazed collection of patented-Move power pop and poppy prog.

Review: Deluxe Reissues of The Move's 'Move' and 'Shazam'

The original British bands tended to follow in the footsteps of either The Beatles or the Stones. The Beatles led the parade of sweet pop harmonizers, such as The Hollies and The Searchers. The Stones led the gang of thuggish R&B shouters, such as The Animals and The Pretty Things. Arriving later on the scene, The Move seemed to follow The Who with their eccentric blend of weird song topics performed with cute melodies and bashing beats. They even picked up on The Who’s violent stage act, taking it to absurd extremes by smashing TVs and junked cars with sledgehammers while dressed as gangsters. The Move were hardly poseurs, though, and with brilliant songwriter Roy Wood steering the ship, The Move moved beyond the terrific Who-like singles of their early career to more progressive forms that had all the humor and cheekiness critics complained were missing from those Yes albums.

The Move’s first album was basically a riff on their zany early singles with some great (Eddie Cochran’s “Weekend”) and not-so-great (“Zing Went the Strings of My Heart”) covers filling it out. Released after some delay, Move must have sounded a bit out of step with the mid-1968 rock scene and its move away from psychedelia toward Dylan and The Band’s more rustic country-rock. Today it sounds like one of the year’s freshest albums.  Perhaps “John Wesley Harding” and “All Along the Watchtower” were more “artful,” but they sure weren’t as fun as “(Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree” and “Flowers in the Rain”. Come to think of it, those Dylan songs may not have even been as artful as “Cherry Blossom Clinic”.

That track became even artier when The Move recut it for their second LP. Shazam is one of prog’s wackiest records. It throws a big custard pie in the face of charges that progressive rock is nothing but po-faced mathematics. The revamped and expanded “Cherry Blossom Clinic” takes bizarre detours, turning familiar Bach, Dukas, and Tchaikovsky tunes into cartoon confetti. Singer Carl Wayne takes breaks to chat with passersby throughout the record. The Move makes heavy metal hay with pop (Frankie Laine’s “Don’t Make My Baby Blue”) and folk (Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind”) standards King Crimson would not have touched with a twenty-foot Frippertronics stick.

Move and Shazam are both terrific albums, but The Move was always at its most comfy making singles, so deluxe editions of these LPs are necessary to tell the whole story. Salvo Records did that in 2007 with a terrific double-disc edition of Move and an expanded single disc one of Shazam. Nine years later, Esoteric is expanding those expansions even more expansively with a triple-disc Move and a double-disc Shazam.

There is not a dramatic difference between the sound on Salvo’s discs and Esoteric’s new remasters, which utilize the same analogue tapes the 2007 editions did. That still means they sound very good, and the extensive bonus material makes an upgrade well worthwhile. Like the Salvo discs, Esoteric’s include contemporary singles, and it’s a fabulous crop with such essential Movements as “Night of Fear”, “I Can Hear the Grass Grow”, “Blackberry Way”, and “Curly”. Salvo made one big blunder in that department by only including a new stereo remix of “Wild Tiger Woman” on Shazam, but Esoteric corrects that by including the original mono single mix along with the stereo variation. Move includes the 1968 mono and 2007 stereo mixes of all the album’s tracks save a cover of Moby Grape’s “Hey Grandma”, and unlike Esoteric’s jumbled “New Movements” presentation, it plays out in the same running order as the original album. It also includes exclusive alternate mixes of “Disturbance” and “Fire Brigade”, which features prominent piano, and a whole disc of BBC sessions. Most valuable is a selection of eight folky and modish originals and soul covers cut in the studio or for radio almost a year before their first single was issued. Five are making their debut on this set.

Shazam contains such exclusive material as the abridged single edit of “Hello Susie”, the full-length version of “Omnibus”, an alternate mix of “Beautiful Daughter”, and the backing track of an acoustic-based rocker called “Second Class (She’s Too Good for Me)”. There’s also another disc of ferocious BBC sessions. The Move’s eclectic taste in covers of songs made famous by Neil Diamond, Jackie Wilson, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Dion, etc. reflects their own gonzo fusion of sugary pop, hard rock, cabaret, and doo-wop. Oddly, it lacks the Italian language version of “A Certain Something” previously issued on The Best of The Move, but only Italian fans and the craziest completists should have a legitimate beef about that one flaw.

Review: 'The Move Live at the Fillmore 1969'

The Move were one the great singles bands of the mid-‘60s. They didn’t even get around to releasing their first L.P. until their 45s had already been chart staples for some seventeen months. By the time the sweet and refreshing Move appeared in April 1968, the self-consciously serious San Francisco scene had stimulated a vogue for epic, meandering jams. The Move had already been feeling a bit old hat, having taken so long to produce their first long-playing statement. When they finally made their way to San Fran the following year, they feared compact confections like “Blackberry Way” and “Curly” would make them seem hopelessly unhip. For a two-night stint opening for Little Richard and Joe Cocker at the legendary Fillmore West, they jettisoned all but three of Roy Wood’s wonderful originals, and those songs were given lengthy, winding makeovers. “Hello Susie”, a bubblegummy hit for Amen Corner, gained Led Zeppelin weight, “Cherry Blossom Clinic” acquired passages from Tchaikovsky and Dukas, and “I Can Hear the Grass Grow” careened into quotes from “Born to Be Wild” and a speedy Bev Bevan drum solo. Amazingly, the new “bigger is better” Move worked, largely because they tended to insert fully-developed new parts into their pop songs instead of endlessly wanking away on chord progressions like The Grateful Dead. A smart clutch of tunes from artists such as The Byrds, Nazz, and Tom Paxton filled out the rest of their set.

Vocalist Carl Wayne was particularly delighted with his band’s work at the Fillmore. He held onto tapes of the shows for his own enjoyment, though he felt the recordings were too ragged to warrant official release. Fortunately, studio technology has improved to the point where Rob Keyloch of Church Walk Studio was able to give the recordings an acceptable polishing. Forty-odd years after The Move’s milestone Fillmore shows, these tapes are finally getting a proper CD release.

Despite Keyloch’s admirable efforts, The Move Live at the Fillmore 1969 is still pretty rough. The sound is tinny and the vocals are mixed too loud. But this double-disc set is an important document for Move fans. We hear them working out daring ideas for their next album in front of an audience. They made the right choices when getting into the studio to cut 'Shazam', losing the bits that don’t quite work (Wood dragged the electric sitar solo on “Fields of People” to an interminable nine minutes on stage) and retaining the brilliant ones (this live rendition of “Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited” is nearly identical to the spectacular version on 'Shazam'). As a bonus track, Bev Bevan gives a fascinating and often hilarious account of The Move’s American tour in a brand-new interview. His tales about bassist Rick Price's unintentional acid trip and Little Richard's throne are not to be missed.