The band Angel was comprised of five seasoned, but relatively unknown musicians from the Baltimore/ Washington DC music scene. The band members were Frank Dimino (vocals), Punky Meadows (guitar), Mickey Jones (bass), Gregg Giuffria (keyboards) and Barry Brandt (drums). Dimino had moved to the area from Boston, and Giuffria came the New Orleans scene. Angel was slagged by the critics from the get go. They were called a poor man’s Uriah Heep, which really was a low blow as the same critics called Uriah Heep a poor man’s Deep Purple! Their lyrics were said to be bad; the songs themselves were bad so the critics said. A completely derivative band so we were told. I think in the 70's, much like today, if the critics hated it, the kids generally seemed to love it. And so it went for Angel, at least in the beginning. I think musically the sum total of the parts was greater than the individual musicians. Gregg Giuffria, in my opinion, was probably the strongest link in Angel’s musical chain. For the era of the bands existence he showed some superior talent on the keyboard (and his keyboard array was impressive as his picture in this post attests to!). That said, I think the band turned in a fine performance on this, their first LP.
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| Barry Brandt |
Before I begin to describe the music, I have to talk about
the album cover. In the pre internet era of the 70's there were no song
samples on ITunes or Amazon to check out, no reviews to pull up at the click of
a mouse. If you were a really advanced music aficionado (with older
siblings in the know!) you might have done your musical reconnaissance by way of the UK’s
Melody Maker or NEW (New Musical Express). If you were just a kid really into
rock, but not an expert (like myself in the 70's), you probably took your cues from either Creem or
Circus magazine, or maybe from the entertainment section of a local paper (I
loved the L.A. Times “Calendar” section back then). But many times a cool album cover was enough
to draw you into buying a record. I think the cover of Angel’s first album was a
great marketing tool. The colors, the logo with the mystical looking Angel; the
cover made you want to buy the record. If one notices the band’s name on the
cover is in a relatively small font; the record label wasn’t using the band’s
name to sell the record as much as the cover art itself. I know the album cover sold me to some degree on what was on the record. Also the band was playing a gig just as school was letting out in June of 1976. Billed as “Angel at
Midnight”, with a band called Ethos opening the show (and their first LP will
get a review at some point as well), for what was basically a showcase concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (in support of their sophomore release "Helluva Band"). The show proved to create quite a buzz for Angel. This is one of those moments in time I
mentioned earlier. I picked up the LP new at Bourbon Street Records, took it home and threw it on the turntable, and the record became part of
the soundtrack of the summer of 1976 for me.
Review
Angel's first, self titled LP was released on October 27th 1975. Production was handled by Derek Lawrence and Big Jim Sullivan. Lawrence had handled production for other bands such as Wishbone Ash, Deep Purple and ironically would produce Legs Diamond's first LP in 1976 (Legs Diamond had a very similar sound to Angel). The recording was done at Wally Heider Studios in Hollywood, CA.
Review
Angel's first, self titled LP was released on October 27th 1975. Production was handled by Derek Lawrence and Big Jim Sullivan. Lawrence had handled production for other bands such as Wishbone Ash, Deep Purple and ironically would produce Legs Diamond's first LP in 1976 (Legs Diamond had a very similar sound to Angel). The recording was done at Wally Heider Studios in Hollywood, CA.
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| Frank Dimino |
The opening track “Tower” starts things off with a flurry of what sounds
like random synthesized keyboard, which is then joined by Brandt’s drums, which
in turn becomes a chord progression driven by Giuffria’s Hammond
B3 organ. This leads to a verse section that builds from a finger picked guitar
and mellotron phrase as the band then
come in on a heavy riff that flows into the chorus, and then onto the verse.
The lyrics are of the fantasy sort, and seem to be telling us of a knight on a
quest that seems to include a “tower”!
After the next vocal section we get Meadows first guitar
solo. Meadows would take a lot of criticism from critics and musicians over the
course of the bands lifetime (Frank Zappa’s “Punky’s Whips” being a prime
example) for his looks and his playing. The looks, we will talk about that
later. The guitar playing I never took issue with. His playing served the band’s songs well, and
his soloing wasn’t tasteless. They weren’t overlong, and he never really played
beyond his abilities. I suppose you could call his playing workmanlike, but occasionally his playing would shine rather brightly. I believe at
the time Meadows was using Fender Stratocasters through Hi Watt amps, with a
treble booster being kicked in for solos. The solo on “Tower” is fairly short, and
ends on a high register note that turns into feedback, and the last chorus and
verse follows.
We are then given Giuffria’s first keyboard solo that brings
to mind something Keith Emerson or Rod Argent would play. Giuffria’s keyboard
playing, or maybe a more appropriately “synthesizer playing” was at
a fairly high level. A lot of what he was doing with his synthesizers playing was pretty
unique at the time, at least to my adolescent ears! In particular I liked his
use of the mellotron. The mellotron was a unique instrument as it actually played taped sound samples as opposed to generating its own sounds as a polyphonic synthesizer could. The melletron’s
trademark sounds, awas what I would describe as an “angelic choir". In retrospect Giuffria may have overused the sound,
but in the context of the time, it was a cool gimmick. After the keyboard solo
we are given several repetitions of the verse as the song builds to a final
crescendo and then rapidly ends. This song was the opener to their live shows throughout the band's career.
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| Gregg Giuffria |
The following song was “Long Time” which is your standard
song of unrequited love. The song opens with a bit of solo keyboard and then
Dimino’s vocals come in. The beginning of this song has always reminded me of
something The Left Banke would have done. The sound is a bit of a nod to classical
music, and is a motif the band would go to often. The riff that follows this
classical section underlays another Meadows guitar solo. The rhythm pattern brings
to mind the iconic riff from Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4”. If I were to really put
my thinking cap on I’m sure I could site many permutations of that pattern on
numerous songs from the 70s. Giuffria then follows with a keyboard solo, and
the song ends with vocals with a backing “choir” of the mellotron's generated human
like voices.
The last song on side one was “Rock N Rollers”. I loved, and
still love this song. It is your obligatory teen anthem in the vein of Kiss’
“Rock and Roll All Night” or Boston’s “Smokin’”. It has it all; a little boogie
woogie piano bit, a guitar solo, cowbell
and a guitar riff that’s been used a
hundred (or more!) times before. Somehow it all works. The song does open with
a neat twist, and that is the use of the mellotron generated “angelic choir”
ushering in the main riff. The lyrics are throwaways, but that really isn’t
what the song is about; it’s the repetitive riff that is. Once again we get a
solo from Meadows, maybe his best on the album. The song comes to an abrupt end, which was an attribute in my book!
Casablanca Records promo video for Angel's song "Tower"
Side B of “Angel” opens with a bang, as “Broken Dreams”
starts with a rapid fire intro focused on the playing of Brandt and
Giuffria. This little keyboard / drums
flourish always reminded me of something I would expect to hear from Deep Purple’s
Ian Paice and Jon Lord. What follows is almost a bit of Black Sabbath like
hard rock played behind what sounds like a story of a boy who had to raise
himself. Once again, the lyrics to some of these Angel songs were not an impediment to
my ability to enjoy the songs. A guitar solo follows, another verse and chorus,
and then an adventurous synthesizer solo, which leads into the song ending that
reminds me a bit of ELP’s “Lucky Man”. This song could have easily fit on a
Deep Purple, Rainbow or Uriah Heep LP. One can hear several of vocalist Frank Dimino’s
signature moves on this tune. Dimino sang in a tenor that sounds somewhat like
David Byron of Uriah Heep, or possibly Rick Sanford of Legs Diamond. Some of
the vocal gymnastics used hear still sound fresh, but seemed to wear thin on
subsequent albums.
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| Mickie Jones |
by either instrument. The middle section of the song has Dimino giving us” la la las” and “nan a nas” over Giuffria’s piano chords with a poppy, AM radio feel.
The tune “Sunday Morning” also has lyrics of the "sword and sorcery" category. We are given a heavy guitar riff to open the
tune, followed by a unison part played by guitar and keyboard. A nice melodic
synthesizer line riding over finger picked guitar take us into the body of the
song. We are given a guitar solo midway through the song, another chorus and
verse, and the song closes out on a wave of crashing cymbals, heavy guitar
chords and a flurry of synthesized sound effects. The next song “On and On”
charges out the ending of “Sunday Morning”. This is the fastest paced tune on
the LP, and in a way foreshadows one of the idioms Angel would work in on
future releases. The song feels more mainstream, and a basic “looking for love”
song lyrically. The feel is almost of a proto heavy metal sound. The album is closed out by the “Angel Theme”
which is basically an instrumental that showcased Giuffria’s keyboards. This
song would appear again at the end of the second Angel LP “Helluva Band”, this
time putting the spotlight on Meadows guitar playing. A bit of a curious tune,
maybe it was just filler as the band might have been out of songs for this
record. Thus ends a great listen that, at least from my perspective, touched
all the bases of the guitar/keyboard band genre of the 70's.
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| Punky Meadows |
I still think this was Angel’s finest moment. If one looks
at the photos shown in the LP art work it can be seen that Angel looked pretty
much like any other band of the era ealry on. By their next album all that had changed. They had begun to dress all in white live and in promo photos, and they developed
what was one of the largest stage presentations at the time including a talking
holographic angel’s head and the band appearing out of thin air into tubes
(this was spoofed on the film “Spinal Tap”). Aside from dressing in white the
band was “prettied up” with teased hair with what must have been lots of hair
spray. I suspect this became too much for original bassist Mickey Jones as he
left after the release of their third album. If one were to fast forward to 80's
and looked at Ratt, Dokken or Motley Crue they would have fit right in. This
has always made me wonder if in some small way they became the model for the
whole hair band look. Be that as it may, the look didn’t help their career.
Subsequent albums became less and less hard rock and more hard edged pop. For
their last LP “Sinful” the band shed the white outfits and went back to the
typical look of a 70's band (see the following picture).
Sadly it was a case of too little too late. The
band broke up before the 80's arrived. Going forward the only band member who
really did anything of note was keyboardist Gregg Giuffria who would go on to a
band that carried his name as well as House of Lords.
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| The band at the time of the first LP's release |
So what Angel left us with were five studio albums, a double
live album and a single disk “best of” that went into distribution after the
band had broken up. I personally can listen to any of the first three albums
and enjoy them. So if you enjoy Rainbow, Utopia and Legs Diamond, or for that matter
Boston or Foreigner you might enjoy Angel. Angel’s later work had more of a
stripped down sound as they tried to become more radio friendly as they looked
for that hit single both they and the record label were looking for. A decent
slice of 70's hard rock history in their music!
"Angel were either a band hopelessly out of time, or a band defiantly ahead of their time"
Ken Sharp
"Angel were either a band hopelessly out of time, or a band defiantly ahead of their time"
Ken Sharp
Classic Rock Magazine
If you like this album you might also enjoy:
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| Legs Diamond: Self Titled |
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| Rainbow: Rainbow Rising |
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| Utopia: Ra |
