Album Review: Angel / Angel..... A Poor Man's Uriah Heep?...........

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mickie Jones

“Mariner” is a prototype for what would become the power ballad in the hair metal era of the 80's. The song tells the story of an old sailor reminiscing about  his life at sea. The keyboards are front and center on this tune, without a solo 
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.

Punky Meadows

Parting Thoughts:

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).

The band at the time of the first LP's release

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.

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

Classic Rock Magazine

If you like this album you might also enjoy:

Legs Diamond: Self Titled

Rainbow: Rainbow Rising

Utopia: Ra