Sunday, December 23, 2007

The Equinox - Hard Rock (1973)

Equinox were a short lived british quartet from Chesterfield who came together in 1972. The band spent most of their first year on the club circuit before a chance encounter with the folks at Boulevard Records, a well-known budget label with a nasty reputation for fleecing their artists and releasing substandard product. Naive, the band agreed to record their album (in the engineer's basement) for a mere £25 per member. "Hard Rock" hit store shelves in early 1973 but within a few months the album was already in cutout bins all over the UK. The band were quite surprised to find that the individuals depicted on the cover were not even in the band. Boulevard explained that they were suffering from a cardboard shortage and had decided to recycle some old rejected covers for the "Hard Rock" release. Though the band tolerated this kind of shady treatment, they would eventually cease to exist by January of 1974. Vocalist Mick Shedd continued performing locally and now performs with classic rock cover band, Hellhound. Keyboardist Jon Stoppard has moved into performing celtic music and has released a solo album, "Secret Gardens". The remaining members whereabouts are unknown.

"Hard Rock" is nothing to get excited about, but it's not an awful effort either. Sounding much like many of their peers from the british music scene in the early 70's, The Equinox suffer mostly from lack of identity. The musicianship is decent enough and even some of the writing is fully formed, but sadly most of it is just indistinct. "Land of Blue Fire" and "Black Mike" get the honors here as the standouts. The rest is mediocre at best. Judge for yourself and download this rarity from the UK. Here is The Equinox.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this absolutely unknown beauty, at least to me.

Anonymous said...

Listem three times and deleted. Not even one song is good.

Miguel

James Prendergast said...

How can I download this please? It is no longer on rapidshare.

James Prendergast said...

P.S. I have LP of Smokin At The Edges... Am sampling soon! Sooner if I can get a copy of 'Hard Rock' without having to re-master that from Vinyl first :-)

James Prendergast said...

If your into 70's Hard Rock you want to ignore Miguel. Miguel, it may not be your style but cool your boots just dismissing music because you don;t like it.

Maybe next time you can leave a proper review rather than a hatchet job. I have a huge music colleciton and this has been a favourite of mine for 20 years!

Aesop said...

I neeeeeeeeeeed this. Please re-up?

Unknown said...

My friend Terry Walden was the drummer and is chuffed to announce that this is being re-issued. Wonder if they could squeeze in a shout to miguel?

Anonymous said...

I NEED HELP!SOMEBODY FRIEND OPEN THIS LINK AGAIN?THANK YOU!STAVROSST.VITUS,GREECE.

Anonymous said...

Please please reupload this album somebody - this band were amazing live.

James Prendergast said...

This link is broken on rapid share? Any chance of re-posting it? I have the original vinyl untouched by needle and would love to keep it that way! I am a big fan of this recording since I found a copy in a record shop in Kent 20 years ago.

James Prendergast

Anonymous said...

Re-released on Wah Wah Records - SUPERSONIC SOUNDS LPS059

Toby

Anonymous said...

Here is a new link in @256
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B2WCQ01H

Anonymous said...

thanks for the EQUINOX album.I wish the best for you my unknown friend.STAVROS"St.Vitus"Preveza,Greece

Anonymous said...

Excellent Lp. Thanks a million for sharing it. Ignore the 1 negative comment. Certainly this guy had no taste in music

MONOLOVER said...

Hi Ronnie!

I'm "Monolover" - a fellow Blogspotter from Sweden about to post my own collection. When preparing for this Equinox Yours was the only place where I could find background facts. Is it OK if I borrow some of it for my page (with a reference). Kindly/Erik

http://monolover.blogspot.se/

JKR said...

Absolutely, Monolover. If you don't mind, tack on an attribution to the article on my blog & you're good to go! Thanks for asking, friend. Many others don't bother. I do appreciate that :)

MONOLOVER said...

I will and I've also put You on my link list.

Kindly/Erik