Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Wizard - Wizard (1979)

Wizard were a Los Angeles based hard rock act which featured brothers Dave Walsh (guitar) and Brian Walsh (drums), as well as Bruffie Brigham (vocals, bass). It's not known when the band was established but their one and only album was self-financed & pressed under the guise of their own label, Future Track Records. The album circulated in nearby shops for awhile before disappearing completely. As the new decade approached, the band fizzled and Brigham moved on to Masque and later worked as a session player. The Walsh brothers activities are unknown.

This album has been fetching ridiculous prices at collector fairs and online auctions for a number of years now and I can't help but wonder why. Sure, the musicianship is decent enough and the songwriting isn't completely terrible by any means but methinks this is a clear case of hype over substance. The production here is half the problem, as the dynamics have all but been tossed out the window. What's left is a leaden and somewhat claustrophobic sounding mix that does no justice to the music at all. There have been many Rush comparisons made about Wizard and I just don't hear it at all. Am I missing something here? Overall, this LP is on the low end of "good", barely scraping by on the fact that there's exceptional musicianship happening here. Otherwise, unless you're a sucker for plodding lo-fi early 80's hard rock, you might want to bypass Wizard.

Unfortunately, this rip leaves alot to be desired. It's fuzzy and part of the opening track has been truncated, but I have seen no alternate rips floating around and until then, this will have to do. Thanks to my friend Orchman, here is Wizard. What do you think?

7 comments:

The SRM said...

Thanks so much for posting. These guys were from the Santa Clarita Valley in LA, which is were I grew up. These guys played in my parent's backyard twice for my older sister's parties and I remember the second time they were all excited because they had made this record. My sister's friends remember being blown away because these guys would play Van Halen's first record pretty much note for note. There was another hard rock band in the SCV at the time as well called Premonition. They released their own single which at the time was a big deal because they made 100 copies! They guitar player was my guitar teacher when I was a kid. I'll be adding their single to my own blog very soon.

Gumby said...

If you still need Yellow Dog's debut LP from 1977, here it is:

http://rapidshare.com/files/248587476/Yellow_Dog_-_Yellow_Dog__1977_.rar

I added four single sides as bonus.

The SRM said...

Continuing the theme of privately released records by bands from the Santa Clarita Valley....
http://hairupthere.blogspot.com/2009/07/premonition-glitter-girl-and-so-what.html

Guitar Arbitrage System said...

Nice! Any idea where to buy the album? Any latest album from them?

Anonymous said...

They were from granada hills. Dave Walsh played with the exies

Anonymous said...

please if possible could you upload wizard 1979 under rapidshare as the current link is not working

Rich said...

Could you please re-up this? Thanks!!!! richnrich04@gmail.com