I haven't been a fan of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel for very long. Actually it took some nudging from friendly neighbourhood music blogs (quick shout out to Fu Man Chu!), but when I checked out Harley & his crew I liked a lot of what I heard. For years I only knew two songs of him/them, the inevitable hit "Smile (Come Up And See Me)" and their cover of "Here Comes The Sun", because those would turn up on various artists 'hits of the 70s''-type compilations. Finally diving deeper, I found it interesting how stylistically diverse the work of Harley & Cockney Rebel is. And of course, in the words of Anchorman, well, that escalated quickly. Somehow, I went from two Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel song to not one, not two, but three discs for the One Buck Record of the day. Up until yesterday, this was still a two-disc release, then I got to start digging and finding some more treasures and reshuffling again, and well...what can I tell ya, folks, things got a little out of hand, as they tend to when OBG sets his sights on some stuff...
Steve Harley was not only the clear band leader and pretty much used the same logic that Vincent Fournier applied to Alice Cooper, even though he didn't name himself like his band ("Ladies and Gentlemen, let's give a big hand to...Cockney Rebel!"), Cockney Rebel quickly went from a real band to a name brand, so whoever was around Harley at a given time would be Cockney Rebel. At least, Harley took the Cockney part of the name seriously, adopting a sneering Cockney accent for a good number of the band's rockier tunes. Just listen to "Tumbling Down", the opening track of disc two and tell me that he doesn't sound like a dead ringer for Ian Hunter. Othertimes his voice recalls Bowie, an influence on both the artier longer as well as the shorter glam numbers. The longer numbers have a clear prog and art rock influence, as well as a good number of theaticality, a mix that seems as much influenced by Queen's music hall prog as Spector-produced 60's girl groups.
Considering how different the music of Harley & Co. could be, the sequencing of most Best-ofs and Compilations - almost always chronological - didn't make sense to me, mostly due to the different styles snuffing out a disc's momentum. If after, say, a couple of sub-three minute glam stompers we stop for a nine minute suite with choirs and several 'movements' the momentum stops dead in its tracks. Don't get me wrong: I think Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel did some of their best and most interesting work on long-form songs such as "Death Trip", but it was difficult to see those tracks working alongside their more single-oriented rock'n'roll sides. So, from the beginning it seemes obvious that I was going to separate thes two different brands of music, which evidently led to the title of the comp. But the title isn't entirely true. What to do, though, with Harley's later work, which is of middle-length, mostly clocking in between four and five minute, but more importantly, is stylistically different again, more reflective and often more acoustic-based, with a voice that cearly shows its years?
So technically, this compilation is now three sets, on three discs: Disc One, The Short Of It, compiles 20 of Harley & Cockney Rebel's short and sprightly work. Disc Two, The Long Of It are Cockney Rebel and Harley long-form songs. And disc three, the one too long for the album title (and thus cunningly hidden behind an asterisk), is A Long Journey's End, which chronicles Harley's work since the mid-90s, increasingy an old man's songs sung in an old man's voice. There's a lot more sentimentality in these songs whose titles like "The Last Time I Saw You", "Journey's End (A Father's Promise)" and "Compared With You (Your Eyes Don't Seem To Age)" already hint at their emotional and sentimental content. This is both understandable and quite touching. Harley feels that his long journey is approaching its end, so he is, by and by, saying his goodbyes, his regrets and his wished for the future. Speaking of: it seems eminently fitting that the comp should end with his lookinto a future when he's long gone, with "2000 Years From Now" harking back to the spacey prog sound of the Cockney Rebel heydays.
So, either rejoice in some choice memories of an interesting British band and its main songwriter, or be like me and go from zero to...well, a lot in terms of grooving to that Cockney rebel and his Cockney rebels...
