Presented by Keef...
Time Machine: A Vertigo Retrospective

The sheer collectibility of anything on the Vertigo label is one of those peculiar quirks that few people, collectors included, can truly quantify. True, Vertigo was blessed with one of the most compulsive label designs ever devised: a black-and-white swirl that can, indeed, induce vertigo in anyone who looks at it for too long. True, too, the label prided itself in giving voice to talents who might otherwise never have been heard, and wrapped almost every Vertigo album in the kind of ambitious packaging normally reserved for supergroup concept conceits. And one can also be impressed by the label's insistence on defying even the most remote limits of the period's (the early '70s) commercialism, with a clutch of albums that seriously could not have been expected to sell more than a handful of copies apiece. But it is astonishingly unlikely that any single set of ears can truly take as much pleasure from, say, the first album by Affinity as they do the second by Black Sabbath, or who could slip from Keith Tippett to Jade Warrior without undergoing some kind of major cultural dislocation. Which means, of course, that there are a lot of unplayed LPs lying within any sizable Vertigo collection — and a lot of tracks on this collection that will have you reaching for the fast-forward button after less than a minute. Persevere! Although the three CDs here certainly wander across the Vertigo show, the compilers have done a masterful job. Eschewing some of the more defiantly outré contributions to the catalog (mainly the seriously jazz/freeform-shaped ones), Time Machine instead portrays a label that cared dearly for what modern ears would term the "cutting edge" of the early-'70s British prog-folk-post-psych circuit: Colosseum, Juicy Lucy, Clear Blue Sky, Warhorse, and Doctor Z are all here, cut through with a few glimmers of genuine chartbusting inspiration — Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Alex Harvey, Rod Stewart. Inasmuch as most Vertigo albums are now considered rare (reissues from the likes of Akarma and Repertoire notwithstanding), Time Machine is most readily likened to a glimpse inside the most fabulous bank vault in British rock history. But it is also a reminder of a time when the new release sheets were not put together by money-mad automatons, all hoping to make the next round of American Idol. Most of these guys wouldn't even have made the qualifiers for Hit Me One More Time, and more power to them for that.

Disc: 1
01. Colosseum - The Kettle
02. Juicy Lucy - Who Do You Love?
03. Clear Blue Sky - My Heaven
04. Manfred Mann's Chapter Three - Traveling Lady
05. Black Sabbath - Behind The Wall Of Sleep
06. Cressida - To Play Your Little Games
07. Gracious! - Introduction
08. Affinity - Three Sisters
09. Bob Downes - Walking On
10. May Blitz - I Don't Know
11. Nucleus - Torrid Zone
12. Rod Stewart - Handbags And Gladrags
13. Gentle Giant - Nothing At All
14. Ben - The Influence

Disc: 2
01. Dr. Z - Evil Woman's Manly Child
02. Jade Warrior - Borne On The Solar Wind
03. Patto - The Man
04. Juicy Lucy - Thinking Of My Life
05. Jimmy Campbell - Half Baked
06. May Blitz - For Madmen Only
07. Tudor Lodge - The Lady's Changing Home
08. Beggars Opera - Time Machine
09. Colosseum - Bring Out Your Dead
10. Warhorse - Mouthpiece
11. Uriah Heep - Lady In Black
12. Freedom - Through The Years
13. Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Midnight Moses
14. Magna Carta - Lord Of The Ages

Disc: 3
01. Atlantis - Living At The End Of Time
02. Ramases - Life Child
03. Beggars Opera - Mcarthur Park
04. Nucleus - Song For The Bearded Lady
05. Gentle Giant - Pantagruel's Nativity
06. Gravy Train - Ballad Of A Peaceful Man
07. Ronno - Powers Of Darkness
08. Status Quo - Paper Plane
09. Ian Matthews - Little Known
10. Vangelis O. Papathanassiou - Let It Happen
11. Jade Warrior - Mwenga Sketch
12. Aphrodite's Child - The Four Horsemen
13. Black Sabbath - Spiral Architect