Status Quo - On The Level [2 CD Deluxe Edition] (2016) [email protected] Beolab1700
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Status Quo - On The Level 1 Deluxe
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Artist...............: Status Quo
Album................: On The Level 1 Deluxe
Genre................: Rock
Source...............: CD
Year.................: 2016
Ripper...............: EAC (Secure mode) / LAME 3.92 & Asus CD-S520
Codec................: LAME 3.99
Version..............: MPEG 1 Layer III
Quality..............: Insane, (avg. bitrate: 320kbps)
Channels.............: Joint Stereo / 44100 hz
Tags.................: ID3 v1.1, ID3 v2.3
Information..........:
Posted by............: Beolab1700 on 4/8/2016
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Tracklisting
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CD1:
01 Little Lady
02 Most Of The Time
03 I Saw The Light
04 Over And Done
05 Nightride
06 Down Down
07 Broken Man
08 What To Do
09 Where I Am
10 Bye Bye Johnny
CD2:
01 Down Down (Single Edit)
02 Roll Over Lay Down (Live EP)
03 Gerdundula (Live EP)
04 Junior’s Wailing (Live EP)
05 Roadhouse Blues (Live 1975)
Live In Mainz 22/02/1975
06 Backwater
07 Just Take Me
08 Claudie
09 Little Lady
10 Most Of The Time
11 Bye Bye Johnny
12 Down Down (Demo)
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Status Quo are one of Britain’s longest-lived bands, staying together for over 40 years. During much of that time, the band was only successful in the U.K., where it racked up a string of Top Ten singles across the decades.
In America, the Quo were ignored after they abandoned psychedelia for heavy boogie rock in the early ’70s. Before that, the band managed to reach number 12 in the U.S. with the psychedelic classic “Pictures of Matchstick Men” (a Top Ten hit in the U.K.). Following that single, the band suffered a lean period for the next few years, before the bandmembers decided to refashion themselves as a hard rock boogie band in 1970 with their Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon album. The Quo have basically recycled the same simple boogie on each successive album and single, yet their popularity has never waned in Britain. If anything, their very predictability has ensured the group a large following.
The origins of Status Quo lie in a London-based beat group called the Spectres. Francis Rossi (vocals, guitar) and Alan Lancaster (bass) were the core members of the Spectres from their inception; within a few years, the band had added drummer John Coughlan and organist Roy Lynes. The Spectres released three unsuccessful singles before changing their style to psychedelia and adopting the name Traffic Jam and releasing the unsuccessful single “Almost But Not Quite There.” After it flopped, the group added Rick Parfitt (guitar, vocals), formerly of the cabaret band the Highlights. When Parfitt joined the band in August 1967, the group again changed its name, this time to Status Quo.
At first, Status Quo backed British solo artists, including Tommy Quickly, while working on their own material. “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” the group’s debut single, was released at the beginning of 1968 and quickly shot to number seven on the U.K. charts; within a few months, it was a number 12 in the U.S. as well. The immediate follow-up single, “Black Veils of Melancholy,” was a flop, but “Ice in the Sun,” written by former British pop star Marty Wilde, became Status Quo’s second Top Ten hit in the fall of 1968. Over in America, the single barely registered, squeaking to number 70; it was the last time the group would ever chart in the U.S.
For the next year, Status Quo tried to replicate the success of their first two singles with similar psychedelic material, but they had little luck. Finally, they revamped their sound — and jettisoned organist Lynes — in the summer of 1970, debuting their new heavy, bluesy boogie rock with the single “Down the Dustpipe.” The single reached number 12, yet the full-fledged hard rock album Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon didn’t gain much attention. Status Quo began playing concerts regularly across England, slowly building up a strong following in England. Following well-received sets at 1972’s Reading and Great Western festivals, the band became a hot property. The Quo signed with Vertigo Records and their first single for the label, “Paper Plane,” cracked the Top Ten in early 1973, while their first album for Vertigo, Piledriver, reached number five. Later that year, Hello entered the charts at number one, while its accompanying single, “Caroline,” reached number five. Also in 1973, keyboardist Andy Bown, formerly of the Herd and Judas Jump, became the band’s unofficial keyboardist.
Throughout the ’70s, each album Status Quo released went into the Top Five, while their singles — including the number one “Down Down” (1974), “Roll Over Lay Down” (1975), “Rain” (1976), “Wild Side of Life” (1976), and a cover of John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World” (1977) — consistently hit the Top Ten and frequently went gold. Since they were experiencing a great deal of success, they didn’t change their sound at all, they just kept churning out the same heavy boogie. America basically ignored Status Quo, yet their eponymous album managed to chart at 148 in 1976. Nevertheless, they were an English phenomenon, and England continued to support them even when pop music was undergoing drastic changes in the late ’70s.
Following the release of 1980’s Just Supposin’, drummer John Coughlan left the band in 1981 to form his own group, Diesel. Former Original Mirrors drummer Pete Kircher replaced him; his first appearance with the group was 1982’s Never Too Late. During the early ’80s, tensions escalated between bassist Lancaster and guitarists Rossi and Parfitt, who were the group’s main songwriters. Lancaster left the Quo after performing with them for a final time at Live Aid. He subsequently took Rossi and Parfitt to court to prevent them from using the name “Status Quo.” Lancaster lost his battle, and the name became the property of the guitarists.
Once the lawsuit was settled, Rossi and Parfitt assembled a new band, hiring bassist John Edwards, drummer Jeff Rich, and keyboardist Andy Bown, who officially became a member of the group. The new lineup continued Status Quo’s remarkable success, as they racked up a number of new Top Ten singles and hit albums, as well as consistently selling out concerts across England and Europe. In 1994, the group had its second number one hit of its career, with the football anthem “Come on You Reds”; the single was recorded with the football champions, Manchester United. By the mid-’90s, Status Quo had scored 50 British hit singles, which was a greater number than any other band in rock & roll history.
In April 1997 Parfitt underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery but fully recovered and continued performing and recording with the Quo in the years to follow. Drummer Rich departed the band in 2000, replaced by Matt Letley, who has continued on with the band in the 21st century. The single “Jam Side Down” was a Top 20 hit in the U.K. during 2002, a year that also saw the release of the critically acclaimed Heavy Traffic album. The all-covers outing Don’t Stop arrived in 2004, followed by The Party Ain’t Over Yet in 2005 and In Search of the Fourth Chord in 2007. In 2010 the Quo returned with Quid Pro Quo. The album — which featured 14 newly written songs — peaked at number 10 on the U.K. album chart. Two years later, Parfitt and Rossi announced that they had filmed their first full-length feature film. Bula Quo — hailed as a modern-day version of the Blues Brothers — was released in the summer of 2013, with its soundtrack arriving just a few months earlier.
1975 On The Level
If any single song sums up Status Quo in the hearts and the minds of the millions, it’s “Down Down.” Other songs may have been bigger, others may have more resonance, and some (“Rocking All Over the World ” comes to mind) may be so permanently ingrained that it’s hard to remember that Status Quo cut anything else. But, if you want to nail the very essence of Status Quo, only “Down Down” will do. It was their first British number one and their first all-time classic. And it was also their first grinning, winking acknowledgement that not only was there a formula to the records they made, but they were not afraid to list its ingredients. “Down Down” is the perfect Status Quo record, and the fact that it doesn’t arrive until six songs into the band’s eighth album just proves how much fun it had coming up with it. On the Level is Quo at its single-minded best. It doesn’t matter whether its driving the boogie through your skull with the relentless precision of “Little Lady” and “Over and Done,” lurching loosely around the ghosts of blues and ballads (“Most of the Time” and a positively maniacal finale of “Bye Bye Johnny”), or even glancing back to their days as one of British psych’s finest pop bands (“What to Do”). Still, all roads lead back to “Down Down,” a dynamic riff, a perplexing lyric, and a mood that’s so compulsive that you’ll still be shaking your head in time long after all your hair’s fallen out. And, just to make it even better, the album version’s almost two minutes longer than the familiar hit, littered with false starts, fake endings, and one of the cruelest fade-outs in recorded history. It comes just as you’re really getting into the groove.
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