All Together Now (Argent, 1972)

If ever a band was born from a song, it would be Argent. By 1968, Rod Argent's old band, the Zombies, was effectively deceased. The boom times of their earlier hits ("She's Not There", "Tell Her No") had faded and the individual band members were beginning to seek out new ventures. In one heroic final gasp, the Zombies pulled together for one last album, "Odessey and Oracle", and evaporated. What nobody anticipated was that the band had one last great hit left in them, "Time of the Season" (NOT a Christmas song, but that's another rant for another time). By the time the song was topping the charts, two members of the band, Rod Argent and Chris White, were scrambling to assemble some kind of "New Zombies" to capitalize on the success of the song. For matters of personnel and changing musical tastes, the "Zombies" name was tossed and the new lineup, which added Rod's cousin Jim Rodford on bass (with occasional T-Rex sounding vocals), and Unit 4+2 alumni Russ Ballard (guitar, vocals) and Bob Henrit (drums). White elected to work behind the scenes as this point.

This is probably their most solid, if not adventurous, album. "Hold Your Head Up", even in its awful radio-edited form, was a monster trans-Atlantic hit, welcome news for a hit-starved Rod Argent. Ballard's "Tragedy" is an excellent song in its own right. Already evident on this album is the growing divide between Ballard and the rest of the band. Argent and White's songs show increasing progressive tendencies, with the final song being a virtual mini-concerto showcasing Rod's keyboard prowess. Meanwhile, Ballard was more in a hard-rock vein, with more down to earth material. More often than not it was his songs that were giving the band greater exposure, but his role within the group was diminishing.

Following 1974's "Nexus" the original lineup split, heralding the launch of Ballard's solo career, the dissolution of the Rod Argent-Chris White songwriting partnership, and the band's dramatic turn into prog-fusion with Ballard's two (two!) replacements. Even though the post-Ballard albums are virtually forgotten, they really aren't that bad and certainly worth checking out if you like all of Argent's other albums, especially the transitional "Nexus". Some free advice though: the final album "Counterpoints" never made it to CD, iTunes or any of that, but a certain popular video streaming service can help with that problem.

The CD released back in the 1990's seems like a great deal, with as many bonus tracks as the original album, but only two of them are true bonus tracks ("Kingdom" and "Closer to Heaven"). The rest can all be found on the preceding "Ring of Hands" from 1970 or the following "In Deep" from 1973. However, if this is the only Argent album you ever get, then it's a nice mini-anthology you get on top of their best-known album.