Counterpoints (Argent, 1975)

Looking back on some previous posts, I realize I've covered the Argent catalog quite well up to this point. After this post, all that will remain is the second album, Ring of Hands, and the second-to-last one, Circus. There's also the live album, Encore. Of the three, I only have the first one, so the Argent era of this blog may be drawing to an end soon!

So....Counterpoints. Well, until relatively recently, I wasn't even aware that the band had released two albums following the departure of Russ Ballard, this one and Circus, both from 1975. Losing a band member responsible for writing half of the material on paper should have been a killing blow to the band, but then again the band is called Argent, not Ballard, so it really isn't a huge surprise that the band continued with two new members, John Verity (guitar/vocals) and John Grimaldi (guitar). Another major change, more behind the scenes, was the end of Rod Argent's writing partnership with Chris White, his old Zombie bandmate. I'm not sure if anything negative caused that, but White was becoming more involved with A&R stuff rather than songwriting anyway. On Circus, Rod handles all of the writing except for one track penned by bassist Jim Rodford. Counterpoints is similarly written, but Grimaldi gets a couple songs of his own into the mix.

Since Rodford and Argent shared vocal duties with Ballard on almost all of the previous albums, the vocals on Counterpoints are not drastically different from the "classic" era. Verity, most prominent on the opener, "On My Feet Again", "Time" and "Rock and Roll Show" actually sounds Ballard-esque. Musically, some of it isn't a big departure from albums past, but Grimaldi's "It's Fallen Off" (great title?), the bridge of "Time", and "I Can't Remember But Yes" feature some crazy Mahavishnu Orchestra-grade jazz fusion style, showing that the band pushing past simple prog territory. I have no doubt the new members fueled this development, particularly Grimaldi, who, unlike Ballard, could focus entirely on guitar and let the others handle the singing. There are also some quasi-confirmed rumors that drummer Bob Henrit played very little or nothing on this album due to illness, forcing the band to borrow some guy from Genesis to...ahem...hold down the beat.

Finally, there's the little matter of the availability of this album. For some reason, Circus received a proper CD release as a two-fer with some earlier album (I can't remember which, but it was probably one of the first two), but Counterpoints did not. Furthermore, Circus is readily available as download, whereas Counterpoints is not. Thankfully, some kind people have been uploading various tracks to a popular video streaming website and it isn't too hard to make clever use of various extensions to build your own album. However the quality is typically pretty wretched and I'm sure some of what I found is missing small parts here and there. But, if you're not an OCD audiophile and you just want to hear the final Argent album, there are ways to achieve this. Songs come and go, but the one "must hear" track is Rodford's "Time". In general, the songs on the first half of the album are better, though "Butterfly" is also an excellent track, making good use of either trumpet or trumpet-sounding keyboard.

If you really want a challenge, try finding yourself a full copy of Rod Argent's solo debut, Moving Home, released three years later.

Argent (1969)

Whereas the Zombies ended their (initial) career with an unexpected exclamation point (see Odessey and Oracle for more), Rod Argent's new self-named band had a hesitant beginning. Formed from a need to capitalize off the surprise success of the last Zombies' album, with only two Zombies having any level of enthusiasm to continue, the new band made some key changes. Bassist Chris White excused himself from performing and lent his songwriting skills to Argent's to form a writing team. Argent's cousin Jim Rodford, by White's own words a superior performer, took over his stage role. Meanwhile the mess left behind by the departures of guitarist Paul Atkinson and drummer Hugh Grundy was neatly filled by Russ Ballard and Bob Henrit, respectively, best known for being the "plus two" in Unit 4+2 and their catchy hit song "Concrete and Clay". As for vocals, no dedicated vocalist would replace Colin Blunstone, with singing duties split among all except Henrit.

Perhaps the overwhelming success of "Time of Season" made the band feel that success lay in a dreamy/breathless approach, which really only characterized the Zombies on their final album. Hence, you have an opener on this album that's very easy-breezy, with some Marc Bolan-esque vocals from Rodford, who handles about one-third of the singing duties on the album. Throughout the album, guitarist/singer Russ Ballard is particularly restrained and Rod himself doesn't cut loose on they keys nearly as much as he would on later albums. Thankfully, one minor hit, Ballard's "Liar", would keep the band afloat for years to come. Even though the Argent version was indeed "minor", another band, Three Dog Night, would pick it up and run with it, making it into a much larger hit and probably planting a seed in Ballard's mind about writing for bands other than his own.

Enough Argent albums have featured here that the story going forward has already been chronicled. Although the band never made it into the top tier of progressive rock bands, their progression from hesitant beginnings to near-jazz fusion territory makes for good listening.

Nexus (Argent, 1974)

The Argent story continues! We've looked at the previous two albums, so in defiance of randomness (and yet randomly selected they were) we move on to the final Russ Ballard album, Nexus. Ballard's increasing disinterest in the band, made evident on 1973's In Deep, moves to crisis proportions on this album. The first three tracks are instrumental, penned by Rod Argent and Chris White, and heavily reliant on keyboards, leaving the hitmaker feeling a little high and dry. In some ways though, he got the last laugh in that the only hit song from this album, "Thunder and Lightning" was his creation. However his other songs are just so-so. Argent/White weren't having a lot of success on this album either outside the opening suite, making this probably one of the worst albums the band released.

Shortly after this album, Ballard finally cut his ties and went solo, and many of his songs were picked up by other major acts, like Santana and Rainbow. Argent would expand to a quintet to compensate for the loss of Ballard's talents on guitar and vocals, but the new members would drive the band so far into prog territory that they sound more like an opening act for the Mahavishu Orchestra on the next two albums.

Nexus used to be hard to find, but thanks to some smart double-package CD's and now the mp3 era, it's fairly easy to track down. I wouldn't spend a lot on it, but if you've got all or most of the others, why not add this one too. That's what I did!

In Deep (Argent, 1973)

Released in the shadow of their biggest hit ("Hold Your Head Up"), In Deep had to deal with expectations the band had never had to live up to until now. Considering the band originated from the unexpected success of Rod Argent's old band right on its very last breath, Argent was largely immune from high expectations one may have expected from a successor band to the Zombies. Their earliest hit, "Liar", actually ended up benefiting Three Dog Night far more than the author, Russ Ballard, or the band. The second album, Ring of Hands, didn't unleash anything of note although it was a fine album. Then of course came the third album and a newly-earned reputation as a key prog-rock player. "Hold Your Head Up" is a bit of an anomaly in the Argent catalog in that it wasn't a Russ Ballard song, but a Rod Argent/Chris White creation, and they tended to have more progressive leanings. All Together Now shows the divide pretty well, but it has nothing on In Deep, which awkwardly tries to balance a Ballard-dominated A side with an Argent/White B side.

Ballard finally gets his hit-writing mojo back on this album, with "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" and the secondary "It's Only Money". While these are the more commercial portions of the album, they both show a growing dissatisfaction by Ballard of the music biz and probably his strange role in what often felt like somebody else's band. Meanwhile Argent, with his old Zombies bandmate Chris White, continued to move in a more prog direction. Although none of their songs here (except for minor holiday hit "Christmas for the Free") carried this album they are among the most interesting of the band's entire catalog, be it the moody "Losing Hold", the instrumentally-diverse and bouncy "Be Glad", or the mournful "Candles on the River". The album weirdly closes with the decidedly rootsy un-prog "Rosie", highlighting my main problem with the album, which is that it is sequenced poorly, with jarring transitions between the Ballard and Argent/White songs.

I picked up In Deep as a two-fer with it's successor album, Nexus, their final album with Ballard, which continues the Ballard vs. Argent/White issue. Following Ballard's departure (plus Chris White disassociating from the band), there was nothing to tether the band to a commercial sound, resulting in a hyper-prog couple of albums bordering on jazz-fusion. Finally, Rod Argent dropped the fiction of the Argent band name and launched his solo career.

The Argent Anthology (1976)

Once again, we revisit Argent, this time in convenient anthology form. This is a great collection if you have maybe heard either "Hold Your Head Up" or "God Gave Rock and Roll To You" and you thought they were pretty cool songs and wanted to get a little taste of the band. And I must emphasize the term "little" as this collection is only eight songs, making it shorter than most of the band's regular albums, even without bonus tracks. Also, you don't get anything post-Russ Ballard, which is probably fine for the casual listener, but not acceptable for the diehards. Currently, only the last track, a live version of "Time of the Season" is unique to my collection. Of course, if I get Encore, the live album, then there is nothing special about the disc.

All in all I can't take issue with any of the selections here. It's a fine overview. It's a little slanted toward the Russ Ballard material, but he was most of the "hit" writer than Rod Argent. Again, if you have actually invested in any of the regular Argent albums, you can probably skip this one.

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.