Guest
Live, released in 1973 Songs / Tracks Listing disc 1: 1. We Are Indelible 00:00 2. Going Home 03:37 3. Hand Jive 24:05 4. Some Good Advice 36:41 Disc 2: 1. Essay in Paranoia 49:21 2. Superbody 59:12 3. What The World Needs is a New Pair of Socks 01:07:29 ::4. Crazy Song/Goodbye 01:12:26 5. I'll Be Gone 01:28:10 6. I Want To Know 01:33:00 Total Time 97:16 Line-up / Musicians - Mike Rudd / lead vocals, guitar, harmonica - Bill Putt / bass, vocals - John Mills / keyboards - Ray Arnott / drums, vocals Spectrum biography Founded in Melbourne, Australia in 1969 - Disbanded in 1973 - Reformed intermittently since 1995 The Melbourne-based SPECTRUM was a highly regarded Australian progressive psych rock band that came together in 1969 around its central figure, expatriate New Zealand guitarist/singer/songwriter, Mike Rudd. Rudd came to Australia in 1966 with the New Zealand group, CHANTS R&B, then moved through two other bands - PARTY MACHINE and SONS OF THE VEGETAL MOTHER - before assembling SPECTRUM with bassist Bill Putt (ex GALLERY and THE LOST SOULS), organist Les Neale (ex NINETEEN 87) and Putt's former GALLERY band mate, Mark Kennedy on drums. In its formative year SPECTRUM played covers of work by its contemporaries, such established psychedelic / progressive artists like PINK FLOYD, SOFT MACHINE and TRAFFIC before developing a style of its own. The SPECTRUM sound was formed around Neale's skilled Hammond organ playing - mostly without the use of a Leslie speaker cabinet - and Rudd's extraordinary finger-picking guitar style (a style he reportedly used to avoid being compared to the more accomplished guitarists of the time), his often humorous and offbeat song titles and lyrics, plus his unusual and distinctive voice. Add to these two the very skilled and reliable rhythm section of Putt and Kennedy and the SPECTRUM equation is complete. As regulars at many of Melbourne's concert venues SPECTRUM honed its sound and developed a swag of original material. This material would eventually find its way onto the first SPECTRUM album, “Spectrum Part One“. SPECTRUM's polished stage show used a lot of equipment, a huge PA system and had a full light show. The hefty equipment costs meant that a lot of concerts were needed to create some kind of effective income, and bookings were not always easy to come by as some promoters thought SPECTRUM's sound 'too progressive'. As SPECTRUM is struggling to make ends meet via the concert circuit, a significant change comes about in Australian law when a number of states amend the Age Of Majority from 21 to 18. This lowering of the legal age for alcohol consumption gave birth to the pub rock scene, forever changing the Australian live music circuit; pubs had cheap beer to offer to a sharply increased cliental base, and could hire bands to play live music in the rowdy pub atmosphere that leant itself to the rock 'n' roll sound. This new phenomenon was to the detriment of the larger concert events held in unlicensed venues. SPECTRUM (and other “head“ groups) needed the larger concerts and an audience prepared to sit and absorb the often complex music; these concerts became fewer and fewer as the “instant gratification“ of much simpler pub rock took hold. Despite great press and a loyal following, SPECTRUM was all but penniless well into 1970. To survive SPECTRUM needed to play in the pubs where the younger audiences wanted to dance to, rather than listen to the music. Not wanting to sacrifice or taint the progressive SPECTRUM sound, Rudd created a SPECTRUM alter ego with the same four-man combination as a rock 'n' roll band under the name of INDELIBLE MURTCEPS (MURTCEPS being the reverse of SPECTRUM). The MURTCEPS incarnation was able to play rock 'n' roll in the smaller venues with far less equipment and no light show. The MURTCEPS gave the group a way of generating money between the major concerts needed for SPECTRUM to spread its wings - a survival mechanism to allow the band to continue to play the progressive music at its core. Lee Neale's use of an electric piano with the MURTCEPS line-up instead of the Hammond organ as used in the SPECTRUM line-up is a significant difference in the sound of these two configurations of the same musicians.
