King - Soul On My Boots Progressive Voyages Review PV071
King – Soul On My Boots – The Collection Progressive Voyages Review Pv071
Why are Progressive Voyages Reviewing a King Cd box set you may well as King do not really fall on our Radar do they?
Well a couple of reasons
1/ When I first came across King it was the Mid 1980’s and there wasn’t much Prog about ok Marillion, Pallas, Pendragon and IQ were all about but not much in the mainstream, I first saw King one Friday evening on The Tube on channel 4 in it’s tea time slot, and they were an exciting and competent live band that piqued my interest enough to buy the 12” single of Love And Pride as it was an excellent track.
2/ It’s my website so I say I can Review it OK?
3/ King were a band who warranted far more acclaim than they received, along with the likes of Silent running and Then Jericho all of whom were great live bands, I saw them all back in the day
4/This seems to is another wonderfully and carefully curated set that encompasses pretty much everything that King recorded and moreover it even has the demos for what was to have been their third album before they disbanded, Also here is an extended version of Paul Kings solo album Joy and a full live show from Strathclyde University which shows how good And energetic along with being entertaining the band were on stage.
So in this very tasty set you get
KING - steps In Time with bonus tracks
KING Bitter Sweet with bonus tracks
KING live at Strathclyde University
KING demos for the unreleased third album
Paul King Joy album and bonus tracks
A decent length booklet with commentary from Paul King about each album and the bands history and existence.
I personally think that it merits a wider audience so I am happy to review this great set.
King’s flame only shone for just under 3 years, yet in their brief existence they managed to get a degree of chart successes with Love and Pride, Won’t You Hold My Hand Now, Alone Without You and Torture along with both their albums Steps In Time and Bitter Sweet,
They toured extensively I saw then in Birmingham at the Odeon in November 1985 it was full of a lot of young girls screaming but hey so what they had that kind of appeal I guess? They were supported by another fine band who also warrant exploring; Drum Theatre their album is around if you look for it, it’s very worl percussion driven prog adjacent rock.
Going back to the tube show I remember that the guitarist had a green guitar and the whole band were very colourful they played a great track called I Kissed The Spiky Fridge that made a strong impression, well this set allows you go hear them live in Glasgow around that time.
For me though what makes this such an attractive is the presence of the Joy album (long deleted now sadly) but here with an excellent extended remix of Love Pride & Brutality that mixed excerpts of love and pride with the track So Brutal to make entirely different track, I have this on a CD single and it’s brilliant, so to have it here again is great.
Furthermore the demo’s that they made for what could have been their third album, Paul King remarks that they trying a new more funky style and this shows on the demo’s cd , there are some great songs on there like Baby Raven Mane, Ten and Rock Trash Go all of which showed progression in their sound, it’s a real shame they fell apart as the signs of further growth were there but were sadly flattened by their dissipation.
Ì really think that they were a promising prospect but as has happened to so many great bands, the pressures and internal struggles and conflict fractured the band beyond salvage,
Here again the opportunity to rediscover this fine band from Coventry for yourself and see if there is much substance here, I think that there really is, especially on the joy cd demos and the live set, in fact it’s all worthwhile in my book. Why not give it a try and decide for yourself you might be surprised at what you hear here.
Info here:King: Soul On My Boots – The Collection, 5CD Box Set https://share.google/hvjciNBi99jIhZnvm
Author John Wenlock-Smith