Roy Wood – Mustard
Following up on the not-quite-success of his amazing 1973 solo debut Boulders and some equally underground releases (commercial-success-wise, that is) with his band Wizzard, ELO co-founder Roy Wood regrouped and decided to do another truly solo album. Woody can play a few dozen instruments, you see, so locking this guy into a recording studio by himself for a few weeks with a fresh batch of songs is not a problem. What he emerged with, while not quite up to the innovation level of Boulders, is still stunning.
I have to admit a certain level of amazement with those gifted individuals who can play it all for themselves, and Roy Wood is among the most amazing of those musical hermit crabs. Who else could get away with using bagpipes in an intro to an all-out 70s style rocker? And actually play the bloody things himself?
That’s not the only stylistic innovation on Mustard; on two tracks – the title track intro and “You Sure Got It Now” – Wood does an uncanny vocal impersonation of the Andrews Sisters, complete with scratchy-record effects on the former. The latter overlays that all-female trio sound on a somewhat bluesier, rockier rhythm track, and it works in a weird, cultural-collision sort of way. And keep in mind, it’s all Roy Wood’s vocals. (The only guest vocals are Phil Everly – yes, as in the Everly Brothers, who coincidentally later had a song produced by Wood’s former ELO cohort Jeff Lynne – on “Get On Down Home” and Annie Haslam singing higher backing vocals on the excellent ballad “The Rain Came Down”.)
The highlight for me is easily “The Song”, which slowly unfolds into a lovely instrumental in its second half, and it’s easy to tell that the starting point for the song’s sound – if not the music itself – was The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home”.
This being a 1999 CD reissue, fully half of the tracks are added bonuses from non-album singles and B-sides (the original Mustard ended with “Get On Down Home”), including the sitar-heavy “Bengal Jig”, and some more of the 50s-style rockers which Wood has made part of his unique style – “Oh What A Shame” 
and “The Rattlesnake Roll”. An ELO-worthy instrumental with equal helpings of sax and Moog synthesizer, “Strider”, is also included, as are some very interesting liner notes placing Wood’s work into the context of British rock history and what other acts were doing at roughly the same time. A highly recommended package for fans of Woody’s work – or even for those unfamiliar with it.
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- Mustard (1:27)
- Any Old Time Will Do (4:12)
- The Rain Came Down On Everything (6:34)
- You Sure Got It Now (5:29)
- Why Does A Pretty Girl Sing Those Sad Songs (4:32)
- The Song (6:35)
- Look Thru The Eyes Of A Fool (2:55)
- Interlude (1:24)
- Get On Down Home (7:29)
- Oh What A Shame (3:50)
- Bengal Jig (2:13)
- Rattlesnake Roll (4:01)
- Can’t Help My Feelings (5:11)
- Strider (2:49)
- Indiana Rainbow (3:53)
- The Thing Is This (This Is The Thing) (5:43)
Released by: Edsel Records
Release date: 1975 (reissued in 1999)
Total running time: 68:39
This is a strange little album – that much is undeniable! The vocals are pure They Might Be Giants-esque 60s kitsch, and the instrumentation is firmly lodged in the early 80s explosion of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines. Some may remember the obscure single “Mexican Radio” which sprang from this album, although there are more memorable songs here, among them the strangely hypnotic “Lost Weekend” and the hyper-kinetic “Tomorrow”, a hysterical ode to procrastination, but we’ll get to that later. My 
personal favorite from this album is the rather short country-guitar-twanging instrumental “On Interstate 15”, a nice little piece with a syncopated beat that also manages to be relaxing somehow. This isn’t for everyone – it’s sure quirky! 
more accessible material – some understanding of the historical context of these songs, both within the framework of Doctor Who’s history on TV and and within the musical trends of the mid-1960s, is probably required to enjoy them. Extensive liner notes offer lots of that information, but it will ultimately be up to the tastes of individual listeners. 
Even though Jeff Lynne is a bit of a recluse, his prominence during the rise of the Electric Light Orchestra in the 1970s often obscured the memory of the band’s other original co-founder, ex-Move multi-instrumentalist Roy Wood. But ask anyone for an example of Roy Wood’s work and you’ll likely draw a blank. Exotic Mixture redresses that imbalance nicely.
One of the best albums this listener’s ever heard. The idea behind Wood’s Boulders is much the same as the premise of Todd Rundgren’s A Capella – that one person is responsible for every sound on the album. Wood manages to turn out an incredible body of work with this limitation in mind, including the haunting “Dear Elaine”, with more tracks of overdubbed cellos than I can pick out providing an appropriately baroque backing to the heart-wrenching lyrics – Wood’s vocal range is unbelievable. The one irritation is the occasional silliness Wood had to stoop to in order to get lower or higher 
This is a rockin’ selection of hysterically funny covers of the immortal tunes from those educational animated shorts that used to give ABC’s Saturday morning cartoons such a distinct identity. ABC tries to brand itself with an incredibly annoying series of banana-yellow graphics these days, but that will never even approach the popularity or instant recognition factor that ABC had with the Schoolhouse Rocks cartoons. Schoolhouse Rocks officially ascends to the status of cultural icon with this cover album, featuring a series of often faithful (and occasionally way-the-hell-out-there) covers performed by alt-rock and rap artists. The original Schoolhouse Rocks theme opens the proceedings, and Deluxx Folk Implosion promptly crashes the party with a very good copy of “I’m Just A Bill”, adding the modern touch of vocals dripping with thick, syrupy sarcasm. It’s hard to bang one’s head and laugh out loud at the same time, but this is a good song with which to try. Other standouts include a very good homage to “Electricity, Electricity” by all-girl band Goodness, and Ween’s very accurate rendition of “The Shot Heard ‘Round The World”. The more rap-oriented