Count's Rock Band opens with a 12-minute Hills composition called "Theresa's Blues" that absolutely shreds -- as intense as any Sharrock I've heard from that period. I like to think about what fusion might've turned into if *this* had been the model three years later. Rest of the record's nowhere near the same level but heck, that track's almost half the record... [JF]

I still can't figure out The Lord's Prayer.  Man, you try to describe an album that leaps from free/kozmik/bop as yielded by the quartet of Marcus, Miroslav Vitous, Herbie Hancock and Bob Moses, to orchestrated skronky pop, to yet another unnecessary cover of "Hey Jude", to a 30 second recorder solo by somebody's kid, to the smoked-out head session of the title cut, and finally to a coupla tracks sure to clear the room-- drummer Larry Clark's solo deathcall on Dylan's "Tom Thumb's Blues"-- this must've been some kinda inspiration for the Sun City Girls gawdawful Midnight Cowboys From Ipanema-- and a take on "Wild Thing" that is so laughably bad it defies description.  All this produced by Herbie Mann.  I dunno, for all my grumbling about the length of those Atlantic albums ca. late 60s, maybe this one (on Mann's Vortex subsidiary) paints an example of exactly why their records should remain less than 15 minutes a side.  Then again, I'll may well spin it more often than some of my more "serious" longplayers. [DW]

Unfortunately, Sharrock isn't on Count's Rock Band, the only Steve Marcus LP he's on is The Green Line, hopefully one day to be on CD.
[Chris Dupre]