May Blitz – May Blitz

A great press for a reasonable price compared to the UK press. I never had the opportunity to listen the original UK version, but this one is fabulous! A must!

Great and underappreciated heavy rock by this Canadian/British combo, who released two albums on Vertigo, this being their first, from 1970, which also received an American release on Paramount (which luckily, unlike the American releases of Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath's debuts, is exactly the same, from tracklisting down to cover artwork and packaging). The group consisted of two Canadians, guitarist and vocalist James Black and bassist Reid Hudson, who both played the Victoria, BC club circuit (including a band called Missing Lynx) (an earlier version of May Blitz, that never recorded included future Bakerloo ). Tony Newman, the Englishman of the band was the drummer and had previously played with the Jeff Beck Group on Beck-Ola (the final album with Rod Stewart - I suspect thanks to Tony Newman's association with Rod Stewart that this group got a deal with Vertigo).

Basically, this is your Hendrix/Cream-influenced hard rock album with blues trapping. "Smoking the Day Away" is a fantastic opening piece with some intense guitar jamming. There is no doubt a hippie theme going through this song, especially the drug references. The hippie reference is also found in the bluesy "I Don't Know", only the theme is on going back to the land (in fact, in my opinion, I'd love to hear this song being played on a documentary on the hippies, particularly when the back to the land movement is being brought up, over Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country", just because that one is so overplayed). "Dreaming" starts off rather mellow, so it's really startle you when the music suddenly goes into overdrive with some intense bluesy jamming. "Squeet", features some great guitar riffs and a bass solo. "Tomorrow May Come" is psychedelia all the way, a dreamy, mellow, relaxed piece. Then they go into Crazy World of Arthur Brown territory with "Fire Queen" (even James Black sounds very much like Arthur Brown here, so I'm sure it's intentional). Only thing missing here would be Vincent Crane's organ playing (he was with Atomic Rooster at the time, anyways). "Virgin Waters" features some reverb, some spoken dialog, and bluesy ages, then eventually some heavy riffs close this piece.

One of the more underrated albums I have heard and if you like hard rock with blues, psychedelic and prog overtones, give it a try!