Argent - All Together Now

This is the album that has "Hold Your Head Up" probably one of the greatest classic rock songs ever. It's been a staple on rock radio for as long as I can remember. Well, that's not entirely true, but it is the one song I associated with Argent, and then in later years they were the band who originally recorded "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" a song that I associate more with Petra that Argent or KISS. To be clear, the versions by Petra sucked, and sucked hard, BUT the reprise that closed out the second side of Come and Join Us with the kids singing was awesome, seriously it's still surprising to me how good it was.

A couple of years ago I found Argent's In Deep from 1973, and found that I really enjoyed the early '70s rock vibe and the interplay between guitarist Russ Ballard and keyboardist Rod Argent. The two were so good together. I'll have to pull that down again at some point.

Today though I'm spinning All Together Now and the album opens with "Hold Your Head Up" and it holds up so well. The band was firing on all cylinders and everything was near perfect. It was such a high that the next song "Keep On Rollin'" gets kind of lost. However, the opening guitar riff to the Russ Ballard penned "Tragedy" caught my attention and this was a different sound, almost dance oriented but with a heavy groove, and Rod's organ work is just so good. The band keeps things chugging along with the head bobbing groove that accompanies "I am the Dance of Ages" that lyrically is a hippy dippy post psychedelic collection of nonsense words, but the music is grandiose and the storm sound effects and guitar feedback are so good. That first side was pretty cool and honestly was better than I had expected, considering the impossibly high bar the band set with the album's opener.

The second side opens with more of the same jam band kind of stuff. The second of Russ Ballard's contributions "Be My Lover, Be My Friend" is a pretty game rock and roll song that almost veers into glam territory and is pretty decent.

The album closes out with "Pure Love" a thirteen minute opus that unfolds in four parts:

i Fantasia
ii Prelude
iii Pure Love
iv Finale

This is what was so cool about the early '70s. Now this is a few years before Rollerball truly introduced the great unwashed (me, I'm talking about me) to Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" but here with the first part of "Pure Love" Rod Argent is doing a pretty solid job of channelling the spirit of the classics. Man could he ever play. As the song moves into what I assume is the title sequence things move into trippy psychedelic territory the song meanders and feels like another extended jam. I have no idea what the song is about, and really it doesn't seem to matter. Things end with an extended wind up aptly titled "Finale" and then it's over.

Most of the songs on the album were written by Rod Argent and Chris White with Russ Ballard contributing a song a side, and both were really good. Rod and Chris were in The Zombies together, and then kept working together as songwriters and producers.

The band was made up of

• Rod Argent – organ, vocals
• Russ Ballard – guitar, vocals
• Jim Rodford – bass guitar
• Robert Henrit – drums

I did enjoy this, but extended wandering jams aren't always my thing. I sort of need to be in the mood. On All Together Now Argent does manage to maintain a decent balance between art and self indulgence. I'm partial to  "Hold Your Head Up" it is after all the song that to me defines the band. However, I was really quite taken with the two Ballard compositions, and while the rest was cool to listen to while it played, it didn't exactly stick to me ribs like a nice bowl of oatmeal.

This would represent the commercial peak for the band. They would release four more records but after In Deep in '73 they wouldn't chart again in Canada, or the UK. They would manage to crack the top 200 in the US with a couple of the later releases, and their final album more or less went unheralded.

Still, for a glorious moment in time they were able to (you know it's coming, how could I resist?) hold their heads up.