There’s a school of thought which argues that The Quo should be as critically revered as the , because they basically locked into a frill-free groove and did the same thing over and over again until a state of blissful Zen transcendence was attained. Other schools of thought are available.
These three deluxe reissues skip from the tail of their imperial phase with ‘the classic line-up’ – 1976’s Blue For You (7⁄10) – to a new decade with 1980’s Just Supposin’ (6⁄10) and 1981’s Never Too Late (5⁄10). In between they didn’t co-produce themselves, so by the 80s they’d eased into a less piledriving, more keyboard-coloured pop sound.
Blue For You, a chart-topper, is by far the strongest of these, the late Rick Parfitt starring on the irresistible omni-clenching chug of Rain and Mystery Song.
The later albums still bang out affable, avuncular hits like What You’re SOFTWAREmark” gingersoftwareuiphraseguid=“b78a46fa-ed63-4494-8885-662e21b7b90d” id=“d57de1da-a76a-401c-9a81-f3486989ffe1”>SOFTWAREmark” gingersoftwareuiphraseguid=“47b04627-1536-441a-8f41-35711c142c49” id=“58774123-cb77-4229-a67d-2c9c56950f2e”>Proposin’ and Something ‘Bout You Baby I Like, but an aura that was definitively diamond-hard has diluted.
Demos and B-sides are added here, plus copious live spurts from, respectively, Osaka, Le Mans and St. Austell: literally all over the world.
