Hammond Gamble: Recollection (Liberation)

 |   |  <1 min read

Hammond Gamble: Recollection (Liberation)

Gamble is one of this country's most distinctive voices, but too often in the past decade it has mostly only been heard on ads.

A couple of decades back, however, when he fronted Street Talk, Gamble was a household name and his songs rocked pubs and even radios across the nation.  The band flirted with greater fame - most notably when notorious LA producer Kim Fowley improbably tried to make them into an exportable version of Springsteen and the E Street Band - but it never came, despite Joe Cocker covering Gamble's wonderful If You've Got Love.

On this stripped down acoustic collection of 12 songs from Street Talk and Gamble's subsequent career - with various members of the band including guitarist Mike Caen - it is the power of those blues-tinged songs and intelligence of Gamble's lyrics which shine: the brooding Pretty As a Picture; the shoulda-been hit I Wish I'd Never Asked Her; the terrific Should I Be Good given an outstanding, emotional piano-ballad treatment; the exceptional Midnight for which he won the Apra Silver Scroll in '84; Leaving the Countryhere as a backdoor blues; the gritty Poison ...

Gamble has long been acknowledged by fellow musicians as one our best singer-songwriters (and guitarists), here's the evidence laid bare.

Long overdue opportunity to celebrate one of our finest, in acoustic mode.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Cybiont: A Trilogy of Random Thoughts and Considerations (Cybiont)

Cybiont: A Trilogy of Random Thoughts and Considerations (Cybiont)

First let it be noted that this album by a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Northland is not an easy proposition, and nor does it give up its manic diversity that easily. The title... > Read more

Eleni Mandell: Miracle of Five (Shock)

Eleni Mandell: Miracle of Five (Shock)

I have no doubt Mandell will be dismissed in some circles as an alt.country Norah Jones -- but that would be a little lazy. What this album (Mandell's sixth) shares with Jones is an overall low... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan: Jimmy Berman (1971)

Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan: Jimmy Berman (1971)

Given they had so much in common -- a love of words, counterculture cachet, Jewish upbringing and so on -- it is a surprise poet Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan didn't write and record together more... > Read more

Various Artists: Womad Australia and NZ 2017 Compilation (Cartell)

Various Artists: Womad Australia and NZ 2017 Compilation (Cartell)

Many people are so confident about having a good time at the annual Womad festival in Taranaki that they book for the following year immediately after the festival has ended. As with the Big... > Read more