Recension B.E. Taylor Group

Tracks
1. The Fire's Gone
2. Question Of Love
3. Our World
4. Beautiful Day
5. Reggae Rock n'' Roll
6. Girl In The Know
7. Runaway
8. Take Me To Your Heart
9. Karen

Band:
B.E. Taylor vocals
Rick Witkowski guitar, vocals
Natt Kerr keyboards, vocals
Jim Spears bass
Joey D'Amko drums

Discography:
Innermission (1982)
Love Won The Fight (1983)
Life Goes On EP (1984)
Our World (1986)

info:
Produced by Rick Witkowski
Remastered at Munich MSM Studios

guests
Rick Bell saxaphone (on "Karen")
Felix Cavaliere backing vocals
Frank Simms backing vocals

Released 12/8-2011
Reviewed 11/8-2011

Links:
betaylor.com
myspace
yesterrock

Another classical album I have never heard about by some artist I have never heard about either. This particular unknown classical album was released in 1986, the band in question was called the B.E. Taylor Group which was led by vocalist B.E. Taylor or William Edward Taylor as his name is. The band had a few releases in the early eighties, this particular one was released in 1986 and was the final one by B.E. Taylor group, it is called Our World. After this album the main man Bill went on to the Christian scene where he still is active recording albums and doing concerts and whatever. That however, is a whole other matter as the matter at hand here is the final album by the group and album sporting Billboard hot 100 hit Karen amongst others. So we would have to say it was a moderately successful album we are dealing with here.

It can be described as pop-rock looking at the music, the songs are generally rather straightforward. Not too much surprises seen in the purely musical sense but there are some stuff breaking some new ground like track five Reggae Rock’n’Roll which mixes in elements of the reggae genre into the rock music. The vocals of Mr Taylor is a rather usual rock music vocals style, his voice is as I would describe as a quite ordinary for the genre. It does not sound as dated as one would expect for an unknown rock album from 25 years ago, maybe some of it can be attributed to the germans who remastered it but it had to be good to begin with for it to work anyway. This is the first time it has been released on CD, at least on any scale to talk about and as you can imagine it is the length of the vinyl which adds up to it being almost 40 minutes long and having nine tracks.

I think that the overall quality of this album is good, the songs are straightforward and good rock song with a slightly pop-rock feel to them. But at the same time it does not feel that special and it only really heat up when we come to track five Reggae Rock’n’Roll and the ending hit single Karen, otherwise the songs are good but very ordinary. Mr. Taylor has a decent voice but nothing that lift the material either, as I described it, he has an archetypical rock voice which makes the material in general sound rather ordinary. In a way I would say that besides the track five play out it is a rather conservative and careful album that feels more like they are afraid of failing rather than willing to write some exciting music.

Still, I think it is a good thing that albums like this are being remastered for CD at last as it holds a high quality all way through and it really is a shame that it was not remastered earlier because I am sure there are people who would have wanted to have this album on CD a long time ago.

In the end I would like to say that it is a rather good rock album but for me it is a bit too conservative and a bit too careful, track five is the only real highlight and in a way it is also a downer for the album and band as it shows the potential that is there but only shown in one of the tracks. But no matter what I think of and says and writes, it is a solid rock album without real shortcomings.

HHHHHHH

B.E. Taylor Group Our World

B.E. Taylor Group
Our World