1 post tagged “allan holdsworth”
Have you ever heard a song on the radio, liked it, and meant to buy it, but didn't get around to it until much later? So it is with me and "Nothing to Lose" by UK. During the heyday of Album Oriented Rock (the late 70s), many of the second-tier, less-played songs were better than the rock staples. I would often tune in WAVA on the family stereo and sit by the tape deck to listen for key tunes and record them, but I never caught "Nothing to Lose." And I never managed to buy the album, either, though I did secure a copy of UK's eponymous first album from 1978. That was the album that got UK accorded "supergroup" status (being comprised of John Wetton, Eddie Jobson, Bill Bruford, and Allan Holdsworth; between them they had played in just about every progressive rock band that mattered), but it didn't contain anything like a single. By the second album, Danger Money, Bruford and Holdsworth had left, with Terry Bozzio taking over on drums and Eddie Jobson doing more keyboard and violin overdubs to compensate for the lack of a guitarist. Unlike the first album, the second got some radio play with "Nothing to Lose," which was moderately catchy and, unlike most other UK songs, short enough for radio. This past weekend, 28 years after deciding I wanted "Nothing to Lose," I finally got it. And it sounds exactly like I remembered it.
In hindsight, the song is not far from Wetton's output with his next supergroup, Asia, three years later. So why was I so disappointed with that first Asia album? The two explanations are (1) there was not enough musical virtuosity on it, i.e. lots of different notes played quickly; and (2) by 1982 I had converted from AOR to New Wave, and Asia was an AOR behemoth.
(Two more UK songs are available at progarchives.com.)
