Mick Abrahams - All Said And Done (1991)

Mick Abraham, has played with early rock star's Neil Christian and Dickie Pride in the late fifties, early sixties The Toggery Five (later to become 'Sad Cafe'), spending the usual apprenticeship in Germany with Rock & Blues bands. A lot has been said about the sixties, some of it true, and some of it wide of the mark.

One thing though is certain, it was a period of metamorphosis for music. The decade began with British teenagers crowding around small record players listening to the epitome of the American Dream -Rock and Roll! They listened, they took up their guitars, their drums, their saxes, and they created, and by the end of the decade we had Sergeant Pepper.

In the course of this musical growth, the mid sixties saw a huge resurgence in the blu6s, and suddenly Britain spawned a generation of great blues' guitarists who, as teenagers, had obviously drifted from Elvis, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, to the likes of B. B. King, Freddie King, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. They heard, they tried, and they made their own. Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, and a host of others, all putting their fingerprints on the British Blues Scene.

The guitar players of this period were the focal point of their respective bands and it has to be said, that in a lot of cases, the band was only as good as their guitarist!

From this scene emerged Jethro Tull, playing the circuit with the blues bands and the then called 'progressive' or 'underground' bands of the period, playing a fusion of folk, rock and blues. If the flailing dervish figure of Ian Anderson was the folk rock aspect of Tull, then Mick Abrahams was the blues.

Mick returned to England in 1966, formed legendary McGregor's Engine later to become amalgamated with the John Evans Smash which eventually metamorphosised as Jethro Tull. After having made four singles and the hit album This Was' he left the band to form 'Blodwyn Pig'. The reason being that Mick felt the musical direction taken by Tull was not for him. Blodwyn Pig was proof of Mick's decision to continue in the Rock Blues vein, that has always been his first love. 'Blodwyn Pig' had immense success with two hit albums, 'Ahead Rings Out' and 'Getting To This', unfortunately the powers that be that controlled 'Pig' let the band morale break down badly and as a consequence the band split. Mick then formed another band with which he continued to gig and record under his own name, two albums "Mick Abrahams and Friends (A Musical Evening With)" and "At Last". Mick deaprted the live music scene in 1975 and took a two year sabbatical to focus on various projects which have included running two successful businesses.
Mick was pursuaded to come out of musical hiding by a close friend who told him, ‘You may be successful at all these other things but that ain't what you do best, so get out there where you belong and play'.

Mick fortunately took the hint and is back with a vengeance.

Mick has recently reformed Blodwyn Pig with his old Tull mate Clive Bunker and the band is currently playing to UK and European audiences and 'Knockin' Em Sideways'!

Mick has just recorded this new Blues album, 'All Said & Done' with a host of well known players, including Andy Pyle, Clive Bunker and Nigel Pegrum.

Mick can be heard on the '25 Years Of Tull' Box Set on numbers previously unissued.

Mick is enjoying playing now more than ever, as evidenced on this album and at his current series of gigs.

Quoted recently, Mick said, 'I'm happy to be out there enjoying every minute of it!

Liner notes

Mick Abrahams' return album, "All Said and Done" (1991), is as fine as anything he has ever done. This is an excellent blues album, with fourteen tracks comprised of seven tunes written by Mick (two of which were collaborations with Gordon `Mississippi' Murphy), two new arrangements of traditional pieces, and five covers of older blues pieces.

The pieces written by Mick are quite good, starting with "Road Roller" which opens the album. Then there is the absolutely fantastic "All Tore Down" which is probably my favorite tune that Mick has ever done. Another noteworthy piece is "Dear Jane" which is very similar to "Dear Jill" from his days in Blodwyn Pig. Another great piece is the title song of the album "All Said and Done", which is one of the two pieces which Gordon Murphy co-wrote.

While Mick's pieces are very strong, one cannot ignore the cover tunes like "Black Night" by Jessie Mae Robinson, "Let Me Love You Baby" by Willie Dixon, and "I Wonder Who" by Alexis Korner. There are also two new arrangements of classic blues pieces. The first is "Billy The Kid" (originally by Reverend Andrew Jenkins), and the second is an amazing 11+ minute version of "Cat's Squirrel" (originally by Charles Isaiah Ross) which has become Mick's signature piece.

On this album, Mick plays with Andy Pyle (bass guitar), Bruce Boardman (piano), Clive Bunker (drums and percussion), Dave Lennox (piano), Dick Heckstall-Smith (sax), Gordon Murphy (sax), Jim Rodford (bass guitar), Nigel Pegrum (drums and percussion), and Pete Fensome (bass guitar).

As far as I know, there have been two CD releases of this album. The first was from Élite (ELITE007CD) which includes some liner notes which talk mainly about Mick's history although it does have a small section which tells just a little bit about this album. There is some confusion about when this CD was released, as Mick's web site gives an absurd date of 1970, and the re-issue of the CD shows a date of 1990, but the CD itself clearly indicates a date of 1991.

The second release is a remastered version of the CD which was released in 2001 on Mick's own Squirrel Music label (SM CD 005). This CD lacks the liner notes, but does give some of the details about who played on the album which were missing from the original release. Note that there is also a 2 CD + 1 DVD which has been put out with the same name, but it is not the same as this CD and is in fact a retrospective of Mick's career.

Review by Dave_42, Amazon.com

Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015

EAC extraction logfile from 13. October 2016, 11:46

Mick Abrahams / All Said And Done

Used drive : ATAPI iHAS124 D Adapter: 1 ID: 0

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Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
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Gap handling : Appended to previous track

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TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.33 | 3:07.00 | 33 | 14057
2 | 3:07.33 | 3:50.45 | 14058 | 31352
3 | 6:58.03 | 3:33.00 | 31353 | 47327
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7 | 25:28.65 | 3:58.38 | 114665 | 132552
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9 | 32:41.30 | 3:25.15 | 147105 | 162494
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11 | 38:57.45 | 3:59.73 | 175320 | 193317
12 | 42:57.43 | 6:56.05 | 193318 | 224522
13 | 49:53.48 | 3:16.10 | 224523 | 239232
14 | 53:09.58 | 11:25.27 | 239233 | 290634


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Accurately ripped (confidence 5) [6C137B97] (AR v2)
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Accurately ripped (confidence 5) [DB4C64B0] (AR v2)
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Track 8

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Track 11

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Track 12

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Track 14

Filename C:\EAC Rips\Mick Abrahams - 1991 - All Said And Done {Elite - 007CD}\14 - Cats Squirrel.wav

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All tracks accurately ripped

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

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==== Log checksum F331415D94BC244F638BF48C82B5D70CC5E3C83F4C89DDED411DEAE9661BA7B9 ====

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2017-12-23 21:45:43

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Mick Abrahams / All Said And Done
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR13 -0.87 dB -15.70 dB 3:07 01-Road Roller
DR13 -1.43 dB -16.06 dB 3:51 02-Watch Your Step
DR11 -4.24 dB -18.49 dB 3:33 03-Billy The Kid
DR12 -1.17 dB -15.64 dB 3:12 04-Let Me Love You Baby
DR12 -4.14 dB -17.67 dB 6:24 05-Black Night
DR13 -1.14 dB -15.73 dB 5:22 06-All Tore Down
DR13 -2.70 dB -21.21 dB 3:59 07-Redways Of Milton Keynes
DR11 -1.91 dB -14.61 dB 3:14 08-Long Gone
DR13 -1.17 dB -17.89 dB 3:25 09-Rock Me Right
DR11 -4.27 dB -18.77 dB 2:51 10-So Much Trouble
DR13 -1.51 dB -18.35 dB 4:00 11-Dear Jane
DR13 -3.49 dB -17.61 dB 6:56 12-I Wonder Who
DR12 -3.53 dB -18.02 dB 3:16 13-All Said And Done
DR12 -2.40 dB -18.80 dB 11:25 14-Cats Squirrel
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 14
Official DR value: DR12

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 679 kbps
Codec: FLAC
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