55 Years Later: Taste-Rory Gallagher Led Trio Sparkles With Raw Power & Restraint On Self-Titled Debut

Irish blues-rockers Taste were contemporaries of the seminal power trio Cream and didn’t last all that much longer than the latter. Having been employed as one of the openers (along with Yes!?!) for the farewell concert by the aforementioned vaunted threesome at London’s Royal Albert Hall in November of 1968, guitarist/songwriter Rory Gallagher, bassist Charlie McCracken and drummer John Wilson broke up just shy of two years later, ironically enough, after what is most probably their most famous performance, that of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival (the complete show of which was reissued in 2015 as What’s Going On: Live At The Isle Of Wight.

As documented in 1971’s Live Taste, the threesome could succumb to the same self-indulgent bombast that so often afflicted their peers. Not so in the studio, though, even on this self-titled debut album: at its fifty-five-year milestone (released 4/23/69), the record and the band who made it are all the more impressive for their self-discipline and restraint.

And that’s not at the expense of a collective exercise of imagination that exceeded other groups of its era (arguably including the aforementioned Clapton/Baker/Bruce axis). Befitting its provocative title, “Born On The Wrong Side of Time” is the best of the distinctive lot, the unpredictable changes Taste navigates with an effortless fluidity. It’s a vivid foreshadowing of Rory’s solo work, where recordings were often textured in the same nuanced fashion as the compositions.

Still, the unique nature of the material and musicianship stand out in greater relief when compared to the corrosive “Blister On The Moon.” As raucous an opener as an emphatic album like this deserves, there’s also the modified shuffle of “Leaving Blues,” where the band stays even closer to its blues roots, right down to the finely-etched slide guitar of Gallagher.

Its deceptive intricacy is a far cry from “Sugar Mama.” Often the source of some of the self-indulgence mentioned above in concert, its inclusion adversely affects this otherwise judicious production of Tony Colton’s: at over seven minutes of the total thirty-eight plus, it sounds like an impromptu jam with little inspiration. Heavy-handed as Taste so rarely was otherwise, it’s quite the contrast with more concise cuts like the dual acoustic-based selections “Hail” and “I’m Moving On,” both clock in at less than three minutes each.

“Catfish” is a minute longer than its (over) extended corollary, and the trio bludgeons with it in much the same way, lyrically and instrumentally. Such faults are all the more egregious immediately after “Same Old Story,” which stands as a viable blueprint for blues-based rock. Gallagher, Wilson, and McCracken play as one on that number.

Rory was comparably single-minded when he embarked on his solo career two years after this long-player was issued. Defiant of marketing and sales concerns, he refused to allow singles to be released from his LPs, but he preferred to let the music speak for itself. And it did for nigh on two decades of studio and stage releases, almost all of which were permeated with a sense of dynamics that allowed for a feverish intensity juxtaposed with the reflective likes of the best moments on Taste.