A drummer who studied computing, a double bassist training at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, and a trumpeter who would later teach psychology walk into a Glasgow rehearsal room. It sounds like the setup to a joke, and in a sense it was one, since the punchline is a record as sharp-witted as ‘Blackpool Cool.’ Head pressed it in 1977 on their own label, and it slipped quietly out of sight. Toronto’s We Are Busy Bodies now brings it back, freshly remastered by Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel. Nearly five decades late is still on time.
By the time ‘Blackpool Cool’ came around, Head had been through a few versions of themselves. Trio first, then quintet, then a quintet with two new faces. This was their third and final album. Bill Kyle anchors the group on drums, and the playing is busy without ever feeling nervous. Graham Robb’s bass is the other half of the engine, moving in rolling, liquid figures that keep the pulse alive even when the arrangements turn brainy. Above them sit Gordon Cruickshank on soprano and tenor saxophone, Lachlan MacColl on electric guitar, and John Davis, who doubles on electric piano and trumpet and seems to have been given the run of the place. Four years earlier, a different lineup might have pointed toward cool-school Miles Davis. This one has heard the electric records and chosen sides.
Opening with “Met a Man” is a confident move. The track runs a little past seven minutes, and Head uses every one of them, sinking into a groove that Robb’s bass carries along at an easy, unhurried pace that sets the temperature, with the drums stirring underneath, and the horn and keys circle in. The track announces a group that trusts its own chemistry, and the trust is earned. Nothing here sounds rehearsed into stiffness, though the interplay is clearly the product of countless nights on stage together.
“G.B.H.” follows and runs close to nine minutes, the longest stretch of the first half. Here the rock instincts come forward. MacColl’s wah-drenched guitar jabs and stutters against Kyle’s patterns, while Cruickshank’s saxophone leaps up through the octaves with a looseness that suggests he was having a very good day. The piece rolls rather than strides. It has muscle, but it keeps a sense of humor about it, a trait the whole record shares.
The two centerpieces, “There’s a Lot of It Around” and the title track, each clock in at just over six minutes, and they are where the band leans furthest toward pure jazz. Melodies curl and double back. Solos pass from saxophone to guitar to electric piano like a baton in a relay where nobody ever drops anything. Davis deserves particular credit here. His Rhodes-style playing adds a warm, slightly woozy glow, a color that sets the album apart from more austere fusion of the period. He also wrote with a wink, evidently, because the album’s name began as a private joke. Blackpool, the cheerful seaside resort famous for ice cream and novelty hats, supplied the raw material, and Davis supplied the twist. How he got from a souvenir slogan to a title this deadpan remains his secret. MacColl, who later became an art teacher, painted the cover, and the playful tone carries over nicely to the visuals.
Then comes “Pauline,” the shortest cut at barely four minutes and the record’s moment of stillness. After so much motion, a ballad could easily have sagged. Instead it sits right. The melody stays simple and warm. Kyle and Robb ease off, and the rest of the band edges closer, as if afraid to wake someone. It is a reminder that these players could be gentle without being sentimental, a harder trick than any flurry of notes. “Kick Me Quick” closes the set, a near-nine-minute blowout that pulls every thread of the preceding half hour into one loud, joyful knot. Rock drives it, jazz steers it, and nobody is holding anything back. A slogan from a vacationer’s hat has no business turning into something this ferocious. That mismatch is half the fun. When the last note drops, the quiet that follows feels earned.
Recorded in Edinburgh over a matter of days, utilizing an engineer nobody can name who also handled the mix, and still the record comes out crisp, roomy, balanced, with air around every instrument. Mintz’s remaster leaves that openness alone. The low end gains real weight, yet the room never gets sanded off. Robb’s bass, once a little hard to pin down, now lands with a thump that is a pleasure to hear. Head lean further toward jazz than most of their Canterbury-adjacent contemporaries. That improvisational footing is the album’s backbone. These players solo as if they mean every note, and they listen to one another just as fiercely as they play.
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