Spontaneous Combustion - Sabre Dance/ And Now For Something Completely Different

Prog trio attempt two different takes on Khachaturian's most famous moment

Label: Harvest
Year of Release: 1973

It's not unfair to say that Poole proggers Spontaneous Combustion were not the most critically acclaimed performers of the seventies. While they had a good friend and professional associate in Greg Lake, were signed to Harvest - which was a badge of quality most groups wore with pride - and performed on live tours with the likes of ELO, they've become something of a footnote in the prog rock story since.

In retrospect, it's difficult to understand why so many magazines were dismissive of their long, meandering instrumental indulgences, when these very same creative habits were seemingly tolerated and even applauded in the better known and most established acts of the era. Comments were also made about them playing with technique but no soul, and with their heads rather than their hearts, but the same could also be said - and indeed has since been said about - a great many of the biggest acts.

They've been afforded a certain amount of critical reappraisal since, and this blog entry over at Bournemouth Beat Boom offers a balanced view of their three LPs ("Spontaneous Combustion", "Triad" and "Time") and their excursions into 45rpm territory.

Their third and final single is something of a puzzler. "Sabre Dance" had been covered very successfully by Love Sculpture a mere five years before, and the A side here brings nothing new to the Khachaturian orientated party - in fact, it sounds much the same as Edmunds' take, except perhaps not quite as wild and furious. While his version went to number five in the charts, Spontaneous Combustion's version went ignored.

Resting on the flip, however, is a Robert Fripp designed take on the track which possibly might have made a more interesting A-side, though it seems unlikely it would have fared any better commercially. Erasing the rapid-fire showiness and instead slowing things down and throwing in arty clattering guitar chords and moody Mellotron excursions, it's genuinely interesting and proof that the old dog "Sabre Dance" could have new life breathed into it after all. The group also resist any temptation at all to "solo" and instead let the arrangement do the talking.

It was all for nought, though, and this was their last release on Harvest. In 1974, Drummer Tony Brock left (to become a hugely successful session musician) and following that a revolving doors membership seemed to set in with various members jumping on and off the Combustion boat, always the sign of an unsuccessful group on its last legs. Their final LP "Time" was produced by the krautrock wizard Conny Plank and issued under the name Time on Buk Records, thanks to legal complications with the "Spontaneous Combustion" name, but to all intents and purposes they were a different group by that point anyway. Perhaps the name change might even have allowed them a moment in the spotlight as fresh-faced newcomers, but this wasn't to be, and "Time" sold as unconvincingly as their other LPs.

Guitarist Tris Margetts went on to work with Greg Lake, and a Brock worked with Rod Stewart, The Babys and Jimmy Barnes before beginning to run a Los Angeles recording studio.

Thanks to Neil Nixon for sharing these files.