Clive John - You Always Know Where You Stand With A Buzzard (1975)

Keyboardist, guitarist, and vocalist Clive John was most known for his stint in the Welsh progressive rock group Man from the late '60s through the mid-'70s (before that, he had been in the group from which Man evolved, the Bystanders). In late 1975 he released a little-known solo album, “You Always Know Where You Stand with a Buzzard”. Like much of what Man had done, it was eclectic, with dips into singer/songwriter rock, blues-rock, riffs with echoes of West Coast psychedelic bands, and Frank Zappa-like fusion and absurdism.
In the liner notes to a CD reissue of his solo 1975 album, even Clive John himself concedes that "I had no continuity of musical direction," adding, "I was trying out different things all the time." On You Always Know Where You Stand With a Buzzard, those things include lumpen blues-rock ("Visitin' the Duke"), slightly Quicksilver Messenger Service-Grateful Dead-Frank Zappa-influenced squiggly guitar lines ("Overflow," "Swansea Town"), an impenetrably absurdist spoken word track ("Ferret Interview"), and Zappa-influenced vocal fusion rock ("Hold Your Ferret Aloft").
The remnants of his Man days are heard in occasional careening guitar and keyboard lines. Like many solo albums from members of mid-level bands such as Man, it has a "getting all of these ideas I've built up out of my system" air.
And like many solo albums of that ilk, it was unfortunately pretty forgettable, the weirder items lined up uncomfortably against a mix of more standard-issue mid-'70s British album rock and singer/songwriterisms. It's never a good sign, for instance, when a song starts with the lyric "I ride up to London, just to see what I can see" (as "Visitin' the Duke" does).
[The 2004 CD reissue on Eclectic includes historical liner notes, and adds a brief coda that didn't make the original album.]
Clive John died in Swansea, Wales on August 24, 2011 after a lengthy struggle with emphysema.

Track listing

01. Out of My Tree  - 5:21
02. Brand 'X'  - 3:45
03. Summer Song  - 5:24
04. Swansea Town  - 3:48
05. Visitin' the Duke  - 6:02
06. Love to You  - 6:19
07. Overflow  - 5:08
08. Bust Again  - 4:37
09. Ferret Interview  - 1:38
10. Hold Your Ferret Aloft  - 6:01

Credits
Clive John - keyboards, guitarist, vocals
Andy Fairweather Low,
Phil Ryan, Martin Ace

Notes
Genre: Blues Rock
Length: 48:03
Label: United Artists Records

© 1975