Customer Reviews

This Strange Effect: Decca Sessions 1

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I'm going to have to disagree with the previous reviewers here, based on the simple fact that if you've termed this Dave Berry retrospective as part of the British Invasion, then you don't know much about him or the "genre."

The term "British Invasion" is a catch-all used to describe the saturation of British pop/rock & roll in the US market after the Beatles made a big splash in 1964. Problem is, there isn't a definite way to collapse the hundreds of "British Invasion" artists into one descriptor, unless you only count maybe four or five bands that had hits somewhat comparable to the Beatles. And to paraphrase rock critic Dave Marsh, anyone who tries to do that either doesn't know enough about the groups they're describing, or doesn't love them enough to be listening to them.

So let's get down to it: this Dave Berry collection is a completist affair. But that's not a bad thing. Plenty of Dave Berry compilations already exist, if that's all you're after. But if you like what you've heard before and want to hear his output during the Decca years, this is the compilation for you.

To label Berry a cheap imitation of Ray Davies, Cliff Richard or Herman's Hermits is to do him a disservice. No, he wasn't a 100 percent wild rocker, but neither were the Beatles ("Till There Was You", anyone?), the Kinks ("Waterloo Sunset" springs to mind) or the other groups commonly used to describe "The British Invasion Sound." To quote John Lennon: "It's hard to imagine a time when rock & roll was just one of the musical styles out there." The varying styles existed because A) most companies thought rock & roll was a dying fad, and B) there were plenty of teenage girls willing to buy soppy love songs. And they did in droves. Berry did what he did to survive the business, and sometimes that meant putting a rocker like "Don't Gimme No Lip" on the B-side of "The Crying Game" (a smash hit 45, well deserving of its success).

So yeah, Dave Berry wasn't a guy who had hit after hit after hit. But he had plenty of great songs, which was enough to make me want to listen to everything else he recorded. And even if you only end up with 5 or 6 songs you really like on this 2-CD set, think about how many genius tracks there are on the compilation of Berry's contemporaries: the Applejacks, the Dakotas, Peter and Gordon, the Remo Four, Kingsize Taylor & the Dominos, Rory Storm & the Hurricanes... the majority of these bands only had a handful of truly great tracks. You may come out ahead of the curve with this Berry compilation.

Dave Berry - The Strange Effect: The Decca Sessions 1963 - 1966 is another case of too much not being a good thing. No, that's not really the case. This compendium of virtually everything ever issued and/recorded by this artist - 57 tracks from albums, EPs, singles and radio shows - shows us another performer from that odd period from immediately before The Beatles hit through the first three waves of the British invasion. And, like all such singers and groups, the material is a mixture of US covers, some dreary middle-of-the-road songs aimed at pleasing, a few songs that are better appreciated when heard done by other artists, and one massively popular song.

The two-disc set contains `The Crying Game' and `This Strange Effect' and `Don't Give Me No Lip;' three songs that - looking back across the span of time - that are - in all likelihood - stronger and better known than Mr. Berry. The first is more-or-less the main theme from the eponymous movie; the second is a song written by Ray Davies of The Kinks. Both songs sound nice - that word being deliberately selected as an example of `damning with faint praise.' The third song, a boy fighting with his girl and basically telling her to shut up is presented in a way that reminded me of what a priest might tell a nun; a delivery that is bland in the extreme. That this song, a decade later, would be transformed into a belligerent outburst of near `Like A Rolling Stone' intensity by none other than The Sex Pistols only serves to verify the mediocrity of Berry. This is why Dave Berry was, at best, a footnote in the chronology of The British Invasion.

Should you buy this CD set? Well, only if you are a fan of this sort of music; that is to say a tepid sub-par Cliff Richard imitation or if you are a Brit Invasion completist. RPM Records, the releasing label, is contributing to that genre with this and other product.

Take a big dose of Ray Davies filling up some space on an LP contract, a lot of Herman's Hermits even lesser LP cuts, a tragic underdose of Keith Relf solo, throw on a lot of Jimmy Page guitar (coz he nose wot heez doin), imagine that the original lyric to 'Mr. You're A Better Man than I' was 'Baby Don't Make Fun of Me,' and you have Dave Berry. OK, Crying Game is a great song. There is also My Baby Left Me made famous by the Jimmy Page Session Man LP, but that explains it all. This CD has some really OK moments on the first disk but those moments belong on some compilation, because there is nothing noteworhy about this stuff. The 2nd disk might be past off on some old woman whose heyday is the 1940s. He is not Dion 'the voice'. He is Dave Berry 'the glove.' The constant repetition of the voice on the 1st disk and the bad songs on the 2nd takes away from the few OK moments. I wish they sold Default Swaps on Parts Deuxs, I could cut my losses. I doubt it will happen.