What does it sound like?:
The seventh and final album by Family is reissued as a 2cd remastered set with an illustrated booklet featuring a new essay on it’s making. Tony Ashton and Jim Cregan joined the band but rather than revitalising the group they produced one of their least essential albums. This is leagues away from the heights of Bandstand and Music From A Doll’s House. The songs are pretty run of the mill and uninspired and it’s hard to pick a stand out track really. In fact it’s a set where the extras are better than the original album. There’s a generous 19 tracks added, five being studio cuts and the remainder coming from BBC sessions from a 1973 In Concert and a Top Gear appearance from later in the same year. The jaded sound of a band reaching the end of the road really, with their heyday behind them.
What does it all *mean*?
It was no surprise when the band split not long after the album’s release as they sound rather uninspired and unsure of what direction to take.
Goes well with…
Popcorn and Kia Ora.
Release Date:
26 Jan
Might suit people who like…
Really one for Family completists.
Absolute nonsense! This is the very definition of an under-rated album – and no, I’m not pretending it’s as good as …Doll’s House or Bandstand. But certainly better than “uninspired and unsure”! And as for a jaded band at the end of the road…
Not often we disagree, Bargie…🙂
Always glad to hear a different opinion….it’s what this place is all about 🤔
…and usually good-natured…
…although in this case, I think you must have been sent the wrong album by a different band altogether, your impression is soooo different from mine…
Rob T said the atmosphere making this album was terrific – they’d decided it was to be their last and there was a “demob happy” element to it, which I think comes across. Of course Rog and Charlie ended up doing another five years of hard time together in the mighty Streetwalkers but I don’t think that was in the pipeline at this stage, so as far as they were concerned they were parting ways.
It’s the weakest Family album by some distance but still very decent by normal standards – certainly if you started with it you’d probably be interested enough to try the other albums.
when I was a kid I thought the guy on the cover was Larry Hagman…
PS If that’s the In Concert I think it is it’s a whopper.
“Still very decent by normal standards”
In a nutshell – if wasn’t for the unassailable heights of the remainder of Family’s albums, we’d be praising it to the nines! It’s one of my favourites from the year.
Back in the day, I was an enormous fan of Family. Such a superb live band.
I remember going to their Farewell Tour at the Rainbow. Happy Memories!
So successful that they did another Farewell Tour. I went to that too.
Uncertain if Poli Palmer still on board at this stage; I suspect not. However, he makes Brum pub favourites, the Kate Gee Band, even better, when he brings along his mallets. Also contains onetime Steve Gibbons guitarist, Bob Wilson.
I think Poli is just on A Song For Me and Anyway… maybe Fearless. He’s not on Bandstand, is he…?
Yes, I think he is…
I think they were trying to get rid of him. They were certainly trying to get rid of someone on that album. How do you get someone to leave a band without actually firing them? Put bogies on their sandwiches?
There’s always the Floyd Method…just don’t pick ’em up one day!
Just checked: he played on Bandstand, has a writing credit on one song – and is on the telly on the cover, wearing a bunnet!
Maybe I was thinking of that other guy. Wetton, Gretton, Grattan, Gratin whatever he was called.
To me after Grech and King left and were fired respectively, Family are Chappo, Charlie, Rob and some other guys.
For shame, for shame…says more about you than it does about those “other guys”…
The Doll’s House/Entertainment line-up is the one I fell in love with. Despite Grech’s horrid Dylan impersonations…
Fair enough…first album I heard was Fearless – then worked backward and forward.
I’ve always loved Family, from the day I first heard Weavers Answer on the youth club stereogram.
Back in the day I bought Only A Movie as half of a twofer vinyl release with Fearless. I’ve ordered the Cherry Red CD re-issue mostly to get the BBC In Concert set if I’m honest, but in general this LP doesn’t get the respect it’s due. Still a potent force, the band are demonstrably more interesting and capable than a lot of their contemporaries. Within a year or so I’d see the Streetwalkers live, but find them less inventive than their predecessor, and a decade or so later I saw Chapman, with his own band, blow the roof off at a Rock Goes To College gig in the Bristol University Students Union main hall. The man is a proverbial force of nature.
1991, The Town & Country Club, Tom McGuinness’s 50th birthday gig. Various Manfreds, Blues Banders and of course McGuinness Flinters are in attendance. To the delight of everyone, some way into the proceedings Baron Chapman takes to the stage to do Hoochie Coochie Man, in tribute to one of the birthday boy’s heroes, Muddy Waters.
The moment Chappo opens his mouth, all the lights on the desk go red and the sound man leaps forward to the faders screaming “FAAAAARKINELLL!”
That, darlings, is how one makes an entrance.
I don’t know this album but I’ll have to give it a listen given the diverse range of views!
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard It’s Only a Movie before – I think I’d drifted off in another direction by then. Listening to it now, and in my sophisticated critical judgement it slips down a treat, once they stop goofing around mind…
Allmusic gets it right, I think:
“For a swan song, this is pretty a good one. Generally, at this point in a band’s career, when personnel changes become more frequent, live shows become more unpredictable, and substance use seems to become more central to the band than singing and songwriting, you would think that Family (a band that partied as hard as any) would simply cough up a final piece of dreck and say so long. But Movie is a relaxed, funny and funky record, almost sunny in disposition.”
Such a great band, over so many albums and gigs. Put it this way – who’s capable of making an album like this today? Spoiled, we were, SPOILED I tells ya!
Well, exactly…funky is the mot juste! Who else makes albums like this when they’re breaking up?
(Man, maybe – Welsh Connection wasn’t bad for a break-up album…)
All seven of Man’s break-up albums have merit.
Arf! A Man fan!
@Vulpes-Vulpes
No bones about it
Indeed. Keep on crinting.
This “remaster” is absolutely identical – or as near so as makes no diff – as the last one, back in 2016 or whenever it was.
Don’t buy it, would be my advice…I assume you have the one from 2016 or whenever it was.
Anyway, I imagine most purchasers will be buying it for the live BBC disc.
Not sure HP buys any music.
Fair enough. I guess the “don’t buy it” advice works for anyone who bought the previous remaster, assuming that HP’s golden ears are turned on and tuned in…
But, if anybody likes Family – and have never heard this album due to negative reviews – buy it! Or stream it! Or whatever! As HP quoted above – relaxed, funny and funky – what’s not to like?