Lonely at the top (Hammond Gamble) (LP 2590 -2592)

Hammond Gamble  Hammond Gamble (Vinyl, WEA Records, 1981) ***

Hammond Gamble  Every Whisper Shouts (Vinyl, CSM Records, 1983) **

Hammond Gamble  Recollection (CD, Liberation Music, 2006) ***

Genre: NZ music, blues, rock 

Places I remember: Peter Gillbanks collection; Secondhand shop

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Gamblers Blues (Hammond Gamble)

Gear costume: Leaving the Country (Recollection)

Active compensatory factors: It's kind of appropriate that Hammond Gamble follows Rory Gallagher, because he's as close as NZ music ever got to a Rory of their own. 

Hammond can play some great bluesy guitar and he sings well, plus he writes his own songs. His version of Crossroads live with Streettalk is awesome (I taped it off the radio back in the day).

Unfortunately, he doesn't appear inclined to play incendiary guitar riffs as a solo artist. Also unfortunately, these solo albums came in the eighties - not the best time for Hammond as he tries to write commercial songs of the time.

First solo album has the minor hit Should I Be Good Or Should I be Evil and some good musicians - various Streettalkers, Suzanne and her husband Bruce Lynch (he produces as well as plays bass), and Midge Marsden all appear.

It takes until the third song on side two before he unleashes his guitar on Gambler's Blues. More of that would have been good.

Every Whisper Shouts from 1983 is more of the same (style, musicians) but he's even less inclined to play guitar on this one. Instead, strings, synths, and slow-paced ballads are the order of the day.

Recollection is aiming to do what Clapton's Unplugged did but on a smaller scale (obviously) - an acoustic redo of the back catalogue. Hammond succeeds. There are some tasteful recollections of past glories on offer. But it's all a bit...polite.

Where do they all belong? I'd recommend a return to Streettalk, rather than the solo albums, but Recollection is a good place to start for an overview.

I feel so bad, I feel like leaving the country (Streettalk) #390-391

Streettalk Leaving The Country/ Falling To Pieces (Asylum, Z 10007, 1978)
Streettalk She's Done It Again/ Long Night Blues (WEA, Z 10021, 1980)

I first heard Streettalk on Radio Hauraki in the mid seventies. Barry Jenkins, a.k.a. Dr Rock, played a recording of Hammond Gamble and the boys playing a wonderful live in Albert Park version of Crossroads. A new guitar hero had arrived.

American whiz kids Chris Hillman (yes - that Chris Hillman) and then Kim Fowley (okay - no longer kids) knew quality when they heard it. They got involved - Chris did the first single - Leaving The Country, Kim produced the first album, and then finally a sympatico Nu Zilder, Bruce Lynch, gave the boys a more honest sound on the second album - Battleground Of Fun.

Unfortunately, early on, that wonderful raw guitar sound of Hammonds never quite made it to vinyl as producers produced and knocked the edges off the band. Having said that I still love these singles (and Battleground Of Fun).

Leaving The Country rips into things in a patented Streettalk way with guitars to the fore.

Mike Caen's She's Done It Again is at the poppy end of the Streettalk spectrum. It's a better production - more in yer face and it drives onwards but not a kiwi classic by any stretch.

Both A sides were single only releases, although Leaving The Country eventually found a home in a rerecorded version on BOF.

Hidden gems: Both B sides are rarities in that they never made any of the albums, Hammond later included Long Night Blues on a live album.

Falling To Pieces is okay but 'gem' would be stretching things.

Long Night Blues is much better - Hammond gives it some welly and the song is much better for it.