Notes

---

There's not much happening here. By the time Positive Vibrations was released, Ten Years After had run out of gas. Leader Alvin Lee had already released two solo albums, "On the Road to Freedom" and "In Flight," and the band was simply going through the motions on this album. The band broke up following its release.

By 1974 the world really didn't need Ten Years After any more. It was really obvious they did everything they were supposed to do. This is basically Rock & Roll Music To The World Vol. 2, but even worse, with not a single classic like 'You Give Me Loving' in sight and even less excitement and more boredom than last time around. Sure, Alvin's guitar still stung as hell, but it stung just like it did five years ago; he must have realised that, so he's trying to get away from the "speed god" tag, and he only lets rip with his trademark finger-flashing techniques a couple of times, which would be okay if the "guitar resistance" would be compensated with some awesome melodies, like on A Space In Time - in other words, we could easily disregard the lack of incredible technique if the band were on yet another creative roll - unfortunately, it is not so. Chick Churchill's synths still carried on, but mature prog rock bands like Yes and ELP were showing thousands of new creative ways to use them (and actually, by 1974 even creative rock bands like Yes and ELP were already running out of ideas, so whaddaya want from an unpretentious blues-rock band?) With his drinking and all, Alvin entered a phase of artistic stagnation. He managed to drive his band through the hard rock years and the prog rock years, but as music was beginning to wither all around them, pulled down by the exhaustion of the "ideas pool", deterioration of public tastes and global commercialization of rock'n'roll, they were pulled down by the general crisis as well. And darn it to hell, does it show on this album. It's all the more obvious how little Alvin cared at the time when you look at his own first solo recordings - most notably, In Flight: apparently, all the best material was saved for solo projects, while the band was left with scraps and odds.
Yeah, they're still rocking as a young Chuck Berry - superficially, but somehow the melodic hooks are gone. This is the first record in a very long time which refuses to reveal us at least a single memorable riff; don't forget that Lee was first and foremost an excellent riff-supplier, and it was those riffs that constituted a firm basis for all the admirable "wanking". Show me those riffs, I just don't see 'em here. Likewise, there are no gimmicks - neither good nor bad. Just none of them; the production is as flat and un-atmospheric as could ever be. Hell, it isn't even depressing: at least on their previous record, one could tell that the band was in a pretty suicidal mood, for better or worse, but here you just can't tell anything, apart from a couple numbers.
Hell, in fact, there's just nothing at all about this album. The ballads ('Without You', title track, etc.) are bland and neither sugary nor salty. The title track is a not too self-assured post-hippie anthem, dated on time of release (was Alvin trying to cure the world from Alice Cooper by imploring 'give yourself some positive vibrations' or what?). They just move on lifelessly, and they don't display the kind of funny bizarre feeling of 'If You Should Love Me', or the beautiful emotional lines of 'Hard Monkeys'.
And the rockers? 'Going Back To Birmingham' is destined to sound as a Brit version of 'Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey', and it doesn't work, it's just a rather poor idea. Too many of these songs just take the simplistic boogie of 'Choo Choo Moma' and replay it to death; and since you already know they're doing that out of creative stagnation rather than anything else, the triple derivativeness really gets you down. As for the somewhat more "original" midtempo rockers on the second side, well, they suffer the same fate as the ballads. Even Alvin's guitar sounds tired and ragged, more so than on Rock'n'Roll Music To The World, so Chick steps in to help on some tracks with his organ solos, which only seems to make the matters worse. Bah! This stuff is as comestible as a giant hogweed. Only multiple repeated listenings have made me soften a little bit towards the album's centerpiece, 'Look Me Straight Into The Eyes', a six-minute minor rocker that doesn't really fit all that well on the record - way too surprising and aggressive, with the last "classic guitar thunderstorm" by Alvin on a non-reunion TYA album. Even so, the only truly treasurable thing about it is the one-minute coda, where Alvin's insane soloing brilliantly meshes in with the harmonica and the moody organs to form a brief snippet of ecstasy. Not that you don't have to dig your way through to reach it, though.
Nothing on here is truly offensive, of course, which is why I don't rate it as low as I used to (hint, hint), but that shouldn't be considered a justification of the record's existence. To add a couple more positive notes, I'd just mention that the opening 'Nowhere To Run' and closing 'I Wanted To Boogie' might draw your attention because they get a couple more drops of blood flowing, but this really comes on as a bonus. Nothing else. They disbanded almost immediately after this record, and it was probably the second best rational thing they could do (the first best, of course, would be to disband immediately after Recorded Live - but I guess the boys had contractual obligations to fulfil or something. Damn record bosses). Oh, and, of course, the album is now out of print and probably will remain like that forever. Not that you hear me complaining, especially since I already got a copy