The crickets – The chirping crickets (1957)

„The Crickets“ was the name of the band of Buddy Holly under which he also release some albums. I must say that I am looking forward to hear this, since I once buy´d a best off Buddy Holly in the supermarket which does not get me at all. After I listened to it I discovered that the most songs were from the posthume Buddy Holly. Also the album reviewed was an important influence for the development of the rock music in generall, because Holly was one of the first using the standard Guitar/Bass/Drums user. He influenced bands like „The Beatles“ with his sound. So let´s see, if „The Crickets“ can do better.

With „Oh Boy“ the album starts with a very fast dancing rock`n`roll number. His voice is good especially when he sometimes have some hints of aggression hidden in it.

The A side hold the very high quality, except for the slow ballad It´s to late. It finish strong with „Tell me how“ and the B side starts very strong with „That´ll be the day…“. But after that the most track on side B are ballads, which is sad, because the rock`n`roll tracks are pretty decent.

With rock me baby the album ends with a faster country-influenced rock`n´roll track with a great instrumental part and solo in the mid. The chorus of this track is pure energy.

If I could change the album I would replace the background vocals which creating the rhythms with an electric guitar because I really dig that sound it has when playing solo.

After all I would say my impressions of the album are mixed. The rocking tracks are pretty cool but the ballads are lame. Although this is an album which need to be listen to at least once, because it has very cool tracks and because of it´s big influence it had (Beatles, Stones).