SRC were fixtures of the Grande Ballroom scene alongside The Stooges, MC5 and Alice Cooper, yet their anglophile streak set them apart. Championed by Peter Gabriel and John Peel, the band blended UK pop finesse in the vein of The Zombies with the inventive garage bite of The Pretty Things, plus a dose of Blue Cheer heft.
On their second album, “Milestones”, SRC widened the palette, threading funk, prog and heavy rock into a taut, theatrical balance. The songs still hit hard with hooks, anchored by Gary Quackenbush’s searing lead guitar and the keystone keyboards of his brother Glenn, but now carried a broader, more ambitious sweep.
SRC’s second album isn’t radically different from their debut, but it certainly captures the group in more comfortable and energized form. Rather than go back into the studio, the members of SRC used their recording advance to build a recording setup in their rehearsal space, and on “Milestones”, the group seems more willing to push the songs in a harder and faster direction without losing touch with their psychedelic and progressive influences. Gary Quackenbush steps farther into the forefront with his lead guitar on “Milestones”, demonstrating why he was one of the most acclaimed soloists on the Detroit scene in the 1960s, and he bounces his lines off keyboard man Glenn Quackenbush and rhythm guitarist Steve Lyman with skill and fire.
Scott Richardson’s vocals are also in excellent form on this album, and he performs with greater passion and increased imagination on SRC’s second effort, though he can’t quite overcome some of the lesser material. And SRC were writing songs with a harder and more physical edge for “Milestones”, most notably “Checkmate” and “No Secret Destination,” though if the album has a flaw, it’s the presence of not one but two adaptations of the works of Edvard Grieg — “In the Hall of the Mountain King” and “The Angel Song,”
Some might argue that SRC was best off leaving this sort of thing to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but while the band can’t quite rise above the material, they do sound far better and more comfortable performing Grieg than anyone would have a right to expect. If in many respects, “Milestones” was an experiment, it was a successful one, though it unfortunately didn’t sell as well as the first album, leading to the first steps toward SRC’s eventual breakup.
LP on Jackpot. Cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. All analogue process (AAA) from the original master tapes. Edition of 1000 copies
The Fat Angel Sings 