Larry Norman - Instigator: The Essential

Reviewed by Dougie Adam

25 tracks have been crammed on here, many of them from Larry’s halcyon era spanning from ‘Upon This Rock’ in 1969 to ‘Something New Under The Son’ recorded in 1977. Eight of the songs are released in their radio promo single edit format for the first time on CD and the ‘Something New Under The Son’ tracks benefit from losing some of the extended instrumentals, great fun though they are. With the ‘Upon This Rock’ tracks many are the Capitol radio edits, so while many of the songs have been heard before there are just about enough rarities here to keep the collectors happy. Many of the songs here rank as some of Larry’s best album tracks (excepting the opening “Lonely Boy” from the lacklustre ‘Home At Last’) but the choices here will not be as well known as those featured on ‘Agitator’ (and given a perfect 10 out of 10 rating by Tony Cummings a few issues ago). Nonetheless ‘Instigator’ is well worth getting hold of and yet again flows very well (seems like Solid Rock are now hitting the mark when it comes to compilations – for those of you who remember some of the Phydeaux efforts from the ‘80s have no fears about the Essential series). The most interesting tracks are the final two, “Butterfly” and “Kulderachna” which were both recorded for ‘So Long Ago The Garden’ and removed from the album by the record company. Both tracks in their ‘Instigator’ incarnations are rough mixes rather than final versions but you can imagine that with a few harmonies added, some more guitar from Mickey Keen and maybe some strings on “Butterfly” that these would hold their own with the other ‘Garden’ tracks. “Kulderachna” is a sister song to “Looking For The Footprints” and shares a similar Arabic feel and probably goes further down this road with strange and foreign sounding lyrics high in the mix (not unlike “Children Of Nimrod” from 1994).