SHOOT OUT AT THE FANTASY FACTORY
Traffic
•Eclectic Prog
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3.68
| 208 ratings | 17 reviews | 20% 5 stars
Excellent addition to any |
Studio Album, released in 1973 Songs / Tracks Listing 1. Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory (6:01) - Steve Winwood / guitar, piano, organ, vocals, producer
Artwork: Tony Wright and to Quinino for the last updates Edit this entry |
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TRAFFIC Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory ratings distribution
(208 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(20%)Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(45%)Good, but non-essential (28%)Collectors/fans only (6%)Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
TRAFFIC Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory reviews
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Collaborators/Experts Reviews
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk
Another real gem and absolute masterpiece but not doing unanimity as Low Sparks. And this is very understandable because it feels a little too much like its predecessor (the cut- out cube cover) although there are many differences ( a little like Crimson ITCOTCK and ITWOP) between the two.
First Mason is again gone (for the last time, I think) , the bassist is different (Grech from family and Blind Faith fame is replaced by unknown Hood) as well as Kwaaku is replaced by second drummer. Why I like this album better is that there are no throw-away rocker such as LSOHHB's closer and no obvious rocker (R'nR Stew) and this makes for a more even album with less abrupt changes. If side one is full of happy-times melodies , hitting a high point through the long but great Roll Right Stone, side 2 is of a softer more melancholic tone as well described by the titles , but Tragic Magic is simply awesome, And Uninspired is anything but that: you can feel that Winwood was effectively feeling that way but as he sang the first line , the rest probably followed quite easy, so as a spoof he kept the intro. Wood is playing much more sax than flute on this one and this is also a change and sometimes he sounds like a whole brass section.
Unfairly criticized by the people who did not really listen to it but I kid you not - a must.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
PROG REVIEWER
"Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory" is an upbeat rocker with percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, Hood and Hawkins creating an excellent groove for the others to ride in. But, as on other Traffic efforts, Winwood plays a lot of electric guitar on this song and his ability on the instrument has never really impressed me much. His voice doesn't seem as powerful, either, and maybe that's because he was still recovering from a long, energy-sapping bout with peritonitis at the time. Wood's flute is in there somewhere but for some reason it's buried deep in the mix and the song comes off as being rather colorless to me. "Roll Right Stones" is next and the singer tells you that even though he's got the "space age before my eyes" and mankind's technological advances amaze him, the rocks that surrounded his ancient ancestors are still here with us today. (I didn't say it was profound, I'm just telling you what I heard.) It's a soulful tune with an intricate arrangement, mixing piano and organ effectively as Hood and Hawkins guide things smoothly and tightly underneath. You keep waiting for Chris to cut loose but every time he gets a shot at injecting some adrenaline with his saxophone he sounds tentative as if he's not ready to play (or something). At a whopping 13:40 in length it might have benefited from some judicious editing, but one of the enduring traits of this group has always been their tendency to stretch their songs with improvised jams and that's what happens here. Somewhere round about the halfway point they really find the song's pulse and Hawkins steps up, throwing in some exciting fills on his drums and showing that he was a worthy replacement for the exemplary Jim Gordon.
"Evening Blue" has a full acoustic guitar foundation and Steve's vocal is back to its usual charismatic proficiency, ruefully emoting the sad line "If I had a lover whose heart was true/I wouldn't be alone in this evening blue." Once again Wood has a chance to steal the show on his sax but he still sounds timid. Yet he shines brightly on his "Tragic Magic," a slow funk instrumental that really elevates the overall mood at this juncture. It starts by developing a cool, smoky atmosphere, then the music continually builds up till it reaches the hook featuring a sharp, clean horn section. It's a great track as Chris finally unleashes some playful, satisfying solos throughout the tune. "(Sometimes I feel so) Uninspired" is a bluesy, gospel-tinged song that I have always enjoyed. Here Winwood and Capaldi have written a tune that perfectly describes a feeling that affects all artists at one time or another in their lives. It's not depression, burnout or fatigue. It's not laziness, futility or frustration. It's exactly what they say it is. A disabling lack of inspiration. If there's a weakness in the delivery it lies in Steve's decision to play another guitar lead. I'm convinced that one of his stirring Hammond organ rides would have been a lot more emotional and memorable.
Kudos have to go out to Tony Wright for providing the terrific cover illustration. It's a classic. As for the album, it was very successful. It reached #6 on the charts but I don't think it's as good as "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys." Of course, that LP was bolstered mightily by the eternal bliss of its title tune while this one just didn't have a song that so completely characterized the album in the same way. But it still has the undeniable and unmistakable aura that only Traffic could create and for that reason alone it is still superior to the vast majority of albums released in 1973. 3.4 stars.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
"Shoot out at the fantasy factory" should be seen as the second release by the reinvented Traffic, as it bears little relation to anything which was released by them prior to "Low spark of high healed boys". The line up is once again tinkered with, the rhythm team from Muscle Shoals Studios (Hawkins and Hood) providing their distinctive percussion and bass. With Rebop Kwaku Baah also adding percussion, Jim Capaldi must have wondered if he was being literally muscled to one side!
The opening bars of the title track give a slightly misleading indication of what to expect here, the sound being rooted in funky jazz rock. This track is actually quite similar to SANTANA's early material, with the fine guitar work dominating the piece.
Steve Winwood, always a highly under appreciated singer, gives an excellent vocal performance on the slightly slower "Roll right stones", the longest and most progressive track on the album. The slowing of the pace is retained for pretty much all of the second side. "Evening blue" is a dreamy laid back number, Chris Wood taking the opportunity to add some smoochy sax. Wood composed the instrumental "Tragic magic", the only song Winwood and Capaldi did not co-write. While not by any means "tragic", the piece could have done with substantially more "magic".
The closing track "(Sometimes I feel so) Uninspired" rounds things off in a predictably downbeat manner. Lyrically though, it does not appear to represent the situation the title might portray, the piece being one of the album's highlights. Winwood's vocal performance is once again exemplary, although I found the intrusive percussion to be totally inappropriate to the style of music. More so on this track than any other.
Those seeking the music which led to the current Prog Folk classification of this band will need to look elsewhere. Traffic's folk influences have been firmly ditched by this time, the album being highly steeped in jazz and blues rock. The oddly shaped sleeve makes it clear that this is intended to be "Low spark.." part 2. "Shoot out.." is not really up to the standard of that album though, the feeling here being of a band reaching the end of its road.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
PROG REVIEWER
The heavy opener "Shoot Out?" is quite an embarrassing tune I have to say. IMHHO, it was quite a mistake to have placed this track there. You know, in those remote days, you went to your record shop, and usually you were played a few seconds of the opening track, and eventually the same for the second one. And you had to make up your mind based on this short introduction. Not quite convincing, unfortunately?
After this quite messy track, good old "Traffic" is back with "Roll Right Stones": a good rocker of a song that also combines good fluting and enjoyable percussion work. But don't expect real ecstasy: the moment IS pleasant but no more. A good musical combination played by skilled musicians. Is this anything extraordinary?
I very much prefer the melancholic "Evening Blue" which features an excellent vocal part from Steve (but this is again usual). This is a truly moving rock ballad which features a damned good (but short) sax part.
The jazzy instrumental "Tragic Magic" holds little magic as far as I'm concerned. Another pleasant soft-jazz-rock number for sure. But weren't we expecting more from the band? Maybe I wasn't since I were never a huge fan and my preferred album of theirs will always remain "Welcome To The Canteen" (for specific reasons outlined in my according review).
My fave track is the closing one. I would say that on the contrary of its title, this song is indeed very much inspired, emotional and in one word: beautiful. The backing band performs superbly and Steve is again phenomenal in his vocal duties. A moving guitar break and excellent percussions add a definite "Santana" feel to the whole. THE highlight.
This is a fair critic from someone who did listen to it carefully. And I'm not kidding. Three stars.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk Researcher
Well I didn't understand then, and I don't understand now, why this became the band's most popular record in the U.S. Other than "Tragic Magic" there is very little of the jazzy folk sound that made the band's first few records so appealing and even the better traits of the group (Winwood's vocals and guitar, Wood's blowing and Rebop Kwaku Baah's percuission) seem to have been reduced to smooth studio sheen and tastefully yet somewhat boringly spread thin across the other four tracks.
The only song worth special attention other than "Tragic Magic" is "(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired", whose middle section of piano, sax and hand percussion actually does sound a tad bit inspired despite the title. Winwood's vocals are too polished at this point to remain appealing to progressive music fans, but the song as a whole is worth the seven minutes or so of your life you'll invest listening to it.
As for the rest of the songs, the title track starts off well enough but the weird tempo shifts are clunky and come off a bit cheesy and inauthentic for my tastes. And "Roll Right Stones" takes a great guitar riff and vocal passage too far for too long to keep the attention of most listeners. I suspect this one was extended to give some length to the album and to avoid having to include filler tracks, but in the end it turns out to sound like one anyway.
But "Tragic Magic", the only Chris Wood-penned tune on the album, saves this record from being a total loss. The band enlisted the famed Alabaman Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section to provide a backdrop, with Jimmy Johnson's clarinet supplanting Wood's saxophone for the lead wind piece and providing a stellar accent to some exceptional piano from Winwood. The tempo shift to a controlled-jam boogie midway is more southern U.S. R&B than anything Traffic ever did before or after, and the net result is a tight rhythm and blues instrumental with just enough of a jazzy intonation to set it apart from the rest of the album and most anything else on the radio at the time except maybe some of Bob Seger's early stuff. A great song, if not exactly prototypical Traffic.
The shift in sound on this album began with the closing number on 'Low Spark' and continued to the group's final studio album 'When the Eagle Flies' a year later. The band undoubtedly also benefited by recording in Jamaica, as the percussion mixes are all quite good and clearly enunciated, especially on the last two songs. For fans of the band's early music this may be too much of a stretch for them to be comfortable with, but for those of us who discovered Traffic after they were disbanded and gone this one is a very decent album that is attached to fond memories. In the end though it can't be saved by one great and one or two decent tracks, so two stars out of five are really what it should be rated at. Mildly recommended if you are a fan of the band and if you haven't heard it yet, but not worth going too far out of your way to find.
peace
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
5 Alabama pylons
PROG REVIEWER
This album is less inspired by Folk music and most songs are more inspired by Rock music in general, with Winwood playing some distorted guitars in several parts. This can be listened more clearly in the title track of the album which also has some very good Latin music influenced percussion playing from Capaldi and Reebop. "Roll Right Stones" has a very good electric sax solo played by Chris Wood (with some "wah-wah" sound effects) in the extended final instrumental section of this song. "In "Evening Blue" Winwood plays acoustic guitars and maybe this is the most "relaxed" song in this album. The next song, "Tragic Magic", was composed by Chris Wood (all the other songs from this album were composed by Winwood and Capaldi), and this instrumental song has a lot of influences from Jazz Rock music with very good saxophones played by Wood. The final song in this album, and maybe the best from this album, is "(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired", a song with somewhat sad lyrics. Maybe Capaldi (the lyricist) was a bit tired of being working in the music bussiness, so he wrote the lyrics of this song. The music in this song is particularly very good, and this song includes very good lead guitar parts played by Winwood. In this album Capaldi did not sing lead vocals on any song, but his backing vocals are listened more clearly in "Roll Right Stones". Jimmy Johnson and Barry Beckett are mentioned with a "thanks to" in the credits section in the album s cover, but it is not clear at least for me if they also played in some parts of this album.
For their 1973 tours the band also invited Barry Beckett to join the band on keyboards, giving more freedom to Winwood to play guitar or keyboards as he wanted apart from singing lead vocals on most songs, and also giving freedom to Chris Wood who previously sometimes also played keyboards in some songs while Winwood played guitar or other keyboards. I think that this line-up of the band was one of the best they had, with the three members of The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section being very good and experienced musicians, playing very well. This line-up recorded the very good live album titled "On the Road" in Germany in April 1973. Jimmy Johnson also joined the band but as sound engineer for the concerts. Unfortunately, all these very good musicians from The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section left the band in September 1973 (but they carried on working with Capaldi in some of his solo albums from the mid seventies). Capaldi then returned to play drums with the band, while their new bass player was Rosko Gee, from Jamaica. Reebop stayed with the band until mid 1974, with him apparently appearing uncredited in two songs from TRAFFIC`s next and then last album (titled "When the Eagle Flies", which was released in September 1974) before they split in December 1974.
This album, "Shoot at the Fantasy Factory" is very good. It also has a vey good recording and mixing, and like their previous album from 1971 ("The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys") it also has a very original cover design done by Tony Wright.
After a long time of not listening to some of TRAFFIC`s albums, it really was very good and enjoyable for me to listen to them again recently. TRAFFIC was a very good band, in my opinion, despite all the changes in personnel they had.
PROG REVIEWER
The album isn't a total loss, but from the end of the title song through the first four minutes of "Tragic Magic" is twenty-one minutes of blah. That's a lot of blah, by the way, on a thirty-nine-minute album. "Roll Right Stones" finds singer/multi-instrumentalist Steve Winwood and drummer Jim Capaldi - - who co-wrote most of the album - - trying to come up with a Traffic song, but settling for a meandering Grateful Dead track that at best might've been (literally) cut down by ten minutes* and put out as a b-side. Maybe the length of the track was symbolic of the thousands of years that the Rollright megaliths have existed.
"Evening Blue" is more of the same melding of British pop-folk and US pop-soul. It's rambling and a bit too casual for Traffic; neither Winwood's soulful voice nor Chris Wood's well-played saxophone stylings are enough to elevate this beyond the band's second- division pieces. And then Wood's instrumental "Tragic Magic" picks up where "Evening Blue" left off. The downtempo vibe of the prior seventeen minutes had been, to quote the Buckinghams, kind of a drag in places, and the first four minutes of "Tragic Magic" threatens to drag Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory into simple tedium.
Thankfully, the second section of "Tragic Magic" is based on a nearly out-of-nowhere woodwind vamp that reminds me of Fela Kuti's 1970s work. It doesn't exactly fit with the rest of Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory, but it's pretty great - - my only complaint is that this two-and-a-half-minute section wasn't much longer.
The opening and closing numbers are quite a bit more consistent than the middle of the album. The standout song here is the title track, which opens the album. It's a little different from the classic Traffic sound, though I can't explain exactly why. Maybe it's because there is no sign of either folk or R&B; while neither of these necessarily defined the band, one or the other (or both) were present in most of their work. Anyway, "Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory" is one of Traffic's best songs. As is the case with "Tragic Magic," this one might've sounded pretty good if the improvisation had gone on for a few more minutes.
The last song, "(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired," is quasi-gospel, which is something Winwood can, and does, pull off. It's nothing terribly special compared to the average track on the group's prior two albums, but it's a welcome assurance that Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory wasn't just the title track plus filler.
Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory is, on the whole, a decent album, but while it's not Traffic's last album, it sounds like a record of a group of musicians who should probably take a break from each other. Although it's considerably better than the group's two- star debut Mr. Fantasy, Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory is nonetheless a two-star effort, and these two LPs serve to illustrate just how wide a range is encompassed by the two-star rating.
If you're interested in Traffic, I suggest you hold off on purchasing Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory until after listening to and enjoying John Barleycorn Must Die and The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.
====
*"Roll Right Stones" was originally 13:47, and is restored to that time as of the 2003 Island remaster.
PROG REVIEWER
Roll Right Stones is a similar attempt at a long song with regular repeated refrains as the title song from Low Spark, but there's diminishing returns at play here; the instrumental Tragic Magic has some fun contributions from Chris Wood which help things a little, but the obvious joke about the title of closing number Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired really rings true: even Steve's singing feels unenthusiastic about proceedings. It's not a terrible album - I won't skip any of the songs if they come up on shuffle - but it's not a memorable album.
Latest members reviews
Traffic, a very 70s band with very 70s vocals unloads on Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory a barrage of lengthy rock accompanied by ethnic percussion Track 1, Shootout At The Fantasy Factory kicks off right away with the song. There are instrumental breaks that go on for quite some time, stretchin ... (read more)
Report this review (#2568990) | Posted by Beautiful Scarlet | Saturday, June 5, 2021 | Review Permanlink
I have been listening to a lot of Traffic lately, so I may as while do some reviews of their work. (I have previously only reviewed Mr Fantasy.) Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory would be a solid 3 star effort if it were not for the first and second songs. They bring it up to a 4. The title tra ... (read more)
Report this review (#288494) | Posted by mohaveman | Sunday, June 27, 2010 | Review Permanlink
Sometimes they feel so uninspired... as this album is so overrated... It's probably the worst Traffic effort before Far From Home, and surely the worst album of the 70's decade, perhaps togheter with When The Eagle Flies. But Traffic is one of my all-time favourite bands, and I couldn't give u ... (read more)
Report this review (#113526) | Posted by sircosick | Sunday, February 25, 2007 | Review Permanlink
Traffic is one of those bands which I can't help but love, mostly because they weren't tied to one genre. Folk rock, jazz/fusion, prog rock, you name it. While most of us would consider the predecessors, John Barleycorn Must Die and The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys to be the quintessential ... (read more)
Report this review (#80626) | Posted by CVoss | Wednesday, June 7, 2006 | Review Permanlink
Not a bad follow up to LOW SPARK. SHOOT OUT is one of Traffic's better albums. The opening tite track is fun, and not bad overall, but not good enought to be another "Mr. Fantasy". "Roll Right Stones" is long, but the vocals are some of Winwood's finest this side of "Higher Love". "Evening ... (read more)
Report this review (#33778) | Posted by Tenorsaxman89 | Friday, May 13, 2005 | Review Permanlink
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