Peter Green - The End Of The Game (1970)

01. Bottoms Up
02. Timeless Time
03. Descending Scale
04. Burnt Foot
05. Hidden Depth
06. The End Of The Game		play

Personnel:
Peter Green (guitar)
Zoot Money (piano)
Nick Buck (keyboards)
Alex Dmochowski (bass)
Godfrey Maclean (drums, percussion)

...there might be a planet where radio stations play great music. Until we find that planet, you'll have to check out CD's and other media. "The End Of The Game" is Peter Green's foray into something that is truly genre bending. Is it Jazz? Rock? Blues? Is it Ambient music? Or is it variations on Folk melodies? It's a bit of all of the above, and the terms "mind expanding", or "stunning" come to mind upon listening. The expansive musical exploration suggests why Peter Green and his former bandmates in Fleetwood Mac evenutally parted company. Fleetwood Mac wanted to play more traditional and familiar blues variations and rock tunes, while Green seems as if he wanted to fuse the improvisations of Jazz/rock musicians like Frank Zappa and John McLaughlin, with the blues of early John Mayall and Jimi Hendrix at his peak.

The music here is wordless, and it is as compelling as anything released by the likes of John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Because it is not easily classified as to musical type (rock, blues, or jazz are all equally applicable), it is not "radio friendly", and probably doesn't fit into any pop or other contemporary radio formula--so don't expect to hear it on most stations. "The End Of the Game" is probably a bit too "far out" for many listeners' tastes, like most of the output by the aforementioned jazz legends. Like a lot of jazz and ambient music, this is not a collection of catchy melodies and clever hooks. Unlike a lot of avant-garde music, though, this stays based in blues chord and rhythmic strucutes and never drifts into the "wierdness for the sake of wierdness" realm that ultimately sinks most expermimental music.

Of Green's subsequent CD's, only "In The Skies" even comes close to this. While I liked the songs, rhythms, and melodies on "In The Skies", it left me with none of the sense of exploration and adventure that this CD does. This CD holds up well to many repeat listenings, and all but demands to be digitally remastered. ---B. Lynch

Fleetwood Mac's guitarist Peter Green released the all-instrumental The End Of The Game (1970) before disappearing for almost a decade. Borrowing the format of the jam session from jazz music, but the atmosphere from Ernst's surrealistic paintings, horror soundtracks and voodoo rituals, Green indulged in sheer sound-painting. The hallucinated ramble of the guitar weaves colorful textures for mantra-like psalms. It is visceral, primordial music that echoes the eruption of volcanos, ocean tides and the life-cycle of equatorial forest. Green's expansion of consciousness is one of both folly and ecstay, one that would be better defined as epic terror.

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