The Dave Clark Five Discography
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 The Dave Clark FiveFive by Five Release Date 1969 Label Epic Rating:  This album, which never saw a U.S. release, is pretty amazing as a document of where the Dave Clark Five were in the last third of the 1960s. Divided between a fast side ("Go!!") and a ballad side ("Slow!!"), the group's pounding beat was still there, albeit just a bit slower; the rhythm guitar had given way to jagged lead lines, and Mike Smith was singing a few shades blacker than he'd sounded in 1964. And the covers of rock 'n' roll standards were replaced by numbers such as &"Please Stay," the old Drifters tune authored by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, which is done in a blue-eyed soul style, with a gospel-like chorus. On numbers like &"Devoted To Me," with lots of echo and acoustic guitar, the group sounds a bit like the Mickie Most-era Yardbirds. The singing is more prominent than on the group's classic releases, yet Five By Five is not that far removed from their mid-'60s material -- there's a great beat and chorus on &"Just A Little Bit Now" and &"Maze Of Love" (which also features some Jimi Hendrix-style guitar), and a good high hat count on &"I Still Need You" and &"Return My Love," which fit in well with the group's rocking ballads from 1964-65. Most of the music dates originally from 1966 through 1968; its delayed release as an album was the result of EMI's and Epic's general paucity of Dave Clark Five long-players -- had they been able to issue this album intact a year or two sooner, it might even have raised the group's fortunes by updating their image and sound. Bruce Eder, Rovi |
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