Shouting And Pointing
	Produced by Mott with Eddie Kramer
	Released on June 1976
	no chart information
	Find it at GEMM
PC 34236 cover [high resolution scan]

K ronomyth 12.0: OVEREND SHOUT. Although car wrecks don’t usually interest me, this AMG review did: “so bad that it inspires a sort of perverse fascination....you can’t believe that it can get worse, but it does....one of the true nadirs of ‘70s rock.” Now this was an album I had to hear for myself! As the last of the Mott records, I imagined Shouting And Pointing was so bad that the band simply couldn’t go on, leaving the country under assumed identities soon after. The cover certainly conveyed chaos, with Morgan Fisher (?!) pointing and shouting in center stage. You know you’ve got a leadership vacuum when the peripheral keyboard player and unofficial fifth member takes control. But listening to Shouting And Pointing, I have to tell you this ain’t no accident, just a collision course with reality. Mott minus Ian Hunter is short one captain, but the remaining Mottmen still keep the ship afloat with solid material from Overend Watts (already established in the band as a secondary songwriter) and Fisher. True, you wouldn’t point to anything on here when discussing the best of Mott The Hoople, but it’s not even the worst Mott record I’ve heard (Live is) let alone one of the worst albums from the ‘70s. In fact, I don’t hear a world of difference between these songs and the rockers that Dave Davies used to kick into the kitty on The Kink’s Arista albums (Nigel Benjamin’s voice actually sounds similar to Davies). So what I thought would be a disaster turned out to be a pleasant surprise, insofar as the Motts walk away from this one with their dignity intact. In the end, it’s one more Mott album left to history, one less “what if” nagging our collective musical consciousness and one more reason to look both ways when crossing hyperbolical reviews.

PC 34236 back cover	PC 34236 picture sleeve

TRACK LISTING

Shouting Side

1. SHOUTING AND POINTING    (Overend Watts/Morgan Fisher)    4:30
2. COLLISION COURSE    (Overend Watts)    3:23
3. STORM    (Overend Watts/Morgan Fisher/Ray Major)    5:26
4. CAREER (NO SUCH THING AS ROCK 'N' ROLL)    (Morgan Fisher/Nigel Benjamin)    5:22
   
   Pointing Side
   
5. HOLD ON, YOU'RE CRAZY    (Overend Watts)    4:26
6. SEE YOU AGAIN    (Overend Watts)    4:18
7. TOO SHORT ARMS (I DON'T CARE)    (Morgan Fisher/Ray Major)    3:56
8. BROADSIDE OUTCASTS    (Overend Watts/Morgan Fisher)    3:18
9. GOOD TIMES    (Harry Vanda/George Young)    4:00

CREDITS

NIGEL BENJAMIN -- lead vocals
MORGAN FISHER -- keyboards, vocals, davolisint, VCS3, electric piano, bondi beach synthi, percussion, glockenspiel
DALE GRIFFIN ("BUFFIN") -- distant drums, percussion, photograph of R.S.M. Fisher
RAY MAJOR -- lead guitar, vocals, bass guitar, percussion
OVEREND WATTS -- bass guitar, vocals, slide guitar, lead vocal, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar
Bert Fringe -- bass guitar (6)
Stan Tippins -- chorus vocals
Toby -- parrot
Eddie Kramer -- engineer, percussion
Mick Glossop -- engineer
Bill Price -- master reductions and overdubbing
Ric Stokes -- master reductions and overdubbing
Roslav Szaybo -- design
Gered Mankowitz with Alan Messer -- photography

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THE LAST WORD

"The album was written mostly by Overend in a shut room ahead of time, closed shop. I did work on No Such Thing as Rock and Roll for a long time, but, when recorded, the band decided it would not appear on the album. I quit. They changed their mind. It then appeared on the album as Career. What the fuck was that? I planned to leave at that moment." -- Nigel Benjamin, discussing Shouting And Pointing in an interview from Full In Bloom.

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