Short Reviews [Jeremy - 2022 - "From Here To Eternity"]

When I think of Jeremy Morris there are various things which come to mind such as psychedelia, power pop, prog, keyboards, multi-instrumentalist, but I do not often think of him as a guitar hero. True, there are some other musicians involved on this album in the guise of Stefan Johanssen, Randy Massey and his old friend drummer Dave Dietrich, but it is rare indeed for any of his recordings to feature real lead breaks, so this album came as something of a shock. “Forever By Your Side” is for the most part one of Jeremy’s Christian numbers, here dealt with a huge dose of The Moody Blues, but there is a section at the end which is quite a surprise and certainly made me sit up and pay attention I also then realised the song appeared to have been playing for some time and when I checked the tray card I saw there were only seven songs on this album, with only two shorter ones, one at nine minutes, two at 11, and the other two at 18+. It is not unusual for Jeremy to undertake cover versions, normally making them appear seamlessly alongside his own, so one could imagine that in a better time and place Jeremy would be much more recognised, but what he has done to “Green Tambourine” is both ambitious and audacious. I must confess to not knowing the original by The Lemon Pipers, which was a massive hit in 1967/1968 but I do know the version on ‘Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo’ and is something I played a great deal when I was somewhat younger than I am today. That version comes in at 2:19, the original 2:23, but in Jeremy’s hands he has moved it to 18:07! It is now a psychedelic progressive masterpiece with power pop elements and layers of guitars, which take the whole song to a totally different level. Normally Jeremy is somewhat controlled in his approach, each album following one particular theme or style, and I have reviewed countless of his over the years, yet while this is instantly identifiable as one of his, he has explored different avenues and created something which is going to interesting to fans of multiple genres, and while many progheads think of Jeremy as the man behind ‘Salt The Planet’ I would urge them to check this out as well.