Merv Buchanan originally started up his now-sought-after Trend label in 1965 in a crusty old studio out in the wilds of suburban east Toronto. The enterprising dee jay and producer half-flippantly recalls, "The studio did mostly demo work and an album by Dutch immigrant Guido Smit, which sold 200 copies, mostly to his relatives back in Holland." A few years later, however, Buchanan had converted an old schoolhouse over in nearby West Hill and fitted it with a pair of high-tech Ampex real-to-real decks. ("The bank manager was pretty understanding, (but) he was amazed that a tape recorder could cost more than a car.") By 1969, the fledgling indie was firing on all four, kicking out a string of totally obscure psych singles by the likes of Sedum Shadows, the Uncertain and the Ultimate Image.
Though none of those records had sold more than two or three hundred copies each, Buchanan signed up a youthful jazz-rock combo from the neighbouring suburbs and set out recording the label's first full-length disc. And for a record made by four boys who look barely out of high school, Cargo's Front Side Back Side is a revelation. The squeaky clean kids (guitarist Bruce Oxley, bass player Garth Vagan, Mike Proudfoot on guitar and piano and Norm Foster behind the drum kit) may have looked like extras from the set of My Three Sons, but their spacy noodling had an unintentional lysergic edge to it, and could probably have given the Grateful Dead a good run for their money.
Even more curious is the record's live, almost muffled feel - one song, the upbeat 'Only Best Friends Can Tell', actually splices in some random nightclub din midway through. In an interview with Robert Williston over at The Museum of Canadian Music Foster recalled, "We were all in one room. We played most of (the songs) live and then maybe added in the backing vocals and a couple of instruments later on." That amateurish sound just adds to the mysterious, almost otherworldly effect. Songs like the languid 'Black Widow' and the nearly comatose 'Child of the Playroom' are pure stoned delights, while the dreamy instrumental 'Talk with Us' cruises avenues the Doors might have ventured down had Robbie Krieger been given more of a say.
Cargo added a more polished and better-recorded album to their resume the following year, but the self-conscious blues jams on Simple Things (Ringside) pale next to the acid-tinged naivete of Front Side Back Side. Barely a few hundred copies of Front Side Back Side were pressed up, so tracking a copy down will be a tough - and expensive! - slog, especially with mint copies scraping the four-figure mark. Buchanan, meanwhile, has reformed the label with plans to reissue "all Trend albums and singles, in fully re-mastered form"!!! Better stayed tuned.
by Michael Panontin
"Simple Things album was recorded off the floor, direct to 2 track, in the course of one evening. We started around 9pm and finished about 8am the next morning. I had never played or met the band 'till that night when Merv brought me in to play with them. He thought it would be nice to have keys on their record. All worked out pretty well after that. Hope this gives you some information to work with."
by Ray Parker
Tracks
1. Initial Mailing (Norm Foster, Garth Vogan, Mike Proudfoot, Ray Parker) - 4:19
2. Geordy (Traditional) - 3:03
3. Serenade To A Cuckoo (Roland Kirk) - 4:59
4. The Old Woman (Mike Proudfoot, Norm Foster) - 2:07
"Someone" was an album from Axis, a band with Greek musicians who based in Paris. They played archetypical heavy progressive rock with great organ and electric guitars, with couple of tracks were even in line with the british mellotron-rock.
Axis disbanded in 1974, after the release of their third album. Like their more illustrious compatriots (Aphrodite's Child) they succeeded in breaking into the hit lists, with a Greek traditional called Ela Ela. Axis was also the backing band for the early recotdings by Demis Roussos, after the Aphrodite's Child split.
The last two songs are propably the best on the album, with prog experimentalism that included multi instrumental jams, Keyboard heavy with quirky sounds. One of the listenable obscurities this is worth the spin. Cool album cover.
It all began one manic weekend in 1970 in a recording studio in Johannesburg - and when it was over Astra, one of the greatest rock albums to ever come out of South Africa, had been born.
While the cream of the country's finest bands were strutting their stuff at a rock festival at the 'Out of Town Club' a few kilometres away, Freedom's Children were hard at work laying down the tracks for what was to become their seminal album - a powerful symbol of the rock creativity that flourished in South Africa in the early 70s.
It took three days to completed album, from recording to final mix, but little did anyone involved in the project realise then that what had happened over that magic weekend would live on more than three decades later.
Said Nic Martens, one of the engineers for Astra who also played organ on the album, in an interview in July 2000: "What many are unaware of, is that Astra was recorded from a Friday night, to the Monday morning…on a four track Studer, eight fader Siemans valve mixer, an echo plate, with some help from a Lesley amp and a modified echo box."
This may sound archaic today when powerful software is freely available for anyone with the technical ability to create music using a PC. Seen in context, this makes Astra, if it is possible, even more remarkable.
Not only did the album capture for posterity the unique sounds - dubbed "astral music" or "acid rock" - of arguably South Africa's finest band ever, but it also caught the mood of the drugs infused culture that had taken root on the southern tip of Africa in the post Woodstock love and peace era.
From the driving lead of Julian's lead guitar, a perfect match for the amphetamine and speed culture of the day, to the surreal, trippy sound of the band that tuned into the growing use of LSD, Freedom's captured the mood and the sounds of the early 70s South African music scene.
Not for them the hit parade sounds of the Beatles, Beach Boys and the Monkees. Instead - freakily unconnected in isolated apartheid South Africa - Freedom's, like Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane on other ends of the globe, were experimenting with creativity and musical styles that tapped into the new head spaces opened up by the growing worldwide drugs and psychedelic culture.
But the seeds for Astra were planted well before that crazy weekend in 1970 when, two years earlier the band headed off for the testing grounds of England to seek fame and fortune on the international stage.
So it was that Julian Laxton, who with his magical "black box" was responsible for Freedom's trippy sounds, Ramsay Mackay, a tortured poet and the man responsible for penning the music and lyrics to some of the band's greatest songs, drummer Colin Pratley and Harry Poulos, found themselves in London.
But from headlining their own sell-out gigs back home, the band - from hated apartheid South Africa and unable to legally work in London - were frustrated and unable to work.
Says Julian: "We had time on our hands. We got to see lots of gigs, but frustratingly we could not play so we had lots of time to practice. We started working on a new album, which was to become Astra and half of it was written while we were in England.
"By that stage I had invented a gizmo, which was the beginning of my black box. I took it around to some music shops and got some interest from a company that was keen to develop it further and produce a prototype."
In return they gave us a place to stay and some music equipment, which is how we came to start working on Astra. It took about eight months of experimenting and hard practice to get it right.
"When we finally recorded the album back in South Africa we had no idea then of what it would become, it is sheer magic," says Laxton. "When I listen to it now it still brings tears to my eyes, it was the very essence of our creativity at its peak.
"We could do what we wanted, just about everything was patched into the 'black box', the Hammond organ, the piano, the vocals and the guitars. All the phasing, the echoes, all the effects, were the black box. Today these effects would be simple, but certainly not then.
So, is the urban legend that Pink Floyd made use of any early black box - and may even have been influenced by some of Freedom's work, true - or just an urban legend? I want to know.
"When we were creating Astra we were not aware of anything other than what we were doing, we put our hearts and souls into it. They had developed in England, and we were from the other side of the world. We both developed separately and in our own ways," says Julian.
When the album was finally released in South Africa in 1970 it was an overnight sensation and set new standards for local bands. It was also an album, as time has proved, that would not go away.
Behind this is a remarkable story of an album that would not die: a few years after it's release all the master tapes of that magical weekend were destroyed in a fire at EMI, which also saw the destruction of many of the original masters of Hawk's recordings, as well as other important South African musical history. It has survived because of the dedication of many people who fell under the spell of Astra.
So strongly did songwriter and producer Patric van Blerk believe that Astra's songs "would live again", that in the mid 1970s he bought the publishing and recording rights (the master rights were not available because the original tapes had been destroyed)
Amazingly, at that time there were many requests for the now unavailable "Astra" - some even from as far as San Francisco. Some of these people were willing to pay just about any price for a virgin album.
It was then, said Julian, that he and Patric, with the help of Phill Adoire (Engineer at Orange Studios in Orange Grove, Johannesburg), decided to remaster Astra from a virgin copy of the original album. It was released on both vinyl and cassette - but the album bombed, selling only a handful of copies, and was subsequently deleted by EMI from their stock.
"When it was first remixed from an original vinyl copy in 1990, it was done on a 16 track. When we filtered out the surface noise and re-eq'd the upper mids to brighten up the tracks, the sounds that were hidden on the original came out. I was not very happy; the original had a mystical-mist shrouding the music, which was lost in the remix. It unlayered the music, but this latest CD is much truer to the original."
But beyond the music, the stories surrounding the album encapsulate the madness, the bizarre setting, to what was apartheid South Africa at the time Astra was made.
When the original album was ready and samples cut, Freedom's were suddenly faced with the prospect of it not being played on radio after the national broadcaster, the SABC, ruled that one of the tracks, The Kid Who Came From Nazareth, was blasphemous.
Says Julian: "It was a huge problem, the album was already cut and processed and the covers printed, but the SABC would not give us airtime. So we went back into the studio and "fixed" the song, replacing the word Nazareth with Hazareth. The album covers were also reprinted, and only then were the SABC happy.
Equally bizarre was an objection by the SABC to the name Freedom's Children right at the beginning of the band's career, with the national broadcaster objecting to the use of the word "Freedom". Only when they changed the name to Fleadom's Children", used on several early 7-single releases, were the SABC's policies satisfied.
Two of these songs, Freedom's debut single in 1967, The Coffee Song, and its B-side, a cover of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, originally released under Fleadom's name, as well as the 1968 single Little Games, are included on this new release.
Along the way, the band also had to deal with Mother Grundies who said the band was evil and their music would turn the youth into drug-crazed addicts.
It was a time in South Africa when it was common practice for bands to tour widely, playing live at clubs, bigger gigs and festivals and Freedom's created controversy and headlines wherever they went. And, as they toured the country, city fathers and local police in some small towns often banned them.
Besides the trippy sound of their music, their image of bad boys was spurred on by their liking for long black capes and publicity photographs that pictured the band in graveyards.
From its earliest beginnings way back in 1966, Freedom's Children (briefly Fleadom's Children) went through many changes in its line up, as some of the country's finest musicians passed through its ranks. Something of a local version of John Mayall's Blue Band - a nursery for some of rock's finest musos - many of South Africa's top rock musicians did stints in the constantly changing line-ups, with many going on to form some of the biggest bands of the day. Some of those who passed through the Freedom's revolving door included Ken E Henson, Mick Jade, Barry Irwin, and Rabbitt's Ronnie Robot and Trevor Rabin.
But it was the line-up of MacKay, Laxton, Davidson and Pratley, with Gerard Nel and Nic Martens, who joined forces with them to record Astra, that many regard as the apex of the band.
Speak to anyone who knew the band and two people, the tortured genius Ramsay, for his words and music, and Julian, with his driving lead and magic black box, are credited with helping shape the band's unique sound.
Looking back today, Colin Pratley, who with his wife runs a shelter for abandoned AIDS babies in Durban, remembers how Astra came together.
"Ramsay had written words and music, there were the skeletons of songs and each of us put something of our own into the album. It was a mad weekend where all that counted was the music - and after three days we had Astra.
"It was insane. At one stage Julian was kicking the echo chamber to get sounds that today with modern equipment, we would take for granted. This was Freedom's at its apex; it was the ultimate expression of its time, of the music and the lifestyle."
There are many fans who believed that Astra, with songs like the Kid Who Came From Hazareth, the Homecoming and Slowly Towards the North, was based on the life of Jesus.
Not so says Julian, who today owns his own rock club in Johannesburg and prefers playing stripped down blues rock: "It was a concept album, but the story about the album being about Christ is not true. But who knows what was in Ramsay's head when he wrote the songs. He was interested in many different things and read a lot, so he got his ideas from all over the place."
The song Aileen - listed as Alien on the 1990 reissue - was written by Ramsay about a girl he once lived with, and Slowly Towards the North was - "I think" , says Julian - about his dream of one day returning to his native Scotland. But the origins of the other songs on the albums, says Julian are anyone's guess. "For all I know he may have read the bible at the time he wrote some of the songs, but I really do not know".
Ramsay, returned to live in Scotland, where he still has a band, from many years ago. He seldom - if ever - granted interviews - and always let his music speak for itself.
And then there was Brian Davidson, a slightly built man with one of the finest rock voices of his time. He was recruited from a soul band during a talent-scouting mission in Cape Town, soon after they returned to SA from England, Davidson, who went on to put together his own band many years later, died mysteriously in Thailand, where he was teaching English, in December 2002.
"Brian was a bit like Robert Plant, he used his voice like a musical instrument," says Julian. "To this day I still cannot say how he managed to create some of his vocal sounds. The sounds on some of the tracks, some of the high harmonies, I honestly cannot say where they came from."
If ever there was an album that has stood the test of time, Astra is it. The music is as relevant and as powerful today as when it was released 34 years ago. The high point of a great band at its peak, so sit back and enjoy and feast your ears on the best of the very best.
by Raymond Joseph, Cape Town, November 2004
Tracks
1. Aileen - 2:02
2. The Homecoming - 6:16
3. The Kid He Came From Hazareth - 5:36
4. Medals Of Bravery - 3:55
5. Tribal Fence - 4:34
6. Gentle Beasts (Parts 1, 2) - 5:26
7. Slowly Towards The North (Parts 1, 2) - 7:04
8. Afterward - 4:57
9. The Coffee Song (Raymond Barry Smith, Tony Colton) - 2:48
Born Nov 13, 1946, raised in Kentucky and Virginia by middle-class parents. I was given piano lessons at age five for a few years, then switched to guitar. My early idols were the Everly Brothers and Elvis. Folk music caught my ear around age fifteen, and I was impressed by Ian and Sylvia and Joan Baez. Jimmy Reed was a big influence and really got me started on the blues.
I started performing at age fifteen at some of the local coffee houses for ten dollars a night. I met a lot of older musicians and learned a lot about singing and playing with feeling. There was no room for phonies in that scene, and I knew I would always be content in that environment. I went off to college like most kids in my high school, spent a couple years at Georgetown University (Bill Clinton was my classmate) and immediately got into the Washington, D.C. music scene. As you might have guessed I spent more time hanging out in blues clubs and psychedelic joints than I did studying. I dropped out after two years and decided to become a full time musician.
I played coffeehouses and bars up and down the East Coast, mostly as a soloist on accoustic guitar, and singing my own songs. After a few years of this the psychedelic band Headstone Circus asked me to join them and I did. That was a fun band and we had some wild times during the late sixties. It was a great time to be alive, to be in a popular band, and of course the women were flocking around us continuously.
When I was offered a recording contract as a soloist, I reluctantly left that band to record in New York City. It was a sad parting, but I felt that I better take my shot when I had the chance. Well, the rest is history. I never got rich and famous but I have had a wonderful career in music, written some good songs, met some great people, and have the satisfaction of knowing that I did and am still doing the thing that I was born to do.
by Glenn Faria
PS. My only complaint is the sound quality, I believe it could be better...
Tracks
1. Born In Georgia -3:57
2. Summer's Gone -4:30
3. Reason To Live -3:16
4. Centuries To Live -2:22
5. Feast Your Eyes -2:32
6. Love Is Calling -6:22
7. No Time For Your Tears -4:26
8. I'm Crazy -5:41
9. I'm Crazy -2:39
10.Get Off My Back -3:19
11.I Can't Take It -3:27
12.Strange Love -3:58
13.I'm Going Down -5:06
14.You Got To Live -4:21
15.Bear Down -5:18
Lyrics and Music by Glenn Faria
*Glenn Faria - Vocals, All Instruments except Drums
For most of its early history, the Elektra label concentrated almost exclusively on the album market. Prior to Love's "My Little Red Book" in 1966, they never had a significant entry on the national singles charts; prior to the same band's "7 and 7 Is" later that year, they never had a Top Forty hit. In 1967, this would change to some degree when the Doors' "Light My Fire" soared to #1, followed in the rest of the 1960s by several other Doors smashes and the Top Ten success of Judy Collins's "Both Sides Now." Yet even into the first half of the 1970s, Elektra's product and aesthetic would remain firmly geared toward the long-playing record.
That didn't prevent the label from often trying, however, to get both singles sales and AM radio airplay. From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, Elektra issued quite a few singles, which included a surprising number of non-LP tracks. Some of them, in fact, were by artists who never managed to record an album for Elektra; many of the tracks have seldom or never been reissued since. On this compilation, Collectors' Choice Music gathers ten of the more interesting such non-LP sides from the mid-'60s through the beginning of the '70s.
Although it wasn't until Elektra began recording rock music in the mid-1960s that any of their singles attracted national airplay, the company's ventures into the singles market stretched back further than many realize -- indeed, all the way to its earliest days in the early 1950s, when it was recording little else but folk music. "There was [an] attempt to get radio airplay going back to the very beginning of the label," notes Elektra founder and president Jac Holzman. "In fact, we had a singles label at the very beginning called Stratford Records. We were originally called the Elektra-Stratford Record Corporation. They came out as 78s, this is how early they were." But after a few 78s (including efforts by Jean Ritchie, Frank Warner, and a young Glenn Yarbrough), "I decided that singles were a waste of time. So I stopped doing that immediately, and just concentrated on the LPs."
Still, Elektra never totally abandoned the singles field. Around the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were 45s by two of the label's more popular and mainstream folkies, Yarbrough and Bob Gibson. As the early '60s approached the mid-'60s, there were singles by Dian & the Greenbriar Boys, the Dillards, Fred Neil & Vince Martin, Judy Henske, and Judy Collins. In fact, Henske's "High Flying Bird," which verged on rock'n'roll with its drums and electric guitar, sounds like it could have even been a hit given the right push. For her part, Collins recalled in a 2001 interview that her single of Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!" -- with a young, pre-Byrds Roger McGuinn on guitar -- "became a bit of a minor hit. I remember it was the first time that the Gavin Report took any notice of me; they wrote about 'Turn! Turn! Turn!,' and how terrific it was. And I began to show up on the Billboard and Cashbox lists, I believe."
"Turn! Turn! Turn!" would, of course, become a #1 hit in a folk-rock arrangement for McGuinn and the Byrds in late 1965, about a couple of years after Collins recorded it. It's still not widely known, however, that about a year before the Byrds took Seeger's anthem to AM radio, and about six months before they ignited the folk-rock explosion with a chart-topping cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," Elektra Records had issued the band's debut single. It's not widely known for a simple reason: the single was credited to the Beefeaters, a name chosen by Holzman "because I was enamored of what was going on with the British Invasion." Both sides of that obscure 45, "Please Let Me Love You" and "Don't Be Long," kick off this Elektra non-LP rarities anthology.
Of the five original Byrds, only McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby performed on this 45, recorded with the assistance of Los Angeles session men Ray Pohlman (on bass) and Earl Palmer (on drums). "Please Let Me Love You" showed the embryonic Byrds at their most Beatlesque, while "Don't Be Long" would be remade, in a more tightly arranged and well-recorded version, by the Byrds on their second album (under the title "It Won't Be Wrong"). Though simplistic and overtly Beatles-influenced, both sides (both penned by Clark, McGuinn, and their friend Harvey Gerst) were charming and catchy tunes, and intriguing (if naive and rudimentary) documents of the band's first steps toward their pioneering folk-rock fusion. The record made no commercial impact, however, and under the name of the Byrds, the band were soon recording for Columbia, where they'd quickly rise to stardom with "Mr. Tambourine Man."
Holzman isn't sure why Elektra didn't record more with the Beefeaters/Byrds. "I don't know why we just got the single, and didn't get the album," he admitted in a 2001 interview. "[Byrds co-manager] Jim Dickson really wanted to be on a larger label. He was concerned that singles would be necessary, and Elektra had no track records with singles. I think they wanted to keep the band a little innocent, in case there was an opportunity to make a deal elsewhere. My recollection is that they were asking for far more money than I was willing to pay. Which, in retrospect, was stupid, 'cause I later paid that same amount of money for Love. But they also wanted a ton of stuff that I didn't want to get started with, stuff that was routine in the '80s. They were asking for this stuff back in the mid-'60s." Specifically, Dickson told me in an interview the same year, he and the Byrds wanted $5,000 from Holzman to buy instruments. He also said the tracks used on the 45 were sold to Jac with the understanding that Holzman select the name and not disclose the identity of the group. In Dickson's view, Jac broke that promise, although Holzman does not recall this.
Though it took a while for Elektra to fully immerse itself in rock, it continued to dabble in it with other non-LP folk-rock singles in the mid-1960s. In the early days of folk-rock, there was a boom in Bob Dylan covers, and Elektra entered the fray with Judy Collins's rendition of "I'll Keep It With Mine" in late 1965. "I'll Keep It With Mine" was, on paper at least, a hot item, being an unreleased song by folk-rock's hottest songwriter. In fact, Nico had wanted to record the song first, but Collins beat her to the punch, though Nico would release her own version on her debut album a couple of years later. Despite organ by Al Kooper (who also played on some of Dylan's best early folk-rock recordings, including "Like a Rolling Stone"), and despite being hailed by future Dylan biographer Robert Shelton in The New York Times as "one of the best folk-rock performances yet recorded," and despite Collins's stature as the most successful Elektra recording artist at that time, the single stiffed.
"There's a very good reason that it never made it onto an album," Collins told me in 2001. "It's not a very good song, particularly. Certainly not a Dylan song that lives up to its name. It doesn't really go anywhere, the lyric's kind of flat, and the singing is very flat." All the same, she added, "I love the idea that he said, at least said to me, that he wrote the song for me. Then he told Joanie Baez that he wrote it for her. There was some talk about that, as to who did what. Of course, he says in his retrospective album [Biograph] that he wrote the song for me."
Another established Elektra artist who used a non-LP single as an opportunity to dive into electric folk-rock for the first time -- with Al Kooper in tow again! -- was Phil Ochs. In its original acoustic folk guise, "I Ain't Marching Anymore" had already been the popular title track of Ochs's second album (as well as quickly becoming a vastly popular singalong anthem at antiwar demonstrations). With backing by Kooper's new rock band, the Blues Project (also including guitarist Danny Kalb, who'd played guitar on Ochs's first album), and production by Elektra stalwart Paul Rothchild, it translated quite successfully into folk-rock. Starting and closing with bagpipes, the song was exponentially more powerful in its new arrangement -- enough so that it seemed like it could have had a chance on AM radio. Yet it was only released in Britain when it came out in 1966, though it did make it onto a flexi-disc in the US folk magazine Sing Out! It would, in fact, be Ochs's only electric rock recording for Elektra, though he'd make numerous others in the following few years after moving to A&M Records.
"It was basically to test the waters," Michael Ochs, Phil's brother and (beginning in 1967) manager, told me in 2001. "He wanted to expand his music, and so he thought, 'Wouldn't this be great, to do a rock version.' I'm not sure that it was his decision to be careful and only put it out in England. Phil was very tight with Murray the K, and Murray the K was on [New York's] WOR-FM at that point, doing a very hip show. Every week he'd play like three new releases for major artists, and people would call in and pick their favorite. I know he played Phil's electric 'I Ain't Marching Anymore' against the latest Stones record and one other major one, and the calls that came in all said they loved Phil's record the best." Roger Daltrey of the Who, however, did not love the record; in his review of the single in Melody Maker's "Blind Date" column, he complained, "It sounds like a punished protest song. Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off! It's not even good for my grandmother."
Along with Judy Collins and Love, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were the biggest sellers on the Elektra roster just prior to the emergence of the Doors. Though their sales came almost exclusively from album-buyers, they didn't totally ignore the singles market. In 1966, they came up with the non-LP 45 "Come On In," which boasted somewhat of a funkier rock-soul feel than their more customary electric blues approach. It should be noted, however, that the Butterfield Band were never purists, even if they started out playing nothing but the blues. By their second and best album, East West, they were branching out into a cover of the jazz standard "Work Song," the tour de force thirteen-minute psychedelic instrumental "East West," and even a pass at Mike Nesmith's "Mary, Mary." "Come On In" didn't give Butterfield a pass into the hit parade, but his band remained a popular Elektra act throughout the rest of the decade, even after the departures of ace guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, both of whom played on the single.
The Doors' phenomenally popular 1967 debut album, including the #1 hit "Light My Fire," launched Elektra into the psychedelic era with a vengeance. While the Doors were by far the label's biggest sellers in the 45 market, Elektra did land some other chart hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the biggest of them being Judy Collins's Top Ten cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." Many people who own that single, however, are unaware to this day that the B-side was not issued on LP at the time. For the song on the flip was Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," which was used as the title track of her well-received late-'60s album of the same name. However, the recording used on the B-side of the single was an entirely different one than the LP version, which had a full-band production and a dramatic rising key change mid-song. In contrast, the B-side version featured a much sparser drumless arrangement minus that key change. For a non-LP B-side, it must be said, it did get around: it was also used for the film soundtrack of The Subject Was Roses, and later showed up on the 1972 Judy Collins greatest hits collection Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins. And now, naturally, it's on this CD.
Collins had a great knack for introducing the work of as-yet-little-known songwriters to a wider audience via her cover versions, having been among the first singers to record compositions by such outstanding composers as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, Robin Williamson, Richard Fariña, Eric Andersen, John Phillips, Fred Neil, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell. Sandy Denny was one of her lesser-heralded such discoveries, and it's a testament to Collins's adventurousness in recording up-and-coming writers that the song was recorded in the first place. For Sandy Denny, and even her late-'60s group Fairport Convention, were barely known in the United States when Judy recorded "Who Knows Where the Time Goes." As Collins remembered in her autobiography Singing Lessons, it was her producer of the time, David Anderle, who made her aware of the song. "One day David Anderle said, 'I have a tape to play for you,' and put on Sandy Denny's great song, 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes,'" she wrote. "I fell head over heels in love with the song and used it as the title song of the album...She was a great writer and I came to know and hang out with her later in England when Anthea Joseph, a red-haired fireball who worked for Polygram in England, introduced us. Sandy was pretty and blond, with a voice that could cut through a concrete wall or lull a baby to sleep. Her solos with the Fairport Convention are still hauntingly beautiful. On a visit to New York she once came to my apartment and we swapped songs. She sang me a great song called 'Solo,' which I would someday like to record."
In the late '60s, David Anderle was also producing another Elektra artist, David Ackles. Though his darkly theatrical brand of singer-songwriting generated a cult following among album-oriented listeners and some fellow musicians (most notably the young songwriting team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin), Ackles racked up few actual sales for the label. Elektra nonetheless did release a single of his in 1968, "Down River," backed by one of the oddest items in the company's whole catalog, "La Route a Chicago." A French-language version of "The Road to Cairo," one of the stronger numbers on his 1968 self-titled debut LP, it's one of the rarest (and strangest) tracks only to show up on an Elektra 45. "The Road to Cairo," incidentally, was one of Anderle's most commercial numbers, if there could be said to even be any such things; Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, & the Trinity covered it on a single as the follow-up to their big British hit "This Wheel's on Fire," although it didn't make the UK charts.
It's still a mystery as to how this French version of the song came to pass. " I remember -- and it might have even been Jac Holzman -- but somebody thought that David would have a shot in France, because of the nature of Charles Aznavour and the French ballad singers," Anderle told me in a 2002 interview. "Somebody had a mention that his music was very remindful of French balladeer music. Jacques Brel, I think, was the person that was mentioned. It might even have come from Judy Collins, who I was producing at the time also. I think Elektra figured he would have a shot internationally. And so he did the French version of the song. Maybe it was paid for by the French office? I'm surprised we didn't do an Egyptian one, a Tasmanian one, and...we tried everything with that poor guy." Elektra did indeed try with three separate David Ackles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though only the third of them made the Billboard charts, and then peaking at a lowly #167. "David Ackles was one of my great disappointments, that we weren't able to do better with him," admits Holzman. "I thought he was terrific. But then the person who admired him most wiped him off the map" -- that person being Ackles fan Elton John, whose songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, would end up producing that final Elektra Ackles album, American Gothic.
As another overlooked Elektra act of the late 1960s, Eclection put out just one self-titled album before breaking up. Though usually described as a British folk-rock group, only one member was actually British, the others hailing from Norway, Canada, and Australia. The Eclection album is one of the best little-known folk-rock LPs of the era, its strong male-female vocal harmonies and rich orchestral production at times making the group sound more like a California group than a British one. The record was promising enough to make collectors wish there was more, and in fact there is more, in the form of the non-LP B-side included on this CD, "Mark Time." The track could have fit into the Eclection album without a hitch, but didn't make that cut and never surfaced again, Eclection itself marking time before their possibly premature split. Eclection bassist Trevor Lucas would later team up with future wife Sandy Denny (as well as Eclection drummer Gerry Conway) in Fotheringay and a mid-'70s Fairport Convention lineup, while chief Eclection songwriter Georg Hultgreen would (as Georg Kajanus) join Sailor, who had a couple of Top Ten British singles in the mid-1970s.
"I loved that group," Holzman told me in a 2001 interview. "They were a fascinating group, a wonderful band, and I thought the records were wonderful. I think our mistake was not bringing them to the States, because they really needed to get out of England. There was too much other stuff competing in England, and in the States, we might have had an easier time. I don't know why we didn't bring 'em. I think, had we got 'em the right venues and gotten them some help with their show, it would have worked."
At least Eclection got to release an album, an honor denied the Stalk-Forrest Group, although the band recorded quite a bit of material for Elektra in the first half of 1970. Nowadays the outfit are primarily remembered for having evolved into Blue Öyster Cult. But as the Stalk-Forrest Group, they played a far lighter brand of psychedelic-folk-rock that fit in well with the Elektra roster, with some similarities to the sound of fellow Elektra artists Love and the Doors. Legendary rock critic Richard Meltzer was a friend of the band, and contributed lyrics to much of their material, as did fellow rock critic Sandy Pearlman, who also managed the group.
For reasons that are still not totally clear, Elektra decided not to release an LP, though enough songs had been recorded to produce a fairly strong one. "I think I didn't like the group," Holzman frankly states. "Had I heard Blue Öyster Cult more evolved, that would have been another matter. They altered the personnel, and the group then became very solid." Before the band got dropped from the label, however, two tracks -- the A-side co-written by Meltzer and future Blue Öyster Cult keyboardist-guitarist Allen Lanier, the B-side by Meltzer and future Blue Öyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard -- did eke out in July 1970 as a promotional single, of which only about 300 copies were pressed. Both sides of that 45, "What Is Quicksand?"/"Arthur Comics," conclude our Elektra rarities compilation, which in its own small way reflects the label's evolution as a whole from folk through folk-rock to psychedelia and the dawn of hard rock.
by Richie Unterberger
Artist - Title - Composer
1. The Beefeaters - Please Let Me Love You (Gene Clark, Harvey Gerst, Roger McGuinn) - 2:23
2. The Beefeaters - Don't Be Long (Gene Clark, Harvey Gerst, Roger McGuinn) - 1:56
3. Judy Collins - I'll Keep It With Mine (Bob Dylan) - 3:09
4. Judy Collins - Who Knows Where The Time Goes (Sandy Denny) - 4:44
5. Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore (Phil Ochs) - 2:52
6. Paul Butterfield - Come On In (Mel London) - 2:08
7. David Ackles - La Route A Chicago (David Ackles) - 5:16
8. Eclection - Mark Time (Georg Hultgreen) - 2:54
9. Stalk-Forrest Group - What Is Quicksand? (Allen Lanier, Richard Meltzer) - 3:22
10.Stalk-Forrest Group - Arthur Comics (Albert Bouchard, Richard Meltzer) - 3:11
The initial album is called Grandfather, giving its name to the title of this collection. Released in February 1971, it’s actually a conceptual piece telling the story of a man’s life from birth to death. Now, this wasn’t an original idea even then (yes, sit down S F Sorrow by The Pretty Things, we know you’re there), but it is surprisingly well-executed, even now not appearing too dated. The influences are clear throughout: the album comes across as something of a cross between The Moody Blues and King Crimson’s first album. The former supplies the concise nature of the songwriting, and the way with an often simple but effective melody and easily understandable lyric, while the latter supplies the sometimes angular instrumentation, the sax and the sometimes quirky urgency.
The whole thing holds together pretty well still, with tracks like Make Your Peace and the double header Prelude / Your Country Needs You being particular highlights. It really is worth a listen, and not merely for the curious. Thirteen (!) bonus tracks are appended, being mostly acoustic demos recorded by guitarist Chris Baker, and they are a mixed bag as you would expect – though one or two of them, such as A Song Of Fairgrounds for example, really could have been made into something very good.
ow, we fast forward as a kind of montage through such trifles as the invention of video recorders, mobile phones, DVD, CD, satellite television, the entire life-cycle of Britain in the EU, and something called the internet, and reach the second album. Which is called Brontosaurs And Bling. On Hallowed Ground arrives, and all bets are off. It’s suddenly powerfully-played, edgy yet melodic prog with a real kick in its boots, and the band have almost visibly found their lost mojo. It’s so unexpected as to be utterly joyful. But here’s the thing: it gets even better. Well, not immediately, as It’s Only Love / Tomorrow Is Another Day threatens to derail things again immediately, but with track seven, Sitting In An English Garden, we get the best song on the first and second discs combined, with a brilliantly clever and wittily sardonic lyric referencing the 1960s via an English summer’s day, being perfectly matched by a delightfully upbeat psych-pop tune which simply entrances.
It’s the best song that XTC never wrote. Following this, Pigs In Outer Space, despite the odd title (the second pig reference, for some reason), almost repeats the trick with another slice of pure power-pop genius, borrowing a hint of Peter Frampton’s Baby I Love Your Way, and turning it into a much better song while they do so. At this point, the album has become really exciting.
Next up is the 2018 album, the unimaginatively titled Time, but against every single expectation we could possibly have, this turns out to be a dyed in the wool classic album. Taking the best facets of the highlights of the previous record, the band manage to turn out a razor-sharp, satirical and witty art-pop album which has the best qualities of XTC and 10cc / Godley & Creme written through it like a stick of rock. The difference from the previous album is astonishing, as if they have taken a trip to Robert Johnson’s crossroads in order to become the spiritual heirs to 10cc. From the opening ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds homage’ of the darkly cynical Acid Rain through to the final deftly delivered eco-message of The Houses In Between, there is no weak song here among the thirteen tracks.
Today Is Such A Lovely Day is irresistible no matter how hard you try, Elephants Dump is hilariously clever while Never Done Godspell lists all of the low points and degrading indignities the protagonist has been forced to endure during his life and career, with the repeated caveat ‘but I’ve never done Godspell…’ Some of the stuff here is honestly like Zappa fronting the Kursaal Flyers, it’s that perfect a distillation of that slyly, sardonic art-pop that the previous album missed by the length of a football pitch. Best of all, and for me the standout song on the whole three disc set, is the hymn to rampant entitled consumerism and greed which is Gimme Jam. Interspersed with the constant urgent demands to ‘Gimme Jam’, we get brilliant lines such as ‘Gimme champagne and caviar for sophistication / Gimme real French coffee for my constipation’ and, best of all, ‘Gimme new Maseratis to a monthly quota / Gimme GaGa and Cheryl on a nightly rota – Gimme Jam!’- all this to a leg-pumping boogie accompaniment which just makes you want to put it straight back on when its finished.
The main thrust of the promotion here, and indeed almost all of the accompanying booklet, is based around the Grandfather album, which is understandable as it has its collectable and cult reputation – but despite the undeniable quality of that album, it is still outshone by the unheralded ‘underdog’ Time. Get this set. Enjoy Grandfather, be patient by Brontosaurs, but fall in love with Time. The latter is the most surprised by an album I’ve been in a very, very long … well … Time. Inspired stuff.
by Steve Pilkington, September 27, 2021
Tracks
Disc 1 Grandfather 1970-71
1. Birth The Beginning (Barry Everitt) - 4:01
2. Out Of Time - 4:32
3. Make Your Peace (Barry Everitt) - 5:25
4. Yours Claudia - 2:55
5. Prelude To Your Country Needs You? (Chris Baker, Barry Everitt, John Clements, Dave Sewell, Jim Sturgeon) - 3:03
6. Your Country Needs You? (Chris Baker, Barry Everitt, John Clements, Dave Sewell, Jim Sturgeon) - 3:41
7. A Dawning Moonshine - 3:50
8. Years And Fortunes - 4:09
9. A Prayer For Her - 2:56
10.Light Up A Light - 3:27
11.On A Lonely Night - 4:21
12.Grandfather - 2:49
13.Only Feeling - 2:42
14.Henrietta Hall - 2:07
15.Not Now At All - 2:20
16.Victorian Blue - 1:07
17.This Place Was Us Was Home - 3:30
18.When Baby Comes - 2:20
19.A Song Of Fairgrounds - 2:11
20.Gold And Silver - 1:22
21.True Blue - 1:16
22.When You Move - 2:29
23.All I Have To Give - 3:21
24.August Lights - 3:53
25.Naked Fingers - 2:15
All songs by Chris Baker except where stated
Tracks 1-12 The album "Grandfather", released February 1971 (Square Records SQ 101)
Bonus Tracks 13-25 as Chris Baker, home demos recorded 1970-71
Disc 2 Brontosaurs And Bling
1. Pig Heaven - 4:07
2. In '67 - 4:04
3. I Don't Understand (Peru) - 3:38
4. Like The First Time Again - 4:35
5. On Hallowed Ground (Chris Baker, Nikos Iosifides) - 4:57
6. It's Only Love / Tomorrow Is Another Day - 6:35
7. Sitting In An English Garden - 4:11
8. Pigs In Outer Space - 5:14
9. Butterflies Are Free - 4:21
10.The Universe In My Heart (Chris Baker, Nikos Iosifides) - 3:52
11.Streetwise - 3:56
12.Songbird In The Rain - 4:31
13.Peru (Reprise) - 2:32
14.Full Circle - 4:57
15.We're Only Human - 3:29
16.Maisie Grey - 2:53
17.Don't Go Holding On To Me - 3:15
18.Kifissia Sunrise - 3:20
19.All The Same - 3:20
All songs by Chris Baker except where indicated
Tracks 1-13 from The album "Brontosaurs And Bling" (DMT DMT 0001, released 2015)
Tracks 14-19 Previously unreleased, recorded 2020-21
Disc 3 Time... 2018
1. Acid Rain - 3:14
2. Today Is Such A Lovely Day - 3:00
3. The One Who Saved The Sun - 3:48
4. Elephants Dump - 4:12
5. Summer Days With You - 3:42
6. Einstein In The Sun - 3:19
7. Mr Towers' Hours - 3:18
8. Gimme Jam - 2:52
9. I Will Be With You - 3:49
10.Never Done Godspell - 2:46
11.Home Again - 3:31
12.We Always Knew - 4:43
13.The Houses In Between - 1:23
14.Archie Vine - 6:10
15.When We Were Young - 4:42
16.Lonely Eyes - 3:41
17.The Sentimentalist - 3:39
18.The One - 2:35
19.Walk The World - 3:39
20.What Will Be - 3:37
21.There Is No More (You Do It All) - 2:45
All songs by Chris Baker
Tracks 1-13 from the album "Time" (DMT DMT 0002, released 2018)
Tracks 14-21 Previously unreleased, recorded 2020-21
Dear Mr.Time
*Chris Baker - Lead, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals, Bass (Disc 1, Tracks 13-25 all Instruments and Vocals)
*John Clements - Drums, Percussion
*Barry Everitt - Lead Vocals, Organ, Piano, Harpsichord
A nearly forgotten singer/songwriter of the '60s, Tim Rose's early work bore a strong resemblance to another Tim working in Greenwich Village around 1966-67, Tim Hardin. Rose also favored a throaty blues-folk-rock style with pop production flourishes, though he looked to outside material more, wasn't quite in Hardin's league as a singer or songwriter, and had a much harsher, even gravelly vocal tone. Before beginning a solo career, Rose had sung with Cass Elliott in the folk trio The Big Three, a few years before she joined The Mamas And Papas. Signed by Columbia in 1966, his 1967 debut album (which actually included a few previously released singles) is considered by far his most significant work.
by Richie Unterberger
Although The Musician was recorded several years after Tim Rose's 15 minutes of fame had officially ended, his voice is as gloriously ragged and raspy as ever, and the album contains several flashes of the brilliance that made Rose a Greenwich Village legend in the mid- and late '60s. Considerably less folky-sounding than his earlier records, The Musician contains heavy rock versions of the two songs with which Rose is most identified ("Morning Dew" and "Hey Joe") along with several originals and covers of generally high quality. Like Alex Chilton, another devotee of pure pop music who seems entirely unconcerned with commercial success, Rose's no-apologies vibe has always placed him in the "love him or hate him" category.
On his exceedingly strange version of Neil Young's "Old Man," Rose, amid swirling psychedelic slide guitars, sings like a raging drunk, lending the song an air of chilling desperation. Although much of the production values are quite dated, Rose does a good job of treating each song with a complete emotional honesty that transcends any sonic limitations.
by Pemberton Roach
Tracks
1. Morning Dew (Bonnie Dobson) - 4:43
2. 7.30 Song (Tim Rose, Nick Theobald) - 4:51
3. Small Town Talk (Bobby Charles, Rick Danko) - 3:51
4. The Musician (Mike Shepstone, Peter Dibbens) - 3:43
5. Loving Arms (Tom Jans) - 3:31
6. Old Man (Neil Young) - 4:09
7. Hey Joe (Billy Roberts) - 4:30
8. It's Not My Life That's Been Changing (Tim Rose) - 3:25
9. The Day I Spent With You (Tim Rose) - 3:29
10.Second Avenue (Tim Moore) - 3:13
11.Now You're A Lady (John D. Bryant) - 3:26
12.Where Is The Good Life? (Tim Rose, Andy Summers) - 3:52
Personnel
*Tim Rose - 5-string Banjo, Banjo, Bass, Acoustic, Rhythm Guitars, Electric Piano, String Arrangements, Vocals
*Jonathan Rowlands - Tambourine
*Andy Summers - Electric Guitar, Nylon String Guitar
*Roger Sutton - Bass
*John Verity - Electric Guitar
*Ron Berg - Drums
*Richard Burgess - Drums
*David Charles - Drums
*Tina Charles - Background Vocals
*Paul Cobbold - Bass, Bowed Bass, Fuzz Bass, Electric Guitar
*B.J. Cole - Dobro, Steel Guitar
*Mick Dyche - Guitar
*Ian Ellis - Bass
*Tommy Eyre - Flute, Keyboards, Electric Piano, String Arrangements
Released in 1971 around the same time as his solo Buddah release (The Time to Live Is Now), Music, on Artie Kornfeld's Eleuthera imprint distributed by Buddah, distinguished itself from the Carole King album of the same name because Music was also the title of this group led by songwriter Buzzy Linhart. Not the Music Explosion or Roxy Music or the Music or Music, Inc., the band known simply as Music feels like a cohesive unit, and the album plays with that rock band consistent groove. On "Everybody's Got (And Don't You Know)," Linhart veers off into Donovan Leitch's swimming pool; to be specific, he's vamping on the riff from Donovan's "Atlantis" inside this tune. "Mother's Red Light" is a whole other thing.
Heavy with Linhart's vibes, Klingman's keyboards, and bassist Douglas Rauch playing some lead guitar, the song is psychedelic jazz, more so than Dave Grusin's acidic soundtrack to the film Candy, which came just a few years before. Produced by the band with engineer Eddie Kramer, the album is a solid effort boasting a heavier sound than Linhart's other solo efforts and a deliciously psychedelic gatefold cover. David Bromberg guest stars on dobro for the Mark Klingman composition "Kilpatrick's Defeat," while Moogy, of course, appears on piano and organ, musically supplementing the sounds of drummer John Siomos, lead guitarist Doug Rodriques, and the aforementioned bassist, Doug Rauch. Leiber & Stoller's "Searching" crawls and slinks with a rock & roll groove, the charm and band identity giving all the melodies on Music a solid spirit that comes from a group effort when everything is clicking, ending the album the way things began on "The Bag I'm In" -- that Fred Neil number moving with a blues-rock earnest.
Tim Hardin's "Reputation" almost goes honky tonky, a bit of a change from the Cream-meets-Stories sound of the album's first track. Stories were also on a Buddah imprint around this point in time, and the label seemed to be making a serious move into adult pop. The tragedy here is that Music didn't get to put out more...music. There's definitely something special in the grooves of this important but not very visible recording. (This album was later released on the Kama Sutra label under the title Buzzy Linhart is Music.)
by Joe Viglione
Health issues plagued Linhart throughout his entire career, and potentially prevented him from achieving the fame commercial success enjoyed by many of his peers. During his stint in the Navy, Linhart developed chronic lung damage while fighting a fire with inadequate breathing apparatus which resulted in emphysema. The death of one of his fellow sailors during his naval service caused poorly-treated PTSD, while a late ‘70s car accident during a move to L.A. resulted in permanent hip and knee injuries. Linhart was homeless for a while during the 1980s before getting on SSI disability in 1990 and settling in the Berkeley, California area. As he got older, Linhart suffered from osteoporosis, a series of mild strokes, and several moderate heart attacks, although he continued to perform whenever possible.
Buzzy Linhart, a gifted songwriter and instrumentalist, passed away on Friday, February 13th, 2020 at the age of 76.
Linhart was one of the best, if perhaps the most obscure of 1960s-era Greenwich Village artists, the five albums he released between 1969 and 1974 featuring his unique vocals, immense songwriting skills, and remarkable instrumental talents, resulting in an often-exhilarating blend of folk, jazz, blues, and psychedelic-rock unlike anything any other artist was creating at the time. Known for his manic live shows, critic Robert Palmer wrote in a 1977 New York Times review of one of Linhart’s performances, “no sooner has he hit an opening chord than his eyes roll back in his head and he begins to bob and weave like a dervish in a trance,” the legendary critic concluding that “Mr. Linhart’s talent is genuine.”
by Rev. Keith A. Gordon, March 2, 2020
Tracks
1. That's The Bag I'm In (Fred Neil) - 3:53
2. You Got A Reputation (Tim Hardin) - 4:21
3. Time To Go - 4:58
4. Talk About A Morning - 6:35
5. If You Love Me - 3:57
6. Everybody's Got/Don't You Know - 3:01
7. Mother's Red Light - 4:16
8. Kilpatrick's Defeat (Mark Klingman, Mike Gayle) - 2:57
Singer songwriter John Buck Wilkin's second and last album from 1971, in diversed styles, kind of folk country rock delivered in a very smooth style, sometimes harder with a use of wah wah guitar. John Buck Wilkin has a soft voice and the songs are very good with meaningful lyrics.
Tracks
1. I'm Free - 2:02
2. Going On - 2:47
3. Get Up - 4:04
4. Down On Music Row - 2:24
5. Star Spangled Girl - 5:03
6. Money (Berry Gordy, Janie Bradford) - 4:13
7. Sun Moon And Stars - 4:09
8. Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry) - 3:39
9. Look At Me Mama - 2:59
10.God Save The Queen - 2:49
Words and Music by John Buck Wilkin except where indicated
The first thing that strikes you about this new 2CD live album from Colosseum, professionally recorded across several shows in early 1971, is how sensational it sounds. Vibrant, clear, sparkling, dynamic and alive. Mixing/mastering engineer Eroc (one Joachim Ehrig, a pro recording artist in bands and solo, as Eroc, from the 70s to the 90s, now a mastering maestro) has done an astounding job!
It’s a blistering performance, too. For those who don’t know much about Colosseum, their sound is – to my mind – part of a peculiarly British sort of jazz/rock blend, involving the likes of brass, Hammond and vibraphones, that thrived briefly for roughly a year either side of 1970. It’s a sound world that had its origins in the Graham Bond Organisation of the middle 60s – in which Colosseum mainstays Jon Hiseman (drums) and Dick Heckstall-Smith (saxes) both played – was influenced by the absurdist songwriting of Pete Brown with Jack Bruce in Cream, and that was developed by Jack Bruce’s ‘Songs for a Tailor’ (1969) album arrangements (again, featuring both Hiseman and DHS) and his 1971 touring band (which reunited him with Bond), by the Keef Hartley Band (a briefly flourishing drummer-led band with horn section), by Neil Ardley’s New Jazz Orchestra (which collaborated with Colosseum on some live shows), by the first two albums by jazz/rock arranger Michael Gibbs (1970-71) and his live band, and by one or two other acts of that brief period. It wasn’t ‘jazz-rock’ as represented by the likes of Nucleus in Britain or the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the US; rather, it was a kind of progressive rock music with jazz players and influences involved and, in Hartley and Colosseum’s cases, based more around songs than instrumentals.
If this new 2CD is so sensational, one might ask why it has languished so long in the late Colosseum bandleader Jon Hiseman’s archive, although really that question refers specifically to Disc 1, recorded live at a university in Canterbury on 12 February 1971. Let me explain…
During a British tour in early 1971, Colosseum, with doubtful enthusiasm from their management and label, set about recording shows with the Granada mobile, with the intention of capturing their onstage magic, and a clutch of hitherto unrecorded numbers, on a live album (Jon feeling their three studio albums to that point had lacked something of this). In Jon’s 2010 autobiography ‘Playing the Band’, it is explained that while nobody could by then recall how many shows had been recorded, the first was at Canterbury, the third was at Manchester University on 13 March, there was another at Manchester University on 18 March and the final recording was made at the Big Apple in Brighton on 27 March. Somewhere in between, there had also been a recording made at Bristol. The second show in Manchester – a free gig – was put on because the band had felt the first one was below par, with a ‘huge row’ in the dressing room after, and they were desperate to try and get something good on tape.
After the Brighton show, their manager, Gerry Bron, pulled the plug on more live recordings and Jon became despondent. However, they all listened again to the first Manchester show at Lansdowne Studios and realised it was much better than they’d reckoned at the time. Thus, five tracks from Manchester on March 13, and one from Bristol (date not given, track not identified) – according to Jon in his book, the only one from a show other than Manchester that they thought was any good – became the June 1971 double LP ‘Colosseum Live’. It would be their last album, bar a compilation of oddities, until reforming in 1994.
In Jon’s book, bar a passing mention, there is no discussion of the Canterbury show. The presumption is that, for whatever reason, it was simply not considered for release and everyone moved on to the next gig recording (and the next…).
Emails with Eroc reveal that the original multi-track recording from Canterbury was rather weak and needed a lot of work. Clearly, his results with today’s technology would not have been possible in 1971. Indeed, the eventual ‘Colosseum Live’ 2LP that was mixed back in the day, from the first Manchester show, was often thought to be an imperfect, rather gritty presentation, albeit capturing the energy Jon was after (the 2016 Esoteric Records expanded edition of the album, remastered by Ben Wiseman, significantly enhanced the sound). So, one presumes that technical issues rather than any questions about the performance were why the Canterbury show was never considered for release in 1971, and nor for a disc’s worth of further drawings from the well of these 1971 tapes that appeared in 2009 (more of which below).
So, what’s on the new album? Well, in different order, Disc 1 comprises Canterbury versions of five of the six (Manchester) numbers on the 1971 LP – Mike Gibbs’ ‘Tanglewood ‘63’, Jack Bruce’s ‘Rope Ladder to the Moon’, Graham Bond’s ‘Walking in the Park’ and band originals ‘Skellington’ and ‘Lost Angeles’. The 1971 LP’s sixth number* was ‘Stormy Monday’ – famously, an entirely spontaneous encore version (after that dressing room contretemps) of the classic T-Bone Walker blues. It was immediately added to the Colosseum repertoire – but, of course, it had been absent at Canterbury. The sixth number on the Canterbury disc of the new 2CD set is a barnstorming 15-minute ‘The Machine Demands a Sacrifice’ (incorporating Jon’s ‘Time Machine’ drum solo).
(* Note: ‘I Can’t Live Without You’, recorded at the first Manchester show, was added as a seventh track to all CD versions of ‘Colosseum Live’ from 1992–2004; indeed, a 1990 Japanese CD edition of the album remains the only one to NOT feature this extra.)
Disc 2 of the new 2CD ‘Live ‘71’ comprises five numbers over its 73 minutes (Colosseum specialising in rather long items) that have been released before in two contexts: firstly, as a live disc of previously-unreleased tracks in the 2009 4CD Colosseum box set ‘Morituri Te Salutant’, presumably mixed by Jon Hiseman and certainly mastered by Peter Reynolds; secondly, as the second disc in Esoteric’s 2016 2CD edition of ‘Colosseum Live’, mastered by Ben Wiseman. These are: ‘Rope Ladder’ and ‘Skellington’ from Brighton; ‘I Can’t Live Without You / Time Machine / The Machine Demands a Sacrifice’ from the first Manchester show (the ‘I Can’t Live’ section being the bit added to those 1992-2004 single CD editions of the original live album, mentioned earlier); ‘The Valentyne Suite’ from the second Manchester show; and ‘Stormy Monday’ from Bristol.
Is Eroc’s mastering of the items on this disc better than the previous two outings? I believe it is. Others with more time can do a more comprehensive A/B, but from a few minutes each of two tracks compared between the Esoteric release and the Repertoire one, it’s clear that there is more warmth and depth in Eroc’s mastering without sacrificing any of the presence; Wiseman’s mastering on the Esoteric release is good, but chooses to emphasise the top end, with a slight harshness (albeit plenty of punch). At the very least, Eroc brings something fresh to the tracks on this disc.
It is Disc 1, however, the 74 minutes of magic from Canterbury, that make this release essential for anyone interested in British progressive rock. To reiterate: the performance is great and the mixing and mastering are sensational. In short, a deftly covered Chris Farlowe fluffed entry into one track aside, it’s better in my view than the released-at-the-time ‘Colosseum Live’, which is itself a classic of the era.
‘Colosseum Live ‘71’ is one of five (!) Colosseum live albums that Repertoire has just released – the others being a ‘best of the bootlegs’, from quality amateur recordings made between 1969–71 at Boston, Montreux, Turku and Rome, and newly mastered (also by Eroc). The first three of these are probably of most interest to fans, in featuring vocalist Chris Farlowe’s predecessors James Litherland and Dave Clempson along with a diversity of material. The Rome 1971 set, with Chris, comprises four numbers familiar from the pro-recorded Canterbury set. Seventies ‘Melody Maker’ personality and uber Colosseum fan Chris Welch contributes notes to all of these releases.
If I’ve mentioned Eroc a few times, it’s partly to put right an administrative error: in contrast to the revamped bootleg albums, he is not mentioned at all in the ‘Live ‘71’ booklet, where his work was many times more demanding. (A more minor error in the ‘Live ‘71’ package miscredits the Disc 2 ‘Stormy Monday’ as being from Manchester rather than Bristol.)
by Colin H, 19/07/2020
Tracks
Disc 1
1. Tanglewood '63 (Michael Gibbs) - 13:09
2. Rope Ladder To The Moon (Jack Bruce, Pete Brown) - 8:39
3. Walking In The Park (Graham Bond) - 8:13
4. Skellington (Dave "Clem" Clempson, Jon Hiseman) - 13:21
5. The Machine Demands A Sacrifice (Jon Hiseman, James Litherland, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Pete Brown) - 14:59
6. Lost Angeles (Chris Farlowe, Dave Greenslade, Dick Heckstall-Smith) - 15:53
Recorded live at the University of Kent, 12 February 1971
Disc 2
1. Rope Ladder To The Moon (Jack Bruce, Pete Brown) - 11:14
2. Skellington (Dave "Clem" Clempson, Jon Hiseman) - 14:18
3. I Can't Live Without You-The Time Machine-The Machine Demands A Sacrifice (James Litherland, Jon Hiseman, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Pete Brown) - 21:37
4. The Valentyne Suite (Jon Hiseman, Dave Greenslade) - 21:13
5. Stormy Monday Blues (Aron T. Walker) - 5:12
Tracks 1-2 recorded live at the Big Apple, Brighton 27 March 1971
Tracks 3,5 recorded live at Manchester Univercity 13 March 1971
Track 4 recorded live at Manchester Univercity 18 March 1971
