Guitarist/composer Mandel was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1945, and has been an active and creative musician throughout his long, distinguished career—collaborating with the likes of Canned Heat, the Rolling Stones, Don ”Sugarcane” Harris, Charlie Musselwhite, John Mayall, Henry Kaiser, and Steve Kimock. The instrumental LP, The Snake, was released in 1972 on the Janus Label and was co-produced by Mandel and Canned Heat’s Skip Taylor. They did a great job balancing a multitude of instruments into a distilled audio picture, and, considering this record was released in 1972, Mandel attains many otherworldly, incredibly compressed guitar sounds in conjunction with low-down blues tones that still sound early-morning fresh to my ears.
However, not all of the compositions are standard blues fare. Songs like “Pegasus” and “Divining Rod” have great cinematic changes that Mandel rips over melodically. “Bite the Electric Eel” is a great fusion of tribal rhythms with Mandel playing compression-laden, Hendrix-like tones that sound simultaneously controlled and unhinged. Also, it’s extraordinary how much of his playing sounds “backwards.” Great stuff.
What I learned from this record is that guitar instrumentals can be melodic and innovative, and yet keep an eye on the audience. There’s no need to alienate the listener—or the integrity of the song—with self-centered pyrotechnics. Mandel and company combine great chops while grooving hypnotically hard. The Snake has fine playing by a large cast of fine musicians, including Pure Food and Drug Act alumni—Adolfo de la Parra, Randy Resnick , Victor Conte, Paul Lagos, and Don “Sugarcane” Harris—as well as Chuck Domanico, Freddie Roulette, and the great Earl Palmer.
I’ve been listening to this underrated guitar record—which I feel wasn’t reviewed fairly back in the day—for 40 years. It’s in my DNA, and it remains in my Top 10 instrumental records—right up there with Buddy Emmons’ “Black Album,” Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, and Jimmy Bryant’s Country Cabin Jazz. Not every track on The Snake hits it out of the park, but when this great group connects, it’s a grand slam.
by Jim Campilongo
Tracks
1. The Divining Rod - 3:04
2. Pegasus (Jim Taylor) - 3:29
3. Linda Love - 2:32
4. Peruvian Flake - 3:30
5. The Snake (Harvey Mantel, Larry Taylor) - 3:06
6. Uno Ino (Harvey Mantel, Jim Carroll, Skip Taylor) - 2:36
7. Ode To The Owl - 2:40
8. Levitation (Charles Lloyd, Harvey Mantel) - 5:15
9. Bite The Electric Ell (Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Harvey Mantel, Paul Lagos, Randy Resnick, Victor Conte) - 4:11
All compositions by Harvey Mantel except where indicated
Personnel
*Harvey Mandel - Lead Guitar
*Victor Conte - Bass
*Paul Lagos - Drums
*Randy Resnick - Rhythm Guitar
*Chuck Domanico - Bass
*Earl Palmer - Drums
*Jim Taylor - Piano
*Don "Sugarcane" Harris - Strings
*Antonio de la Barreda - Bass
*Adolfo de la Parra - Drums
*Charles Lloyd - Flute
*Kevin Burton - Organ
*Freddie Roulette - Steel Guitar
Recognise this plotline? In 1969 folk-rockers Paper Bubble recorded Scenery. Despite some impressive songs by the band’s core duo, Brian Crane and Terry Brake, fine vocals and most of the future Strawbs backing them, the album sunk on release.
After decades of highly prized collectability, Scenery returns, along with an unreleased follow-up, instrumental mixes, a rare single and a final album from 1981. There are engaging moments throughout, particularly on Scenery, such as the epic period-piece Energy, and the pensive Tomorrow Never Comes Like A Silver Spoon. When it gets a bit too barefoot-in-the-park on Being Human Being, the band’s skilled delivery throughout helps compensate. Indeed, with blasting keyboards from Rick Wakeman, the frenetic Mother, Mother, Mother rocks your head off.
The second album showed interesting signs of artistic development on tracks like Somewhere To Belong. Despite this, the label cancelled the release and the duo returned to the folk club scene. Their return in 1981 is listenable enough, though occasionally too close to some of that period’s waterlogged singer-songwriting.
Nevertheless, full credit to RPM for tracking all this down and the package comes with a characteristically excellent, informative booklet.
by Steve Burniston
Post psychedelic folk-rock featuring the classic album Scenery plus its previously unreleased follow up LP, both with the song writing duo backed by The Strawbs.
In 1969 a classic folk rock album escaped on Deram, Scenery by Paper Bubble, produced by Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper for their then production company Strawberry Music. The album’s merits took a couple of decades to be recognised but today is now highly regarded (and with an average LP collectors price of £100 to boot). Recorded in the same year of release the producers engaged Rick Wakeman, and Richard Hudson, John Ford, Paul Brett recently of Velvet Opera, to back the Paper Bubble duo Brian Crane and Terry Brake, at Regent Sound engineered by Tom Allom.
The same team re gathered again in 1970, this time at Olympic studios to lay down the songs for a follow up called Prisoners Victims Strangers Friends. By now the backing band had gelled as a unit, along with Cousins and Hooper, as The Strawbs and sailed off into the sunset. Same time the initial return on ‘Scenery’ had failed to inspire the suits and consequently PVSF was left on the shelf. Happily a sound desk recording was preserved by Brian.
Thus RPM is proud to present both Paper Bubble LPs as backed by The Strawbs, plus the duo’s late 70’s single, and to round off Disc 2, following PVSF, their final work together the 1981 album I’m Coming Home.
As a bonus on Disc 1 we have been able to include freshly mixed versions of 5 songs from Scenery and 1 from PVSF, taken from the only surviving 48 year old multi track masters.
For the first time we have the Paper Bubble story direct from Brian and Terry in the booklet, plus photo’s from Brian own archive.
Brian Crane continued to write songs and in the 80’s had the distinction of an entire album’s worth of his music being set to Hindi lyrics and released by CBS India. The success of this led to one of those songs being re-recorded by another artist AMAR in the 90’s and again selling big numbers in the Asian territories. In 2018 a theatre production called ‘Poppyfields’ is being staged by Theatre Severn which features 8 of Brian’s songs, including 3 from the Paper Bubble era.
11.Tomorrow Never Comes Like A Silver Spoon - 4:43
12.Woman - 3:36
13.Loving You - 5:33
14.Sorry About That - 2:52
15.Mm Of La - 3:38
16.Mother Mother Mother - 3:40
17.Tomorrow Never Comes Like A Silver Spoon - 4:41
18.I'm Laughing - 3:09
19.Being Human Being (Alternative Version) - 4:32
Music and Lyrics by Terry Brake, Brian Crane except tracks 12-13 by Brian Crane
Tracks 1-11 from LP "Scenery" 1969
Tracks 12-13 Single 1980
Tracks 14-19 Unreleased 1969
Disc 2
1. Working Man - 3:08
2. You're Feeling Sleepy - 2:56
3. I Am, You Are, We Are - 3:31
4. Strange Days - 5:28
5. Amazon Song - 3:44
6. Afternoon - 3:56
7. Sorry About That - 3:04
8. Prisoners, Victims, Strangers, Friends - 5:14
9. Alone - 1:25
10.Somewhere To Belong - 4:36
11.Coming Home - 4:28
12.Marcia - 2:57
13.Time - 4:50
14.Everything Will Be Alright - 3:27
15.Got To Live - 4:10
16.Getting A Little Love - 3:50
17.Sleepy - 3:01
18.Change In Me - 3:55
19.Funny - 2:26
20.Saints And Sinners - 5:09
21.Alone - 2:29
Tracks 1-10 written by Terry Brake, Brian Crane, unreleased "Prisoners, Victims, Strangers, Friens" 1970
Tracks 11-21 written by Brian Crane and recorded as Brian Cane and The Stillbreeze "I'm Coming Home" 1981
In the dawn of the seventies, when the singer/songwriter boom was just starting to reach full steam, with the heady rush of psychedelic rock giving way to the intimate sounds of introspective troubadours aiming for the coveted “Next Dylan” tag, an album appeared on the Elektra label with the evocative title Woodsmoke and Oranges. The voice was not unlike Dylan’s, circa the dusty John Wesley Harding, but shot through with a keening country wail bespeaking a grounding in vintage honky-tonk and bluegrass. The songs too mixed traditions freely, taking as many liberties with traditional folk and country song structure as the lyrics did with the ‘60s balladeer template. The album cover featured a drawing of a man with a pensive mien and a hint of melancholy in his hound-dog eyes, and the name emblazoned across the top was Paul Siebel.
Siebel was a graduate of the Buffalo, New York folk scene, where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Eric Andersen and Jackson C. Frank. He had done a stint in the army before hitting the Greenwich Village folk circuit where he became a mainstay by the late ‘60s, having paid his dues at Village clubs like The Four Winds. “When you’d do the Four Winds,” he recalls, “you’d do like five sets a night, sometimes it got so weird. It’d be about the third set and a few beers into the night; you’d start the third verse [of your song] and you’d think ‘I just did that.’ Well sure you did it, like 45 minutes ago!”
All the long hours and hard work paid off when Siebel was picked up by Elektra in ’69. Though Woodsmoke and Oranges, was his debut album, he had already been around the block a few times. He was 33 by the time it was released in 1970, and there was a gravitas and maturity to both his writing and his delivery that was lacking in many of the era’s new troubadours. While the album was chock full of striking songs, it ultimately became best known for “Louise,” an elegiac narrative about the passing of a lady of the evening. More people came to know “Louise” through its many cover versions (most notably those of Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt) than Siebel’s original recording. “A lot of women [singers] picked it up,” says Siebel. “They liked the pathology of Louise and identified with that.” These more successful versions were good for the songwriter’s bank account, but didn’t do much for his own record sales.
Equally affecting were tunes like the incisive small-town vignette “My Town,” one of the era’s few truly subtle anti-war songs. Siebel says the characters were “maybe second-generation people in America — ‘My town was fathered by orphans’– people who left their roots and are pining away in America.” A figure of derision in the song is the blindly patriotic “Miss Delia,” but Siebel claims compassion even for her. “Miss Delia is also someone that you know and love, it could be our own mother. That’s part of our makeup also, to raise the flag, fight for our country, and be chauvinistic — what else are you protecting? When you protect your borders, are you being a chauvinist, are you being a patriot? Are you being a fascist, what are you being?”
Tunes like the opening track, “She Made Me Lose My Blues” showed a strong country influence that would be further amplified on Siebel’s second album. In fact, country music had been a part of the songwriter’s musical mindset for a long time, and he was something of a trailblazer in terms of incorporating it into the ‘60s Village folk aesthetic. “I got into Jimmie Rodgers’ songs, which I thought fit very well into the folk idiom…I got to be known for doing country. No one in the folk scene was doing this, with the exception of perhaps Jack Elliott doing cowboy songs, not quite country. [The Jim] Kweskin Jug Band maybe did a little. And of course there was the Holy Modal Rounders doing it tongue-in-cheek — if you did it tongue-in-cheek it was okay, you couldn’t do it proper. I think I wanted to find a voice and a venue in the city folk scene and I used country. One of the problems I had in the ‘70s — country began becoming very popular and people approached me saying ‘Why don’t you go to Nashville?’ I was not a country singer, I did not want to go to Nashville; they could do that stuff better than I could. I would get a lot of ‘What are you doing singing country music? You’re from upstate New York!’ So if you were a banker from Georgia, you would’ve been more authentic?”
Siebel’s brand of country was an idiosyncratic one though – the country-oriented tunes on both of his albums willfully and wonderfully bent the harmonic framework of conventional country. He’s characteristically modest about this, saying “They weren’t I-IV-V, but neither is [George Hamilton IV’s 1963 country hit] “Abilene,” or [traditional tune] “Salt Creek,” those changes, the minor part back to the major, those things had been around, so I didn’t consider ‘Miss Cherry Lane’ more sophisticated than that stuff. A couple of my [country-flavored] songs are Beatles-influenced – ‘Pinto Pony’ maybe a little bit. ‘Uncle Dudley’ — pure John Lennon/Paul McCartney.”
While sales of Woodsmoke and Oranges didn’t exactly necessitate Siebel seeking tax exile in the Caribbean, a solid touring schedule gave him a strong mid-level profile on the early-‘70s singer/songwriter circuit. “There was a whole circle of nice clubs all across America,” he remembers, “The Troubadour in L.A., The Ark in Ann Arbor, Earl of Old Town in Chicago, Passim’s in Boston, the Gaslight here (in New York), The Second Fret in Philadelphia. So the first years you had money all over the place, not huge stuff, but I didn’t have to worry about the rent for a while. I got paid fairly well, but I never broke into big money. And I did that for about 10 years.”
1971 saw the release of Siebel’s second Elektra album, Jack-Knife Gypsy, which upped the ante in terms of both songwriting and production values. Where the first album had been an intimate, homespun-sounding effort, the follow-up was much more ambitious, employing everything from full-tilt electric rock & roll to sweeping string arrangements. Fortunately, it all worked, partly due to the sympathetic production of Robert Zachary. Siebel, however, expresses misgivings. “Bigger production, more money — I think it was premature to do this kind of production with that. I think this should have led to something bigger, I think I still should have kept it simple.” Regardless, the all-star backing band assembled for the album included Byrds guitarist Clarence White, famed mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, country pedal-steel legend Buddy Emmons, Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon, and Cajun/country fiddle phenomenon Doug Kershaw, among others. The rich sound they created fueled some of Siebel’s most powerful compositions, like the outlaw-at-the-gallows tale “Pinto Pony,” the inscrutably poetic, rather Dylanesque “Jasper and the Miners,” and another sneaky anti-war tune, the dark, paranoid parable “Jeremiah’s Song.”
Unfortunately, Jack-Knife Gypsy didn’t do any more to fill Siebel’s pocket than its predecessor had, and it turned out to be the last album he’d ever record. Though he continued to maintain his performing career throughout the ‘70s, cracks began to show after a while. “I don’t know why I didn’t write another record,” he muses, “I started drinking, things started coming apart. I guess I wasn’t getting the recognition I wanted, and without that, how can you write? And then after a while I just couldn’t go out and do those same songs again and again. I soured. It soured. It started coming apart. Then I quit drinking, got all cleaned up, and then I was stone sober trying to entertain a bunch of people having a party…It got to be too difficult. I opened for Bonnie Raitt once at Max’s Kansas City I think, and I remember Bonnie kind of apologizing for that, because I think there was a time when she opened for me in the old, old days.”
In the ‘80s, Siebel jumped off the train, leaving his musical career behind and working a series of day jobs. In the years to come, he would make the occasional, extremely infrequent guest appearance, but his days of gigging and songwriting were behind him for good. Eventually, he moved to Maryland, where he ultimately landed an outdoorsy job with the Parks Department, and started avidly pursuing an interest in sailing, but no matter how much distance Siebel puts between himself and his songs, they can never lose their power. Over the years, several of his tunes – not just “Louise” – have been recorded by other artists, from Emmylou Harris to David Bromberg. In 2004, his Elektra albums were reissued together in England as a twofer, earning ecstatic reviews from the British music press, and this year, in MOJO Magazine’s celebration of Elektra’s 60th anniversary, this writer had the opportunity to single out Siebel’s debut as one of the label’s shining moments. Siebel may not be singing the songs anymore, but they’re still out there waiting to be discovered — or re-discovered. As another Greenwich Village songwriter, Richard Meyer, once said: “A record is like a time bomb, you can never tell when it’s gonna go off.”
by Jim Allen
Tracks
1. She Made Me Loose My Blues - 2:39
2. Miss Cherry Lane - 2:56
3. Nashville Again - 3:13
4. The Ballad Of Honest Sam - 4:23
5. Then Came The Children - 4:11
6. Louise - 3:42
7. Bride 1945 - 3:33
8. My Town - 3:12
9. Any Day Woman - 3:06
10.Long Afternoons - 4:26
11.Jasper & The Miners - 2:39
12.If I Could Stay - 3:44
13.Jack-Knife Gypsy - 3:29
14.Prayer Song - 4:49
15.Legend Of The Captain's Daughter - 3:56
16.Hillbilly Child - 2:59
17.Pinto Pony - 2:25
18.Miss Jones - 4:27
19.Jeremiah's Song - 2:03
20.Uncle Dudley - 3:12
21.Chips Are Down - 4:36
22.Nervous - 3:33
All songs by Paul Siebel
Musicians Woodsmoke And Oranges 1970
*Paul Siebel - Acoustic Guitar, 12 String Guitar, Vocals
*David Bromberg - Dobro, Acoustic, Electric Guitar
*Weldon Myrick - Pedal Steel Guitar
*Richard Greene - Violin
*Gary White - Bass
*Jeff Gutcheon - Organ, Piano
*Don Brooks - Harmonica
*James Madison - Drums
Bolder Damn, formed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida 1969, got a following by opening up for the big names that came through the state. They had a mad and theatrical live show that got a reaction in those days because neither Alice Cooper nor Black Sabbath had turned up! The band reached a good fan base because of this live show.
Allegedly during the epic "Dead Meat" people with capes carried the lead singer off stage while the band continued to play, then they carried the singer back on stage in a coffin! The fans wanted an album so the band went into the studio in the summer of '71 recorded "Mourning" in just 4 hours with hardly any overdubs.
The album is very dynamic and has a huge soundstage. It shows the band as excellent tight musicians who were capable of both writing and performing original songs delivered with meaning and strong lyrics especially, and, as it turned out, ironically about Vietnam.
The haunting doom-power of "Dead Meat", a mind-blowing epic track clocking in at 15 minutes long, the moving boogie feel of "Got That Feeling" and the alarming "Monday Mourning" are just some of the great tracks on this killer album, which is of a consistently high standard throughout.
Bolder Damn could have been huge negotiations with a couple of labels had just started when front man John Anderson and bassist Ron Reffett got drafted into the US Army and inevitably Vietnam. This fatally interrupted the bands plans to make a proper release and spread their name outside the state. "Mourning" is a mighty testament and one of the most essential powerhouse albums from the early 1970s.
CD Liner Notes
Tracks
1. BRTCD - 2:59
2. Got That Feeling - 3:31
3. Monday Mourning - 3:08
4. Rock On - 4:15
5. Find A Way - 4:42
6. Breakthrough - 3:24
7. Dead Meat - 16:05
All songs by John Anderson, Glenn Eaton, Robert Eaton, Ron Reffett
Dave Lewis is a singer / songwriter who moved to California from Texas in 1971. He happened go to Gazzarri’s on the Sunset Strip where he met Mike Cochrane and his band Train. They went into the studio and recorded a song Dave wrote called "Witches Brew". This is the only known recording with the original members of Train on it. After that, Dave and Mike Cochrane started recordind together for several years as a studio duo.
Lewis is a refreshing vocalist who operates in the higher ranges with a minimum of musical accompaniment on most tracks. But he can rock 'n' roll too as he shows on "You Push Too Hard," propably the best track on the album, an out-and-out rocker, with a great melody and raunchy rhythm guitar completed with a great arena-rock guitar solo. 'Daydreamer' opened the album with a glistening slice of pop, the song featured one of those power-pop melodies that climbed into your head and wouldn't leave. "Witches Brew" a nice bar rocker, the highlight on this song is actually the guitar work which more than made up for Lewis somewhat quivering vocals. "Can't Say Goodbye" a classic greasy bar rocker with a tasty talk box guitar.
Tracks
1. Daydreamer - 3:18
2. Loneliest Cowboy - 2:43
3. Jeraboa - 3:05
4. You Push Too Hard - 2:56
5. Witch`s Brew - 3:35
6. Make Me Alive - 3:51
7. Can`t Say Goodbye - 2:28
8. Horsehead Crossing - 3:04
All Songs by David Lewis
Personnel
*David Lewis - Lead Vocals, Drums, Acoustic Six String Guitar
*Mike Cochrane - Lead Guitar, Acoustic Six, Tewlve String Guitars, Bass, Vocals
*Mike Kirchner - Bass (Only Track #5)
*Bob Hopkins - Drums (Only Track #5)
Originally released in 1971, this frenetic, funk-laden fusion of Jazz licks and Blues-Rock attack from former-Canned Heat guitarist Harvey Mandel is a true lost gem that pre-dates the later work of Jeff Beck, Al Di Meola et al. Featuring the knock-out band of keyboardist Howard Wales, bassist Larry Taylor and drummer Phil Lagos, this fine recording sounds as fresh as the day it was born.
Tracks
1. Baby Batter - 3:47
2. Midnight Sun - 6:25
3. One Way Street - 4:22
4. Morton Grove Mama - 4:59
5. Freedom Ball - 6:25
6. El Stinger - 7:27
7. Hank The Ripper - 5:16
All compositions by Harvey Mandel
Personnel
*Harvey Mandel - Acoustic, Electric Guitar
*Colin Bailey - Drums
*Big Black - Congas
*Sandra Crouch - Tambourine
*Paul Lagos - Drums
*Mike Melvoin - Keyboards, Organ, Electric Piano
*Joe Picaro - Percussion
*Jeff Porcaro - Percussion
*Emil Richards - Percussion
*Shorty Rogers - String Arrangements
*Larry Taylor - Bass, Fender Rhodes
*Howard Wales - Keyboards, Organ, Electric Piano
