Andy Roberts - Urban Cowboy (1973 uk, marvellous folk soft prog rock, 2012 remaster)

Born in Hatchend, London, in 1947, Andy’s dad was a devotee of Music Hall comedy and his mum an afficionado of classical music. Both involved Andy in their enthusiasms from a young age and consequently, from formative exposure to slapstick and symphony concerts, Andy took up the violin at nine (taking lessons for nine years) and simultaneously dived into the skiffle boom that was sweeping Britain in the late ‘50s – owning his first guitar circa 1959.

‘I got a music scholarship to a public school in Essex,’ he explained, in an extensive interview with Ptolomaic Terrascope in 1992. ‘When I went there there was already a band called Flash Sid Fanshawe & The Icebergs. This was in 1959. They’d got guitars which they’d made in the school workshops and played very simple stuff which I thought sounded fantastic. By the time I left the school there was half a dozen quite good bands there. You could plug in and just make as much racket as you wanted.’

Andy’s school band, foreshadowing his long involvement with the wacky and the surreal, was known to its friends as Monarch T. Bisk & The Cherry Pinwheel Shortcakes – or, at least, would have been ‘but nobody could remember it all’. The band went through several stages – from a Shadows sound to Chicago R&B – ‘but I never thought of doing it for a living’.

It was becoming embroiled in providing live music for a revue – written by a Shortcakes’ associate – at the 1965 Edinburgh Festival which led to the real beginnings of Andy’s path as a professional musician. The show ran for two weeks at the Traverse Theatre, and one of the acts following the play was Vivian Stanshall, who had recently formed the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, ‘doing mime, playing the tuba and generally camping around’. The theatre was also playing host to The Scaffold, a Liverpool comedy troupe comprising Roger McGough, John Gorman and Mike McGear (ne McCartney, Paul’s brother). Andy was really impressed with their show, and by a bunch of poets – including Adrian Henri – playing the venue during afternoons. Many strands of Andy’s career over the next decade and beyond would be interwoven with all of the above, all focused on this one venue in August 1965.

Andy returned to London and accepted an offer to study law at Liverpool University, almost immediately bumping into Roger McGough at a bookshop as soon as he got there. The ‘jazz and poetry’ movement was at its peak, and Roger invited Andy to dive in: ‘February 1966 was the first time I did a thing with him and Adrian Henri, at the Bluecoat Theatre in Liverpool. It just took off from there. Within a couple of months I was doing poetry events at The Cavern and playing with a band at the University. There was loads going on.’

Soon, on the back of a 1967 poetry anthology entitled The Liverpool Scene, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Andy, along with jazz saxophonist Mike Evans and songwriter/guitarist Mike Hart, were taking bookings as ‘The Liverpool Scene Poets’ Andy was also recording with McGough’s music/comedy outfit The Scaffold, on a series of singles which included their breakthrough hits ‘Thank U Very Much’ and ‘Lily The Pink’. Roger consequently had to drop out of the poetry gigs, leaving Andy to suggest to the charismatic Adrian Henri that all they needed was a bassist and drummer to become a bona fide band. Percy Jones and Bryan Dodson (later replaced by Pete Clarke) filled those roles respectively and The Liverpool Scene was born.

An album for CBS had already been recorded, prior to the band’s formation, called The Incredible New Liverpool Scene – basically Andy accompanying Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, recorded over a couple of hours in Denmark Street, London. BBC Radio’s champion of ’the underground’ John Peel took a shine to it and regularly booked the now fully-fledged band (or, as a duo, Roberts & Henri) for his show and for his own live engagements. He also nominally produced their first full-band album, Amazing Adventures Of… (RCA, 1968), in a recording deal secured by their new manager Sandy Roberton – a key figure in the careers of many now legendary acts at the progressive ends of folk and rock music of the time.

In 1968 Andy graduated in Law – having somehow found a way through a degree course in between singles with The Scaffold, concerts with the Scene and helping out on the Scaffold spin-off LP McGough & McGear, the other guitarist being Jimi Hendrix and the producer Paul McCartney. ‘I wasn’t professional at the time,’ says Andy, ‘but I was doing jobs that many professionals would have envied. I’d get calls to do a bit of recording in London, and I’d stay at Paul McCartney’s house – walk up and ring the doorbell and there’d be 85 girls hanging around outside. I didn’t even think twice about it. [But] 1968 was really when the working life started.’

The following year saw the Liverpool Scene at their peak – delivering their second album Bread On The Night, touring the UK on a three act bill with Led Zeppelin and Blodwyn Pig, playing to 150,000 at the Isle of Wight Festival (on the day of Bob Dylan’s much-heralded ‘comeback’ performance) and touring America for a gruelling, and revelatory three months. ‘Absolute disaster,’ is Andy’s verdict on the tour. ‘We suddenly came up against the utter reality of it. With a British audience, given this poetry and a band that were never rehearsed, we got away with it through being so different and [through] our verve and irreverence. None of which worked in America.’

The American experience would nevertheless inspire the band’s best work – the lengthy ‘Made In USA’ suite, one side of their last LP proper, St Adrian Co, Broadway And 3rd (1970) – and which would filter into Andy’s own work for the next few years. It also forced him to re-examine his own direction: ’[Before America] I was stupid enough to still think I could be Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to be a star. You do when you’re young – you don’t realise that everybody has their role, and that wasn’t mine.’ Andy still recalls some sage advice he received around this time from folk-baroque guitar hero Davy Graham : ’You only person you should be in competition with today is yourself yesterday’.

The first Andy Roberts album, Home Grown, was recorded in late 1969, and built upon the quirky solo tracks he had to date peppered among the jazz/poetry workouts on Liverpool Scene albums and radio sessions. ‘The Raven’, featured on 1968’s Bread On The Night and heard here in a superior unreleased version from 1969, was one such; ‘Home Grown’ itself was another. Those two tracks conveniently represent the poles of Andy’s writing: the profound and the purely comedic. Making these parameters sit well together on one piece of vinyl was the question which would quickly colour Andy’s own view of the album – or, at least, in its original form, as released by RCA (under a production deal with Sandy Roberton) in March 1970.

‘Infinitely listenable and beautifully arranged, with excellent guitar work from Andy. A lovely, peaceful album.’ That was Disc’s judgement on this mesmerising and atmospheric rough-hewn debut, on which Andy was backed on some tracks by the rhythm section from Mighty Baby (another of Sandy Roberton’s charges), with brass arrangements from future Jethro Tull man David Palmer.

An eclectic album, punctuated with brief bursts of violin and organ noodling, the key tracks included the ragtime/country flavoured comedic songs like ‘Home Grown’ and ‘Gig Song’, the impressionistically autobiographical ‘Moths And Lizards In Detroit’ (first of the ‘American’ songs) and ‘Queen Of The Moonlight World’ (inspired by a visit to London Zoo), and the altogether gothic ‘Applecross’, inspired by a weekend in a village of that name in north-west Scotland. The spooky vibe was continued on the traditional ‘John The Revelator’ and a funky cover of ‘Spider’ John Koerner’s ‘Creepy John’.

Andy performed several items from Home Grown on John Peel’s Top Gear radio show, plus the driving non-album track ‘You’re A Machine’, on which he was again backed by Mighty Baby. A previously unreleased rehearsal of the track, recorded shortly before the BBC session, is included here.

The Liverpool Scene finally split, onstage at a London gig, in May 1970. In Andy’s recollection (’Adrian attacking Mike Evans with a mike stand’) it had been building up for a while. Soon after, Andy crashed a motorcycle and was out of action for a couple of months, but recovered well enough by July to accompany Adrian – along with Dave Richards on bass, Alan Peters on trumpet and John Pearson on drums – to Norway for a couple of gigs booked as the Liverpool Scene. The trip would inspire Andy’s ‘Sitting On A Rock’.

Regrouping with Adrian had been Andy’s hope, but it wasn’t to be. Despite the Scene’s perceived success, as Andy explained to Record Mirror’, ‘nobody really made any more than about £20 a week. I was going to form a band with Adrian after the Scene split, but he backed out. You’ve got to remember, he’s 39 and £20 with the Scene wasn’t much.’

As Adrian went on towards becoming, in tandem with his poetry, a well-regarded visual artist and college lecturer, Andy pressed ahead with his new band – now titled Everyone. Retaining Richards and Pearson from the Norway trip, he added John Porter, on guitar, and took Porter’s recommendation to bring in Bob Sargent on keyboards which, he now says, ‘was probably the worst of several moves’.

Nevertheless, the picture that emerged from the band’s debut music press feature, in Disc, September 19, 1970, was one of a bunch of happy campers, ready to take on the world. Having played one gig – the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, no less – and on the cusp of their debut album, Andy declared, ‘We’ve reached the stage now where we’re over-rehearsed and under-performed.’ In retrospect, he prefers to sum up the period with a rejoinder worthy of Spinal Tap: ’Rented a house near Stonehenge; took lots of drugs; didn’t rehearse enough.’

The resulting album, Everyone, released in January 1971, while well-recorded was, in Andy’s view, ‘frankly, a bit of a mess – there was Bob’s stuff and my stuff and it didn’t really meet in the middle.’ The album included four songs fronted by Andy: another Koerner cover, ‘Midnight Shift’, and a beautiful trio of originals in ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ (a reflection on recent US student uprisings against the Vietnam war), ‘Sitting On A Rock’ and ‘Radio Lady’, the latter being another memoir of the Scene’s US tour. All three originals are included here, with ‘Radio Lady’ appearing in the form of a superior mix first released in October 1971 on an US Roberts compilation, on the Ampex label, confusingly called Home Grown (more of which below).

Whether Everyone could have found the common musical ground to continue is academic, for the band were effectively destroyed by a tragic accident involving their two road crew and a friend on the A33 in November 1970. The group’s van and gear were written off and Paul Scard, Andy‘s loyal roadie, lost his life. Andy saw out some contractual obligation gigs as a three-piece with Richards and Pearson but ‘come December 1970 that was it. I didn’t want to do anything.’ By the time the group’s first (and last) album appeared, on B&C, there was no wind in its sails.

Shortly after the crash, Andy and Dave Richards had rented a house for a month on the outskirts of Northampton. This brief period would yield the material that found its way onto Andy’s next solo album proper, Nina And The Dream Tree, a year later. As Andy explains, ‘We played a lot of Bezique, and played Neil Young and Grateful Dead records. I was visited by Polly James [actress in the popular TV sitcom The Liver Birds], with whom I was seriously involved, and who is the subject of the whole of the first side of Nina . Polly and I spent New Year’s eve at Tommy Steele’s house.’

Andy was back in London by January ‘71, living with his folks and wondering what to do, when he got a call out from Paul Samwell-Smith, ex-Yardbirds bassist and now a record producer. He was looking for a guitarist to work on a debut solo album by former Fairport Convention and Matthews’ Southern Comfort vocalist Iain Matthews – hot property after MSC’s September 1970 No.1 hit single with ‘Woodstock’. Andy and Iain hit it off together, and the new association with himself and Samwell-Smith ‘put me into seven months’ intense studio work Iain and Cat Stevens and so on. Then Sandy Roberton was saying I hadn’t done a solo album for a year and should do something…’

Work on the Iain Matthews album (If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes) spanned January to March 1971 (April to May ‘71 would see further studio work with Iain, which became his next album, Tigers Will Survive); during March he also worked on the Mike McGear LP Woman; and he was also, as a Melody Maker feature of March 27 put it, ‘experimenting on a solo album, using vocal backing from three West Indians (“but no flash guitar”)’. Those backing singers, who played a crucial part in the magical sound of Nina And The Dream Tree (recorded sporadically during the next few months and released on Pegasus in October 1971), were Mike London and Mac and Kathy Kissoon. Three pieces of Nina’s jigsaw had been debuted on a BBC session for Bob Harris earlier that month – ‘Keep My Children Warm, ‘I’ve Seen The Movie’ and ‘Welcome Home’ – although the listing of musicians involved, essentially a reunion of Everyone, as given in Ken Garner’s In Session Tonight (BBC Books, 1993) strikes Andy in retrospect as ’hugely unlikely’.

During the early summer of ‘71 Andy was certainly enjoying himself playing shows with a proto-GRIMMS outfit billed as the Bonzo Dog Freaks. If this was a blast of the future, Sandy Roberton had engineered a blast from the past: a new lease of life for Home Grown. Home Grown’s re-release provided an excuse for Andy to perform, supporting Procul Harum, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, backed by Dave Richards and Mighty Baby’s Ian Whiteman and Roger Powell. It would be the stage debut of the Nina material, and led directly to Andy getting the support slot on a Steeleye Span UK tour later that year.

During July ‘71 Andy was able to tell Melody Maker’s Karl Dallas that: ‘For the first time I’ve got a coherent direction. Now I have personal statements I wish to make, though I don’t want to knock them in with a sledgehammer.’ Dallas was given a preview of the new recordings and was rightly impressed: ‘There is a great deal of warmth in his work,’ he wrote, ‘a fellowship for his kin which brims over… His singing voice has matured incredibly and his use of the electric guitar is haunting, reminiscent sometimes of Richard Thompson on top form…’

Andy was often telling the press that it was only during the McGear and Matthews sessions earlier in the year that he found his voice on the instrument, and the quality of his electric playing – a master of texture and atmosphere – was one of Nina’s revelations. Then again, spending August-September ‘71 on an Iain Matthews tour of the States as a trio with Richard Thompson himself can’t have done any harm. 

As before, Andy’s US tour experiences would be a rich seam for his song writing. Time spent with one Karen Goskowski at the Poison Apple in Boston would yield three songs, first heard on his country flavoured Urban Cowboy LP in 1973: ‘Poison Apple Lady’, ‘Urban Cowboy’ and ‘New Karenski’. The first of these is heard here in a demo version recorded in November 1971. "Urban Cowboy" was recorded piecemeal during sporadic 1972 sessions, yet emerges as a true gem of an album. Working with his Plainsong colleagues - Iain Matthews, Dave Ronga and Dave Richards - and guest musicians like Richard Thompson, BJ Cole, Martin Carthy, Neil Innes and Dick Parry, Andy Roberts explored a series of beautiful original songs and a powerful cover of Jim Hall's barroom classic, 'Elaine'.

by Colin Harper, April 2005

Tracks
1. Charlie - 1:30
2. Big City Tension - 4:30
3. New Karenski - 4:09
4. Urban Cowboy - 3:44
5. Elaine (Jim Hall) - 4:35
6. Home At Last - 2:55
7. All Around My Grandmother's Floor (Mike Evans, Andy Roberts) - 3:14
8. Richmond - 4:53
9. Baby, Baby - 2:26
10.Poison Apple Lady - 4:16
All songs by Andy Roberts except where noted
Track #6 as The Grimms Band

Musicians
*Andy Roberts - Dulcimer, Electric, Acoustic Guitars, Vocals
*Martin Carthy - Banjo
*B.J. Cole - Pedal Steel Guitar
*Gerry Conway - Tambourine
*Timi Donald - Drums
*Neil Innes - Electric  Guitar
*Mike Kellie - Drums
*Paul Kent - Vocals
*Iain Matthews - Vocals
*John Megginson - Piano
*Zoot Money - Vocals
*Gillian Noel - Vocals
*Dick Parry - Saxophone
*David Richards - Bass, Harmonium, Electric  Piano, Vocals
*Bob Ronga - Bass,  Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
*Richard Thompson - Electric Guitar
*Karene Wallace - Vocals

1969-76  Andy Roberts - Just For The Record The Solo Anthology (2005 two disc set)
Related Acts
1971  Everyone - Everyone (2011 extra tracks edition)
1972  Plainsong - Plainsong (2013 japan remaster)

Free Text
Just Paste

Tim Buckley - Greetings From West Hollywood (1969 us, brillinat acid folk psych, 2017 remaster)

One of the great rock vocalists of the 1960s, Tim Buckley drew from folk, psychedelic rock, and progressive jazz to create a considerable body of adventurous work in his brief lifetime. His multi-octave range was capable of not just astonishing power, but great emotional expressiveness, swooping from sorrowful tenderness to anguished wailing. His restless quest for new territory worked against him commercially: By the time his fans had hooked into his latest album, he was onto something else entirely, both live and in the studio. In this sense he recalled artists such as Miles Davis and David Bowie, who were so eager to look forward and change that they confused and even angered listeners who wanted more stylistic consistency. However, his eclecticism has also ensured a durable fascination with his work that has engendered a growing posthumous cult for his music, often with listeners who were too young (or not around) to appreciate his music while he was active.

Buckley emerged from the same '60s Orange County, California folk scene that spawned Jackson Browne and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black introduced Buckley and a couple of musicians Buckley was playing with to the Mothers' manager, Herbie Cohen. Although Cohen may have first been interested in Buckley as a songwriter, he realized after hearing some demos that Buckley was also a diamond in the rough as a singer. Cohen became Buckley's manager, and helped the singer get a deal with Elektra.

Before Buckley had reached his 20th birthday, he'd released his debut album. The slightly fey but enormously promising effort highlighted his soaring melodies and romantic, opaque lyrics. Baroque psychedelia was the order of the day for many Elektra releases of the time, and Buckley's early folk-rock albums were embellished with important contributions from musicians Lee Underwood (guitar), Van Dyke Parks (keyboards), Jim Fielder (bass), and Jerry Yester. Larry Beckett was also an overlooked contributor to Buckley's first two albums, co-writing many of the songs.

The fragile, melancholic, orchestrated beauty of the material had an innocent quality that was dampened only slightly on the second LP, Goodbye and Hello (1967). Buckley's songs and arrangements became more ambitious and psychedelic, particularly on the lengthy title track. This was also his only album to reach the Top 200, where it only peaked at number 171; Buckley was always an artist who found his primary constituency among the underground, even for his most accessible efforts. His third album, Happy Sad, found him going in a decidedly jazzier direction in both his vocalizing and his instrumentation, introducing congas and vibes. Though it seemed a retreat from commercial considerations at the time, Happy Sad actually concluded the triumvirate of recordings that are judged to be his most accessible.

The truth was, by the late '60s Buckley was hardly interested in folk-rock at all. He was more intrigued by jazz; not only soothing modern jazz (as heard on the posthumous release of acoustic 1968 live material, Dream Letter), but also its most avant-garde strains. His songs became much more oblique in structure, and skeletal in lyrics, especially when the partnership with Larry Beckett was ruptured after the latter's induction into the Army. Some of his songs abandoned lyrics almost entirely, treating his voice itself as an instrument, wordlessly contorting, screaming, and moaning, sometimes quite cacophonously. In this context, Lorca was viewed by most fans and critics not just as a shocking departure, but a downright bummer. No longer was Buckley a romantic, melodic poet; he was an experimental artiste who sometimes seemed bent on punishing both himself and his listeners with his wordless shrieks and jarringly dissonant music.

Almost as if to prove that he was still capable of gentle, uplifting jazzy pop-folk, Buckley issued Blue Afternoon around the same time. Bizarrely, Blue Afternoon and Lorca were issued almost simultaneously, on different labels. While an admirable demonstration of his versatility, it was commercial near-suicide, each album canceling the impact of the other, as well as confusing his remaining fans. Buckley found his best middle ground between accessibility and jazzy improvisation on 1970's Starsailor, which is probably the best showcase of his sheer vocal abilities, although many prefer the more cogent material of his earliest albums.

By this point, though, Buckley's approach was so uncommercial that it was jeopardizing his commercial survival. And not just on record; he was equally uncompromising as a live act, as the posthumously issued Live at the Troubadour 1969 demonstrates, with its stretched-to-the-limit jams and searing improv vocals. (In 2017, two more archival live albums were compiled from Buckley's 1969 run at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, Greetings from West Hollywood and Venice Mating Call.) For a time, he was said to have earned his living as a taxi driver and chauffeur; he also flirted with films for a while. When he returned to the studio, it was as a much more commercial singer/songwriter (some have suggested that various management and label pressures were behind this shift).

As much of a schism as Buckley's experimental jazz period created among fans and critics, his final recordings have proved even more divisive, even among big Buckley fans. Some view these efforts, which mix funk, sex-driven lyrical concerns, and laid-back L.A. session musicians, as proof of his mastery of the blue-eyed soul idiom. Others find them a sad waste of talent, or relics of a prodigy who was burning out rather than conquering new realms. Neophytes should be aware of the difference of critical opinion regarding this era, but on the whole his final three albums are his least impressive. Those who feel otherwise usually cite the earliest of those LPs, Greetings from L.A. (1972), as his best work from his final phase.

Buckley's life came to a sudden end in the middle of 1975, when he died of a heroin overdose just after completing a tour. Those close to him insist that he had been clean for some time and lament the loss of an artist who, despite some recent failures, still had much to offer. Buckley's stock began to rise among the rock underground after the Cocteau Twins covered his "Song for the Siren" in the 1980s. The posthumous releases of two late-'60s live sets (Dream Letter and Live at the Troubadour 1969) in the early '90s also boosted his profile, as well as unveiling some interesting previously unreleased compositions. His son Jeff Buckley went on to mount a musical career as well before his own tragic death in 1997. 

by Richie Unterberger

Tracks
1. Buzzin' Fly - 6:18
2. Chase The Blues Away - 6:32
3. I Had A Talk With My Woman - 7:23
4. Blue Melody - 5:41
5. Nobody Walkin' - 12:27
6. Venice Mating Call - 3:04
7. I Don't Need It To Rain - 8:37
8. Driftin' - 7:57
9. Gypsy Woman - 10:36
All songs by Tim Buckley

Personnel
*Tim Buckley - Twelve String Guitar, Vocals
*John Balkin - Bass
*Art Tripp - Drums
*Lee Underwood - Electric Guitar, Electric Piano
*Carter C.C. Collins - Congas

1966  Tim Buckley - Tim Buckley (Part 1 of 2017 eight cds box set)
1967  Tim Buckley - Goodbye And Hello  (Part 2 of 2017 eight cds box set) 
1969  Tim Buckley - Happy Sad (Part 3 of 2017 eight cds box set)
1969  Tim Buckley - Blue Afternoon (Part 4 of the 2017 eight cds box set)
1970  Tim Buckley - Lorca (Part 5 of the 2017 eight cds box set)
1970  Tim Buckley - Starsailor (Part 6 of the 2017 eight cds box set)
1972  Tim Buckley - Greetings From L.A. (Part 7 of the 2017 eight cds box set)
1967-69  Tim Buckley - Works In Progress (Part 8 of the 2017 eight cds box set)
1973  Tim Buckley - Sefronia (2017 remaster)
1974  Tim Buckley - Look At The Fool (2017 remaster)

Free Text
Text Host

Marc Ellington - A Question Of Roads (1972 uk, marvellous country folk rock, 2010 korean remaster)

Marc Ellington is a Scottish folksinger and multi-instrumentalist who worked with Fairport Convention, providing some vocal support on their 1969 ‘Unhalfbricking’ album, also played with Matthews Southern Comfort in the same year, as well as releasing his debut. I haven’t heard that one, but came across his 1971 follow-up ‘Rains/Reins of Change’ some years ago, and was intrigued to see just how members of Fairport were involved. It was a very different line-up for the next album, ‘A Question of Roads’.

The album has far more in common with American country, with steel guitars and banjo making plenty of appearances. If I was to compare this album with a more well-known group then it would be with The Band, as this 1972 album compares well with the music they were releasing at the same time.

It is laid back, melodic, and totally enjoyable the first time it is played. This album may not have any Fairport members involved, but I did find it intriguing to note that it includes a very countrified “Open The Door, Homer”, which was what Bob Dylan & The Band called “Open The Door, Richard” when they recorded it in 1967, but it can trace its roots back the Forties. Fairport Convention then recorded the song on the ‘Red & Gold album’, in a very different manner to this it must be said. Marc must have been held in high acclaim back in the Seventies when one sees who he worked with, and the number of solo albums he released, but he seems to have been mostly forgotten now which is a real shame. 

Tracks
1. Four Rode By (Traditional) - 2:14
2. No Deposit, No Return - 3:14
3. Never Again (Karen Ellington, Marc Ellington) - 4:45
4. Please Be My Friend (Iain Matthews) - 3:46
5. Jacobite Lament (A Celtic Dream) - 3:26
6. Royal Blues - 3:08
7. Question Marc (Better Days Ahead) - 2:39
8. You Finally Found You - 3:03
9. Past Master - 2:17
10.Open The Door Homer (Bob Dylan) - 4:04
11.A Question Of Roads - 4:39
12.Six Days On The Road (Carl Montgomery, Earl Green) - 2:09
All songs by Marc Ellington except where indicated

Musicians
*Marc Ellington - Vocals, Guitar
*Mike Deighan - Guitar
*Gordon Huntley - Steel Guitar
*Tim Renwick - Guitar
*Andy Roberts - Organ
*Bruce Thomas - Bass
*Andy Leigh - Bass
*Ray Duffy - Drums
*John Wilson - Drums
*Dave Richards - Piano
*John Roy - Vocals
*Karen Ellington - Vocals

1969  Marc Ellington - Marc Ellington (2009 korean remaster)
1971  Marc Ellington ‎- Rains-Reins Of Changes (2004 remaster)

Just Paste
Free Text
Text Host

Eric Andersen - Be True To You (1975 us, awesome country folk soft rock, 2016 japan remaster)

Eric Andersen's songs, voice, and guitar have created a career, spanning over 40 years, that includes 25 albums of original songs, and numerous tours of North America, Europe, and Japan. His songs; have been recorded by artists all over the world, including Judy Collins, Fairport Convention, Peter Paul and Mary, Rick Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, The Grateful Dead, and Francoise Hardy.

Although born in Pittsburgh in 1943, Eric Anderson received his early education in Buffalo, where he taught himself guitar and piano. He saw Elvis Presley perform in a gold suit at Memorial Auditorium and the Everly Brothers play at his high school gym. He also saw the Miles Davis Quintet at Kleinhan's music hall. He had folk groups that performed the political songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers and spent a great deal of time reading the books of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. After two years of pre-medical studies at Hobart College, he hitchhiked to San Francisco to try out his new songs in North Beach coffeehouses and seek out the poets of the Beat Generation. He succeeded in meeting Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Neal Cassady at the City Lights Bookstore. Weeks later, he heard them recite at a poetry reading in Haight Ashbury, on the same evening President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Songwriter Tom Paxton discovered him that late fall of 1963, performing at the Coffee Gallery in North Beach. He heard his songs and invited him to New York City. In 1964, Eric was soon introduced to the Greenwich Village songwriting circle of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. He played his first gig as an opening act at Gerde's Folk City. Robert Shelton of the-New York Times wrote a review where he called him "a writer and performer of the first rank… possessing that magical element called star quality." He was signed to Vanguard Records and began recording his first album.

In the Village folk and jazz clubs, he witnessed the singing and playing of some of America's greatest blues, and jazz masters alive. The list of people heard whose music he absorbed, was vast; performers like Mississippi John Hurt, Judy Roderick, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Skip James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Doc Watson, Dave Van Ronk, Doc Watson, Reverend Gary Davis, David Blue, Uncle Dave Macon, Fred Neil, Son House, Anita O'Day,, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis. It was in these clubs where he learned, first-hand, how a master musician can with one voice or one instrument, captivate an audience.

Over the next three years he wrote and recorded four albums of his earliest songs, including his early classics "Come To My Bedside", "Thirsty Boots", and "Violets of Dawn", for Vanguard. The Brothers Four recorded a single of "Bedside" for Columbia Records and it was immediately banned from AM radio, on the grounds of obscenity. Judy Collins and the Blues, Project created pop hits of the latter two songs. 

In 1972, Andersen would sign with Columbia Records after Blood, Sweat and Tears drummer Bobby Colomby introduced him to then-label head Clive Davis. Andersen’s Columbia Records debut, Blue River, would become his most commercially successful release, produced by Norbert Putnam. Joni Mitchell sang the duet harmonies on the title track. The Rolling Stone, Album Guide awarded it four stars and credited it as being "the best example of the 70's singer-songwriter movements. But when the master tapes for the follow-up album, Stages, were lost, Andersen's career lost much of its momentum. Between 1974 and 1977 he recorded two albums with Clive Davis at Arista Records, Be True To You and Sweet Surprise. He performed at the opening show of the Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, at Gerde's Folk City in New York, and again in Niagra Falls, in 1975.

by Will James

Tracks
1. Moonchild River Song - 3:52
2. Be True To You - 4:10
3. Wild Crow Blues - 3:07
4. Ol' 55 - 3:22
5. Time Run Like A Freight Train - 8:41
6. Liza, Light The Candle - 3:45
7. Woman, She Was Gentle - 5:01
8. Can't Get You Out Of My Life - 3:02
9. The Blues Keep Fallin' Llike The Rain - 4:48
10.Love Is Just A Game - 3:46
All song by Eric Andersen except Track #4 written by Tom Waits

Musicians
*Eric Andersen - Guitar, Keyboards, Harmonica, Vocals
*Deborah Greene Andersen - Backing Vocals
*Richard Bennett - Guitar
*Ginger Blake - Backing Vocals
*Christopher Bond - Guitar
*Jackson Browne - Backing Vocals
*Gary Coleman - Percussion
*Mike Condello - Backing Vocals
*Scott Edwards - Bass
*Jesse Ehrlich - Cello
*Howie Emerson - Guitar, Dobro
*Emory Gordy - Bass
*John Guerin - Drums
*Douglas Haywood - Vocals
*Tim Hensley - Piano
*Russ Kunkel - Drums
*Allen Lindgren - Piano, Wurlitzer
*Orwin Middleton - Backing Vocals
*Joni Mitchell - Backing Vocals
*Emmanuel Moss - Violin
*Maria Muldaur - Backing Vocals
*Dean Parks - Guitar
*Herb Pedersen - Backing Vocals
*Andrew Robinson - Vocals
*Tom Scott - Saxophone
*Tom Sellars - Clavinet
*Mark Sporer - Bass
*Dennis St. John - Drums
*Julia Tillman Waters - Vocals
*Maxine Willard Waters - Vocals
*Jennifer Warren - Vocals
*Ernie Watts - Saxophone, Flute

1972-73/90  Eric Andersen - Blue River / Stages The Lost Album (2014 double disc remaster) 

Free Text
Just Paste

Text Host

Gregg Allman - Laid Back (1973 us, exceptional southern blues rock, 2016 japan SHM remaster and 2019 double disc remastered and expanded)

Laid Back is Gregg Allman’s debut studio solo album, released in October 1973 by Capricorn Records. He developed the album as a small creative outlet wherein he would assume full control, and he co-produced the album alongside Johnny Sandlin. Laid Back was largely recorded in March 1973 at Capricorn Sound Studios in Macon, Georgia, with additional recording taking place at the Record Plant in New York City.

The album explores Allman’s varying influences, including rhythm and blues and soul music. It consists of several cover songs, originals, and a traditional hymn, and contains performances from a host of musicians, most notably Scott Boyer and Tommy Talton on guitars, Bill Stewart on drums, and Charlie Hayward on bass guitar. The album was created while Allman also worked on Brothers and Sisters, the fourth Allman Brothers album. The album title was a studio term Allman coined for relaxing a song’s tempo, while its cover was painted by Abdul Mati Klarwein.

Upon its release, Laid Back received positive reviews from music critics, and it peaked at number 13 on Billboard’s Top LPs & Tapechart. To support the album, Allman embarked on an ambitious tour, consisting of a full band and an entire string orchestra. Two singles were released to promote the record, with lead single “Midnight Rider” becoming a top 20 hit in the U.S. and Canada. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1974 for shipping 500,000 copies in the U.S., making it one of Allman’s best-selling albums.

Gregg Allman-Oficial 

The early '70s were a tumultuous time for Gregg Allman. After years of hard touring, The Allman Brothers Band broke through in 1971 with Live at the Fillmore East, one of the best live albums of all time. Then his brother, slide-guitar genius Duane Allman, died in a motorcycle accident late in the year. Gregg spent some of 1972 piecing together material the group had recorded with Duane for the landmark Eat a Peach, and began recording the lively Brothers and Sisters, which yielded the hit "Rambling Man." Somewhere in the middle of that process, the keyboard player and singer sneaked away to make a different kind of record: his aptly titled solo debut, Laid Back. It came out to positive notices in 1973 before fading into the background, eclipsed by the band's runaway success.

By this time, Allman was a formidable, confident vocalist — but mostly singing in front of the roaring Allman Brothers rhythm section. Though the disc offers terrific guitar asides, Laid Back's songs are centered on Allman's B3 organ and Chuck Leavell's acoustic and electric pianos, while the rhythm section's relaxed approach defines the session. Singing at a measured pace, one word at a time, Allman makes the most of these entrancingly downcast tunes. His version of Jackson Browne's "These Days" is a study in dejection, a symphony of self-pitying shrugs and cracked-apart whines that only a southerner could make beautiful. Meanwhile, Allman's original "Midnight Rider" , plenty rousing when played by the band, becomes a slightly spookier sketch of an even more shadowy figure.

Several of the songs come right from the revival tent: There's a mournful version of the standard "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and the Allman original "Please Call Home" finds him singing with a slightly ragged but utterly righteous choir. It's amazing stuff, deep and intense yet nowhere near the decibel levels of his work with the band. Allman is amazing when he's belting his heart out about being tied to the whipping post. But he's equally compelling — maybe even more so — in a quieter space, when he's less fired up. At times on Laid Back, he sounds like a man reflecting on the dizzying twists and turns of what he's recently experienced. He may still be shell-shocked, and not too proud to ask for help (from a higher power, from a friend) as he tries to make sense of all that's happened to him.

by Tom Moon, October 25, 2006

Tracks
1. Midnight Rider (Ed Freeman, Gregg Allman, Kim Payne, Jay Collins) - 4:29
2. Queen Of Hearts (Gregg Allman) - 6:17
3. Please Call Home (Gregg Allman) - 2:50
4. Don't Mess Up A Good Thing (Oliver Sain) - 4:11
5. These Days (Jackson Browne) - 3:56
6. Multi-Colored Lady (Gregg Allman) - 4:55
7. All My Friends (Scott Boyer) - 4:33
8. Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Traditional) - 4:50

Disc 1 
1. Midnight Rider (Ed Freeman, Gregg Allman, Kim Payne, Jay Collins) - 4:27
2. Queen Of Hearts (Gregg Allman) - 6:16
3. Please Call Home (Gregg Allman) - 2:47
4. Don't Mess Up A Good Thing (Oliver Sain) - 4:12
5. These Days (Jackson Browne) - 3:58
6. Multi-Colored Lady (Gregg Allman) - 4:56
7. All My Friends (Scott Boyer) - 4:33
8. Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Traditional) - 4:53
9. Midnight Rider (Ed Freeman, Gregg Allman, Kim Payne, Jay Collins) - 4:29
10.Queen Of Hearts (Gregg Allman) - 6:15
11.Please Call Home (Gregg Allman) - 2:59
12.Don't Mess Up A Good Thing (Oliver Sain) - 4:23
13.These Days (Jackson Browne) - 3:55
14.Multi-Colored Lady (Gregg Allman) - 4:54
15.All My Friends (Scott Boyer) - 4:34
16.Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Traditional) - 5:14
Tracks 1-8 Original 1974 "Laid Back" 2019 Remastered
Tracks 9-16 "Laid Back" Early Mixes

Disc 2 Laid Back Demos, Outtakes, And Alternates
1. Never Knew How Much (Gregg Allman) - 4:26
2. All My Friends (Scott Boyer) - 4:12
3. Please Call Home (Gregg Allman) - 3:31
4. Queen Of Hearts (Gregg Allman) - 5:05
5. God Rest His Soul (Gregg Allman) - 4:59
6. Rollin' Stone (Catfish Blues) (McKinley Morganfield) - 4:05
7. Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Solo Guitar, Vocal Demo) (Traditional) - 3:43
8. Multi-Colored Lady (Gregg Allman) - 4:40
9. These Days (Solo Guitar, Piano, Vocal Demo) (Jackson Browne) - 2:58
10.Shadow Dream Song (Jackson Browne) - 2:28
11.Wasted Words (Gregg Allman) - 4:48
12.These Days (Alternate Version With Pedal Steel Guitar) (Jackson Browne) - 3:57
13.Multi-Colored Lady (Gregg Allman) - 4:53
14.These Days (Jackson Browne) - 3:55
15.God Rest His Soul (Gregg Allman) - 5:33
16.Midnight Rider (Ed Freeman, Gregg Allman, Kim Payne, Jay Collins) - 4:52
17.Song For Adam / Shadow Dream Song (Jackson Browne) - 4:08
18.Melissa (Live At The Capitol Theater) (Gregg Allman, Steve Alaimo) - 4:45
Tracks 1-4 Demos
Tracks 5-10,11 Solo Guitar, Vocal Demo
Tracks 13,14 Rough Mix
Tracks 15,16 Rehearsal

Musicians
*Gregg Allman - Vocals, Organ, Acoustic Guitar
*Bill Stewart - Drums
*Chuck Leavell - Acoustic, Electric Pianos, Vibes
*Tommy Talton - Acoustic, Electric, Slide Guitars, Dobro, Tambourine
*Scott Boyer - Acoustic, Electric, Steel Guitars, Electric Piano
*David Brown - Bass
*Buzz Feiten - Guitar
*Charlie Hayward - Bass
*Paul Hornsby - Organ, Keyboards, Clavinet
*Jai Johanny Johanson - Percussion, Conga
*Carl Hall - Background Vocals
*Hilda Harris - Background Vocals
*Cissy Houston - Background Vocals
*Emily Houston - Background Vocals
*June Mcgruder - Background Vocals
*Helene Miles - Background Vocals
*Linda November - Background Vocals
*Eileen Gilbert - Background Vocals
*Maretha Stewart - Background Vocals
*Albertine Robinson - Background Vocals
*Jim Nalls - Guitar
*David "Fathead" Newman - Saxophone
*Johnny Sandlin - Bass
*Butch Trucks - Percussion, Cabasa
*Ed Freeman - Strings, Horn Arrangements, Conductor
*Max Cahn - Violin
*Tony Posk - Violin

1974  Gregg Allman - The Gregg Allman Tour (2008 japan SHM remaster)
1977  The Gregg Allman Band - Playin' Up A Storm
with Allman Brothers

1968-89  Dreams (4 disc box set) 
1971  S.U.N.Y. at Stonybrook NY

1973  Brothers And Sisters (2013  SHM Four Disc remaster) 

Free Text
Text Host

The Original Caste - One Tin Soldier (1969 canada, wonderful sunny folk psych, 2012 remaster and expanded)

The five-member band grew out of the Calgary folk trio The North Country Singers, formed in 1966 by songwriter and guitarist Bruce Innes (b Calgary 7 Jan 1943). They moved to Vancouver and added the singer Dixie Lee Stone (b Moose Jaw, Sask 14 May 1946), who married Innes. After playing western Canadian and US coffeehouses and resorts, in 1969 they signed with Bell Records, adopted a pop sound, and changed their name to The Original Caste. Their first release with Bell was the 1969 pop LP The Original Caste (Bell TA 5003), from which the moralistic tale "One Tin Soldier" (written by US producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter) became a No. 1 gold record in Canada and Japan, was No. 1 in several US cities, and reached No. 34 on the US Billboard charts in 1970. Also from this album, "Mr Monday" hit No. 3 on the CHUM charts in May 1970, was No. 1 in Japan, and sold over 2 million copies.

At their peak, the band was based in Los Angeles. They toured North America and Japan, performed with Glen Campbell and B.B. King, and made television appearances, including on Denny Doherty 's CBC TV show in 1978. Additional releases included several singles 1970-1, which fared less well, and two Live in Japan albums (Bell 1971). After the band's dissolution in 1972, Bruce and Dixie Lee Innes continued to perform as The Original Caste, releasing the country-influenced album Back Home (Century II/Capitol ST 17004, 1974), arranged by Tommy Banks and recorded in Alberta. Bruce Innes continued to perform under the band's name through the early 2000s.

"One Tin Soldier" was given a BMI award. A cover version performed by the US band Coven was featured in the 1971 film Billy Jack. In 2003 CHUM radio banned The Original Caste version and other anti-war songs, despite its having reached No. 1 on the CHUM chart in December 1969.

The Original Caste's trademark early sound was polished, uncomplicated pop, made remarkable by Dixie Lee Innes's rich, strong voice and heartfelt delivery. The band was among the earliest Canadian groups to be heard internationally.

by Betty Nygaard King

Following some musical work in the US, and the completion of his formal education at the University of Montana, Bruce Innes finally returned to Calgary, and began performing in a small renowned coffee house called The Pig's Eye at the same time as undiscovered performers like Joni Anderson (later to be Joni Mitchell) and David Wiffen. Using this as a performance base, he formed The North Country Singers with Graham Bruce (bass) and Joseph Cavender (drums). Innes saw Dixie Lee Stone performing there as well and soon asked her to join the ensemble. The group headed out on a cross Canada tour, swinging down into the US where they picked up Portland, Oregon native Bliss Mackie as second guitarist eventually landing in Los Angeles and changing their name to "The Original Caste".

Through Innes's former label, Dot Records, they recorded two singles including "I Can't Make It Anymore" (1968) which was less than a blip on the music industry radar. However, after signing with TA Records, a label distributed by Bell Records (Columbia), in 1969, Innes met writers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, who would produce The Original Caste’s first album.

They struck pay dirt after releasing the duo's "One Tin Soldier" that same year. The song made No. 6 on RPM Weekly chart and No. 34 on the Billboard Top-40 and went to #1 on the CHUM Chart.

They charted even higher with "Mr. Monday" which hit No. 4 on RPM Weekly's chart and No. 3 on the CHUM Chart in Canada. The two singles combined, worldwide, sold over three million copies. Despite the failure of "Mr. Monday" to chart in the US, they landed opening slots for the likes of BB King and Glen Campbell south of the border and made numerous TV appearances.

"One Tin Soldier" had a revival of sorts in 1972 when it was featured in the movie 'Billy Jack', however it was not the Original Caste on the soundtrack but rather American band Coven featuring singer Jinx Dawson. The singles made another round at radio and had significant sales after being re-issued.

The husband and wife team of Dixie Lee and Bruce Innes would record together and as solo artists as a continued extension of their Original Caste recording contract through Bell.

With switch to Century II Records out of Canada, the new four-piece version of the group (now with Gary Carlson on bass and Tom Doran on drums) released the 'Back Home' album in 1974.

The new version of Original Caste toured into the late 1970's. When the band made its final split in 1980 so did the Innes'; Dixie remarried and became a social worker; Bruce began jingle and film score work, remarried and moved to Washington. He currently lives in Idaho. In 2000 Bruce Innes produced country artist Brenn Hill utilizing the help of veteran country/folk singer Ian Tyson; Mackie died in 2004; Joe Cavender now resides in Seattle, Washington; Carlson now resides in Bellevue, Idaho; Coats now resides in Sandpoint, Idaho.

With the release of 'The Best Of The Original Caste' in Japan in 2005, another revival of the act returned with a line-up headed by Bruce Innes and Cheryl Morrel on vocals.

In 2008 Innes, with new vocalist Jilla Web, a featured artist with Las Vegas show "Superstars Live In Concert," re-recorded "One Tin Soldier" with the Nashville Children’s Choir. A new CD is planned. Innes and Web) can be seen in concert in theaters across the US performing their highly acclaimed traveling show 'One Tin Soldier Rides Again'.

Museum of Canadian Music, with notes from Bruce Innes

Tracks
1. One Tin Soldier (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 3:38
2. Mr. Monday (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 3:08
3. Country Song (Bruce Innes) - 3:16
4. A Picture of Bob Dylan (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 3:00
5. Nothing Can Touch Me (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 2:59
6. Leaving It All Behind (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 2:47
7. Watch the Children (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 2:59
8. Highway (Bruce Innes) - 3:34
9. Sweet Chicago (Bruce Innes) - 4:38
10.Live For Tomorrow (Brian Potter, Dennis Lambert) - 3:26
11.Come Together (Artie Butler) - 2:22
12.Ain't That Tellin' You People (Artie Butler) - 2:40
13.When Love Is Near (Artie Butler) - 3:03
14.Come Together (Live) (Artie Butler) - 3:02
15.Sault Ste. Marie (Artie Butler, Bruce Innes) - 3:04

The Original Caste 
*Dixie Lee Innes - Vocals
*Bruce Innes - Lead Guitar
*Bliss Mackie - Rhythm Guitar, Vocals
*Graham Bruce - Bass
*Peter Brown - Drums
*Joseph Cavender - Drums (1970)

Free Text
the Free Text

The Outlaws - Bring It Back Alive (1978 us, outstanding southern boogie guitar rock, 2015 japan remaster)

The Outlaws were one of the most enduring and popular of bands to emerge from the great 'Southern Rock' boom in the USA in the mid-70s. The band came from Florida, and their history stretched back into the late 1960s. A more detailed story of how the band coalesced can be found in my note for the Retroworld reissue of their self-titled debut album and their third, Hurry Sundown. Like fellow Southern Rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd, the band boasted a three-pronged lead guitar line-up (known affectionately by their substantial fan base as The Florida Guitar Army) but in Hughie Thomasson, Billy Jones and Henry Paul allowed much more in the way of tasteful Country picking to bleed in as an influential strand compared to the Skynyrd Blues-Rock sound.

The Outlaws were the first Rock act signed to the Arista Records label, an imprint set up and helmed by Clive Davis, the legendary former chief of the Columbia / CBS label, affecting the change of the label emphasis into the contemporary Rock scene late in the 1960s, with such signings as Santana, Johnny Winter and many others. The Outlaws debut album, released in 1975, proved that Davis still possessed substantial commercial nous, when it charted just outside the Billboard US Top Ten album chart. An impressive set of American Classic Rock, it still sounds remarkably fresh, nearly forty years down the line.

However, by the late seventies, the Southern Rock phenomenon was on the wane. The act that kicked the whole shebang into gear, The Allman Brothers Band, had sundered in a morass of drug abuse and allegations of treachery, Lynyrd Skynyrd had been torn apart when several members of the band were killed and some seriously injured in a plane crash, and New Wave Rock was starting to become more of a commercial force (indeed, Clive Davis again showed genuine foresight in his signing of The Patti Smith Group, whose epochal debut album, Horses, was released later in 1975).

Bring It Back Alive released as a double live set, and it frequently indicated that a potential change was on the cards; this proves to be the case with the Outlaws; Bring It Back Alive, like its preceding studio album, Hurry Sundown, had been produced by Bill Szymczyk, with his engineering sidekick, Allan Blazek, who had worked on The Eagles' Hotel California and a slew of other US rockers (such as the J GeiIs Band, Joe Walsh and Santana). The Outlaws would go on to record for Arista and other labels, eventually splitting and reforming. There's still a version of the band about on the US heritage rock circuit, but this pairing of albums shows contrasting sides of their talents.

by Alan Robinson

Tracks
1. Intro (Relay Breakdown) - 1:00
2. Stick Around For Rock 'n' Roll (Hughie Thomasson) - 9:30
3. Lover Boy (Hughie Thomasson) - 4:10
4. There Goes Another Love Song (Hughie Thomasson, Monte Yoho) - 4:13
5. Freeborn Man (Keith Allison, Mark Lindsay) - 5:50
6. Prisoner (Bill Jones) - 7:22
7. I Hope You Don't Mind (Freddie Salem) - 5:41
8. Song For You (Bill Jones, Hughie Thomasson) - 3:57
9. Cold And Lonesome (Harvey Dalton Arnold) - 3:35
10.Holiday (Bill Jones) - 4:55
11.Hurry Sundown (Hughie Thomasson) - 4:18
12.Green Grass And High Tides (Hughie Thomasson) - 20:59

The Outlaws
*Harvey Dalton Arnold - Bass, Guitar, Vocals
*David Dix - Percussion, Drums
*Bill Jones - Guitar, Vocals
*Freddie Salem - Guitar, Vocals
*Hughie Thomasson - Guitar, Vocals
*Monte Yoho - Percussion, Drums

1975  The Outlaws - The Outlaws (2001 remaster)
Related Act
1979  Henry Paul Band - Grey Ghost 

Just Paste
Text Host

Free Text

Point Blank - Airplay (1979 us, solid hard boogie southern rock, 2018 japan remaster)

Point Blank's second album, the aptly-titled Second Season, disappeared without a trace, which meant that they needed one thing from their third -- airplay -- so they could get some success underneath their belt. Maybe that's why they titled the album Airplay. Even if their motivations weren't so clearly crass and commercial, there's little question that the focus on Airplay results in a quantum leap over their meandering debut. 

Here, it's pretty much polished hard rock boogie, best heard on the opening track "Mean to Your Queenie." The rest of the album is undeniably slick -- something that comes as a shock after the roughshod and scattershot debut -- but that slickness gives the production coherence and helps focus the band. A  late-'70s album-oriented hard rock, this is pretty entertaining since it has a good surface lined with keyboards and hot distorted guitars and they touch on enough different sounds, not just boogie, but power ballads ("Shine On" is particularly good) and Southern-tinged mid-tempo rockers. A step in the right direction, then, and easily one of the best records this forgotten Texas rock band cut. 

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine 

Tracks
1. Mean To Your Queenie (Steve Hardin) - 4:42
2. Two Time Loser - 3:55
3. Shine On (Steve Hardin) - 3:07
4. Penthouse Pauper - 5:39
5. Danger Zone (Steve Hardin) - 4:40
6. Louisiana Leg - 3:48
7. Takin' It Easy - 4:44
8. Thunder And Lightning - 3:16
9. Changed My Mind - 6:05
All songs by Bill Randolp, John O'Daniel, Kim Davis, Peter Gruen, Rusty Burns except where stated

Point Blank
*Rusty Burns - Guitar, Slide Guitar, Vocals
*Kim Davis - Guitar, Vocals
*John O'Daniel - Vocals
*Peter Buzzy Gruen - Drums, Percussion, Vocals
*Bill Randolph - Bass, Vocals
*Steve Hardin - Harmonica, Harp, Keyboards, Percussion, Vocals

1976  Point Blank - Point Blank (2006 issue) 
1977  Point Blank - Second Season (2006 edition) 

Free Text
the Free Text

John Hall - Action (1970 us, splendid bluesy psych classic rock, 2017 japan remaster)

John Hall was best known, for most of the first four decades of his public life, as a singer and guitarist, principally with the group Orleans -- although that group, an outgrowth of the more prosaically-named John Hall Trio and John Hall Quartet, came along some four years after he'd made his recording debut, and had shared stages with the likes of the Doors and the Who. Born on July 23, 1948, in Baltimore, MD, Hall was studying physics at Notre Dame University before he quit to pursue music full-time. He was initially based in Washington, D.C., where his early band affiliations included the British Walkers, a local group whose membership also included Teddy Spelios (aka Ted Spelies) and, at one time, had featured Roy Buchanan in its ranks. It was sometime after leaving D.C. that Hall joined the Greenwich Village-based group Kangaroo, playing bass and sharing guitar duties with Spelios as well as doing some singing alongside Barbara Keith, while N.D. Smart II filled the drummer's spot. 

Signed to MGM Records, they released a self-titled LP as well as three singles that failed to chart, on which the lion's share of the songwriting went to Hall. He was, along with Keith, the strongest composer in Kangaroo, and they were a powerful enough performing unit -- especially thanks to Spelios' playing -- to get gigs opening for the Doors and the Who in 1968. Following the breakup of the band in 1969, Hall concentrated more on songwriting, providing "Half Moon" for Janis Joplin's final album, Pearl. He also played on the Seals & Crofts debut album Down Home and Bonnie Raitt's Give It Up, in between founding his own group, the John Hall Trio -- later the John Hall Quartet -- which evolved into Orleans in 1972, in conjunction with Larry Hoppen and Wells Kelly, in Woodstock, NY. During his time with the soft rock group, they would score Top Ten singles with "Dance with Me" and "Still the One." 

by Tom Demalon

John Hall is a performer to be reckoned with, especially as a guitarist as the closing instrumental cuts demonstrate, peaceful in "Park Lane Blues" and stronger in "Scuffle". His singing also is good as are his songs, such as "Action" and "Where Would I Be". Produced by Harvey Brooks, who also plays bass on some of the numbers, this pressing also offers other fine musicians, including John Sebastian on harmonica and rhythm guitar and Paul Harris on keyboards. 

Tracks
1. Nu Toone (John Hall) - 4:07
2. Look In My Eyes (Harvey Brooks, John Hall, Paul Harris, Wells Kelly) - 5:07
3. Where Would I Be (John Hall) - 2:53
4. Milwaukee (Tom Pacheco) - 2:50
5. True Love (Tom Pacheco) - 3:50
6. Sitting On Top Of The World (Lonnie Carter, Walter Jacobs) - 2:45
7. Action (John Hall) - 4:00
8. Sing A Blues Song (Tom Pacheco) - 3:36
9. Park Lane Blues (Harvey Brooks, John Hall, Paul Harris, Wells Kelly) - 7:25
10.Scuffle (Harvey Brooks, John Hall, Paul Harris, Wells Kelly) - 3:31
11.Going To The Valley (John Hall) - 1:03

Personnel
*John Hall - Lead Vocals, Guitar
*Harvey Brooks - Bass (Tracks 1, 2, 5, 8-11)
*Paul Harris - Keyboard
*Wells Kelly - Drums (Tracks 1, 2, 5, 8-11)
*Jim Colegrove - Bass (Tracks 3, 4, 6, 7)
*Elliot Zigmund - Drums (Tracks 3, 4, 6, 7)
*John Sebastian - Harmonica, Rhythm Guitar (Track 6)
*Richard Greene - Violin
*Sharon Alexander - Back Up Vocal (Track 4)

Related Act
1968  Kangaroo - Kangaroo (2007 edition) 

Free Text
Just Paste

Compton And Batteau - In California (1970 us, brilliant groovy baroque folk, 2017 remaster)

In the beginning there was “Yesterday.”

Then “Eleanor Rigby” came to pass. And just about every teenager (James Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop excepted) wanted to play acoustic guitar, sing important introspective songs, and color those important introspective songs with flutes, oboes, a violin or cello, harpsichords, a bongo or two, gentle harmony voices, perhaps a sitar, bird sounds, and anything else that sounded exotic, classical, jazzy, or mind expanding.

And, oddly enough, some of the albums weren’t too bad. Cambridge–based Appaloosa released its album on big time Columbia Records. The album, which is fundamentally folk music, gets jazzy and classical and had that important Baroque feel in its grooves. But it died a death for the same reason hyphenating last names in marriage always fails: You know, a Smith marries a Jones and becomes Smith-Jones who in turn marries Johnson-Franklin who in turn becomes a Smith-Jones-Johnson-Franklin who then marries someone else who brings four other hyphenated names into the last name equation. After a while, it’s just not worth the bother while trying to fill out a tax form.

There just wasn’t a space in the average record store for a section given to albums under the convoluted category of rock-classical-jazz-baroque-folk-singer songwriter-avant-garde, and pop music. I actually bought Appaloosa’s vinyl debut in the great equalizer of the music industry known as the cut out bin, the record equivalent of Purgatory where all unpopular music waits to be someday rescued from obscurity. Now, I’m not particularly religious, but I am happy to this day for coughing up pocket change for the record. It’s really a classic of its day whose only crime was it just didn’t fit anywhere. Do seek it out.

Thankfully, John Parker Compton (guitar, vocals) and Robin Batteau (violin) ditched the others, dropped a hyphen or two, exchanged coasts, and enlisted such talents as Jim Messina, Randy Meisner, and Rusty Young to cut In California in 1970. This one leaves some of the Baroque stuff back in Cambridge. The first song “Laughter Turns to Blue” is a template for the album. It’s a beautiful acoustic song. There’s a bit of Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Brewer and Shipley, Kenny Loggins, and Allan Taylor, of the English folk scene. “Silk and Steel” with its accenting violin, matches the beauty and loneliness of any song of that era. “Honeysuckle” gets funky and sounds quite a bit like “New Mother Nature” by Canada’s Guess Who (a forgotten band I always try to champion).

But there’s a problem: On the promo, the next song is listed as “Narration.” It lasts a few seconds and is the strummed intro to the final song “California.” Odd. In fact, two other songs are titled “Narration” and each plays a few seconds of that final track, which incidentally, does have some opening narration. Bandcamp also lists these “songs” on this reissue. I checked the always reliable site What Frank Is Listening To only to find, on his original vinyl, those “narration” songs don’t exist. The same is true for the equally reliable site All Music. Now, those tiny bits don’t ruin the album, but they don’t seem to have any point. They certainly don’t add anything.

So I’m confused.

And that’s a shame because this is a nice folk album. Sure, it’s a record very much of its time, but I really liked that time; and there is so much retro-sounding stuff today that pays homage to the free vibe of the 70’s, it only figures that this re-issue is well-timed.

There are many more nice songs. “Elevation” is bare and confessional. It’s the distant older cousin of Jim Croce’s signature sound. “Homesick Kid” mines the same “Kentucky Hills” sound and adds a great bit of piano and dramatic violin. “Proposition” is timeless stuff. This music is what would one day be known as soft rock, when it still possessed some dignity. Of course, that style would later morph into radio friendly hits like Bread’s “Baby I’m-a Want You,” Eric Carman’s “All By Myself,” Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch,” and anything by Phil Collins or The Eagles that took the “fire and rain” out of the guts of the music.

The final song “California” (the one with the actual narration which includes the recorded pleas of porpoises complaining about one of their own being captured!) conjures the enlightened ecological concerns of the times as well as the sound of the great Gordon Lightfoot. Yeah, I love Gord. And that just about completes the circle. Like I said, this record is very much of its time. And what a time it was. Music was still purely an audio experience. It wasn’t mobile and interchangeable with everything else in life. It was as important as water.  Sure, I am glad that Iggy Pop never succumbed to the acoustic introspective craze, but I’m equally happy that Compton and Batteau recorded this sublime bit of west coast folk rock, when the folk stuff still had the moxie that allows it to wear its age well, even after all these years.

by Bill Golembeski, 18 July 2017  

Tracks
1. Laughter Turns To Blue - 3:22
2. Silk On Steel - 3:30
3. Honeysuckle - 3:07
4. Narration - 0:12
5. Elevator (Robin Batteau) - 1:43
6. Narration - 0:14
7. Homesick Kid - 4:46
8. Proposition - 3:40
9. Narration - 0:14
10.Grotto Farm - 3:46
11.Essa Vanessa - 3:09
12.Zephyr - 2:16
13.Narration - 0:12
14.California (Robin Batteau) - 3:26
Words and Music by John Parker Compton except where stated

Musicians
*Robin Batteau - Cello, Guitar, Vocals
*John Parker Compton - Vocals
*Bill Elliott - Keyboards
*King Errison - Percussion
*Robin Lane - Backing Vocals
*John London - Bass
*Randy Meisner - Bass
*Jim Messina - Guitar
*Pat Shanahon - Drums
*John Ware - Drums
*Rusty Young - Pedal Steel Guitar

1969  Appaloosa - Appaloosa (2006 japan remaster)

Just Paste
Text Host

Free Text

New Riders Of The Purple Sage - Glendale Train Live Radio Broadcast (1971 us, awesome country psych rock, 2013 release)

Legendary guitarist Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) is best known for his leadership of the quintessential San Franciscan collective, The Grateful Dead. However, in the early 1970's he was concurrently a member of another Californian band, The New Riders of the Purple Sage. Further cementing the connection, the New Riders also frequently played support slots at Grateful Dead gigs during this period. The New Riders of the Purple Sage's eponymous debut album was recorded during the winter of 1970 and released in August 1971. 

Unlike the Dead's sometimes sprawling jams, the NROTPS focus was on tight countrified arrangements. At this stage John Dawson (1945-2009) was the band's only songwriter - composing all ten of the album's tracks. Glendale Train, a song concerning the 1879 robbery by Frank and Jesse James, is a highlight, alongside Last Lonely Eagle and Louisiana Lady. This show from which this broadcast was transmitted was performed just two months after the release of the album. 

The New Riders were playing to an ideal audience as the gig was as support to the Dead. The fact that Jerry Garcia was there onstage, seated behind his pedal steel guitar, made extra sure the New Riders had everyone's rapt attention. In addition to a selection of Dave Torbert's finest original compositions, there was a hand-picked selection of cover versions that acknowledged the influence of the Riders' peers: Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Band. Closing a superb show is a fine reworking of Johnny Otis' perennial R'n'B classic Willie and the Hand Jive.

By the following year, Jerry Garcia had left the band to concentrate his activities in the Grateful Dead. The New Rider's 'golden period' was undoubtedly in the early 1970's and their fourth album, 1973's The Adventures of Panama Red was a career highlight, reaching no.55 on the Billboard charts. They went on to release more than 20 albums, and continued to record and perform - in various line-up configurations - into the new millennium.

CD Liner Notes

The connections between the New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Grateful Dead were firm and many, as Dead members Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, and, most notably, Jerry Garcia were members of the New Riders at one point, and the Riders frequently opened for the Dead at concerts in the early years. This live set recorded October 30, 1971 at Taft Auditorium in Cincinnati came after the band had settled into a lineup of John Dawson (guitar, vocals, main songwriter), David Nelson (guitar, vocals), David Torbert (bass, vocals), Spencer Dryden (drums), and at this point, just after the release of the band's self-titled debut album earlier in the year, Garcia was a regular on pedal steel guitar. It was arguably the classic lineup for a band that was initially a spinoff project from the Dead, making this well-recorded live set a historical and archival delight. 

by Steve Leggett

Tracks
1. Intro By Sam Cutler - 0:29
2. Workin' Man Blues (Merle Haggard) - 3:49
3. Superman - 4:01
4. Down In The Boondocks (Joe South) - 3:12
5. Cecilia - 4:23
6. Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, And Loud Music (Joe Maphis, Max Fidler, Rose Lee Maphis) - 4:19
7. Dirty Business - 10:41
8. Truck Drivin' Man (Terry Fell) - 3:07
9. Lochinvar - 4:51
10.Hello Mary Lou (Gene Pitney, Cayet Mangiaracina) - 2:58
11.The Weight (Robbie Robertson) - 7:27
12.Glendale Train - 4:53
13.Lodi (John Fogerty) - 4:05
14.Last Lonely Eagle - 6:33
15.Louisiana Lady - 3:57
16.Willie And The Hand Jive (Johnny Otis) - 6:30
All Songs written by John Dawson except where noted

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage
*John Dawson - Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
*David Nelson - Electric Guitar, Vocals
*Dave Torbert - Bass, Vocals
*Jerry Garcia - Pedal Steel Guitar
*Spencer Dryden - Drums

1971-72  New Riders Of The Purple Sage - New Riders Of The Purple Sage / Powerglide (2002 double disc remaster)
1972  New Riders Of The Purple Sage - Gypsy Cowboy (2007 remaster and expanded)
Related Act
1969  Grateful Dead - Live/Dead
1971  Grateful Dead - Skull and Roses (2001 HDCD bonus tracks edition)

Free Text
Just Paste

Milt Matthews Inc - For The People (1971 us, splendid bluesy funk psych rock, 2010 remaster)

Some old recordings are rare for a reason. When I was a kid in the 70s, like lots of other boys my age, I collected beer cans. And we quickly learned some basic tenets of the hobby. An old Busch can wasn’t usually worth much, even though it had a fairly nice full-color Alpine chalet painting on the can. Aesthetics aside, the fact remained that since those suds were cheap and popular, the cans could be found everywhere. They simply weren’t highly sought after by collectors.

Something like Hop’n Gator Tropical Flavored Malt Liquor, on the other hand, was a popular can among collectors. This concoction was, I believe (I never tried it!) an admixture of a Gatorade-like product and some beer from the people who brought you Iron City Beer. In all likelihood it was as awful as it sounds. It didn’t last long, having what we might tactfully characterize as limited appeal. Thus finding a can for one’s collection was a big deal. (I have one, but it’s not in great condition.)

Music is sometimes the same. Unless one is an aficionado of the Incredibly Strange, there are some items that simply aren’t worth tracking down. But there are other cases. To further riff on the beer can metaphor, some regional products were quite good, but failed due to distribution problems.

Which, finally, brings me to an album by Milt Matthews Inc. called For the People. Originally released on the tiny Catalyst label in the USA, this second album by the group sank in the marketplace with nary a trace. For reasons having mostly to do with the uniqueness and quality of the sides therein, UK label Ember licensed the album for re-release in England. They slapped new cover artwork on it — nothing special, but superior to the original — and put it out in 1971.

It sank without a trace. Again. Which was a shame, since it’s a pretty solid album. The period from around 1965 to the early 70s was filled with so much of value, so much groundbreaking and worthwhile music, that there simply wasn’t any practical way to assimilate it all. The mind boggles at how much quality music never got a hearing. The archive-minded folks at Fantastic Voyage think so, too: they’ve reissued the album so that modern-day listeners can avail themselves of Milt Matthews Inc.’s music, a prime example of how-did-we-miss-this.

So, to the music. At its core, the music on For the People is soul of the turn-of-the-decade variety, but the arrangements are richly informed by the best trends of the era. While that funk-jangle-chunka-chunk so popular on soul albums of the day is omnipresent, there is also an awful lot of fuzz guitar on the album. In fact there’s as much fuzz as you’d hear on a record by, say, Blue Cheer or the Electric Prunes. And said fuzz is well-integrated.

Milt Matthews wrote some strong tunes, but in some ways the most interesting numbers on the disc are the covers. Matthews actually went to the trouble to enlist the services of arranger Bert DeCoteaux for the strings on his cover of BB King‘s “The Thrill is Gone” (DeCoteaux did the arrangement for BB as well). But the vacuum-tone leads all over the song owe more to acid-rock and psychedelia than to the Beale Street Blues Boy. Matthews leads the band through the song with ad-libs like “I believe I’ll sing that verse again,” suggesting that (a) the band performed live in the studio or (b) he wanted to give listeners that impression. This reviewer votes for the former. The strings and the lead guitar fills play effectively off one another, creating a head-nodding groove.

A cover of the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” reinterprets the song in a manner stylistically related to some of what was coming out of Stax (track down the 2008 compilation Stax Does the Beatles for more in this vein). The fuzz is laid on more thickly than was the wont of, say, Steve Cropper. A string chart adds a lot here as well: there aren’t all that many successful examples of melding of soul and psych.

Matthews’ original tunes are good, too. “Can’t See Myself Doing You Wrong” features hypnotic riffing seemingly influenced by both Traffic and Led Zeppelin. But a soulful female chorus moves the song closer to the sort of thing Isaac Hayes did so well. “O Lord (You Gotta Help Me)” is sort of a soul corollary to what George Harrison was doing at roughly the same time on All Things Must Pass.

The riffy “Runaway People” features lots of wah-wah guitar and piano, striking a note redolent of Sly and the Family Stone. The gospel/soul slow-jam “That’s the Way I Feel (Like a Burning Fire)” would merely be a good tune of its type were it not for the searing fuzz leads — did I mention there’s fuzz all over this record? — that catapult it into something greater. “Disaster Area” is good, too; it was via that track’s inclusion on Fantastic Voyages’ Looking Toward the Sky comp of Ember tracks that this reviewer discovered Milt Mathews Inc.

In 1971 there was still a lot of cross-fertilization going on in music. It wasn’t unheard of to dig both Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell. A singer in the Otis Redding style like Milt Mathews could imbibe the best influences of acts like Blind Faith and apply those influences to his own sound.

Which is exactly what Matthews and his band do on the cover of “Presence of the Lord,” the album closer. Matthews brings the song’s gospel feel — already clear — even more to the fore. Fuzz and wah add to the festivities with a long, searing solo.

by Bill Kopp, May 3rd 2010

Tracks
1. The Thrill Is Gone (Roy Hawkins, Rick Darnell) - 6:19
2. Can't See Myself Doing You Wrong (Milt Matthews) - 3:34
3. Hard Day's Night (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) - 5:12
4. Oh Lord (You Gotta Help Me) (Milt Matthews) - 4:01
5. Runaway People (Arlester Christian) - 4:09
6. That's The Way I Feel (Like A Burning Fire) (Milt Matthews) - 5:05
7. Disaster Area (Milt Matthews) - 4:33
8. Presence Of The Lord (Eric Clapton) - 5:30

The Milt Matthews Inc
*Milt Matthews - Vocals, Rhythm Guitar
*Randalll Burney - Lead Guitar
*Tommy Byrd - Drums, Percussion
*Norman Harrison - Keyboards
*Carl Matthews - Bass

Free Text
the Free Text