Bread - Manna 1971

Bread's third album, Manna, isn't so much a step forward as it is a consolidation of strengths, as the group sharpens their skills and carves out their own identities. It's clear that the rift between David Gates and Robb Royer and James Griffin is beginning to take shape, as the album is evenly divided between Gates tunes and Royer/Griffin compositions. This benefits the album, since it spurs each member to greater heights, and they even tend to sequence the record in ways that support that sentiment -- Gates' "Let Your Love Go," complete with its rockin' harpsichords, is followed by the hard-driving verses of "Take Comfort," which, admittedly, is tempered by a dreamy chorus. And while some of the rougher edges present on Bread or On the Waters are sanded down slightly, they're still there, providing good contrast to such soft pop landmarks as "If." Yet, this is a record that is laid-back and even tempered, which isn't a bad thing -- it results in a fine listen, especially since the group's songwriting remains at the high standard instituted on that first Bread album. AMG.

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Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers - Kings of the Robot Rhythm 1972

Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers were one of the main British pub rock groups of the early '70s, playing a laid-back yet rocking mixture of rock & roll, R&B, country, and folk. The band has its origins in a folk-rock duo formed by ex-Junior's Blues Band members Martin Stone (vocals, guitar, mandolin) and Phil "Snakefinger" Lithman (vocals, guitar, piano, lap steel, fiddle). Lithman moved to San Francisco in the late '60s, leaving Stone to play with Savoy Brown and Mighty Baby. The duo reunited in the early '70s, recording Kings of Robot Rhythm with vocalist Jo-Ann Kelly and various members of Brinsley Schwarz. Kings was released in 1972; that same year, the duo expanded to a band, adding Paul "Dice Man" Bailey (guitar, banjo, saxophone), Paul Riley (bass), and drummer Pete Thomas. During the next two years, Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers became a popular live act in Britain. The full band released Bongos Over Balham in 1974, yet the record sold poorly and the band split in February 1975. Thomas became the drummer for Elvis Costello's backing band, the Attractions, Riley played with Graham Parker, Baileyformed Bontemps Roulez, and Stone played with the Pink Fairies before quitting the music business.Lithman moved back to San Francisco where he began to work with his former associates, the Residents, under the name Snakefinger. AMG.

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Don Covay & The Jefferson Lemon Blues Band - The House Of Blue Lights 1969

This album, credited to Don Covay and the Jefferson Lemon Blues Band, is not only a great record on its own terms, but it's sort of a black parallel/precursor to a few blues-rock LPs by white artists that sold a hell of a lot more copies around the same time. On the one hand, it's as solid a blues album as anyone associated with R&B was making in 1969 and contains some of the best guitar-based blues on Atlantic this side of that one-off Blind Willie McTell record that they did at the end of the '40s. The guitar blues, interspersed with some organ-based numbers, mixes with Covay's whooped and hollered vocals like someone caught a performance at some roadhouse 20 miles from nowhere in Mississippi -- except that it's perfectly recorded, like someone sneaked Atlantic producer Herb Abramson and a late-'60s tape unit into a roadhouse 20 miles from nowhere. But the repertory ranges wider than that description would lead one to believe, from standards like "Key to the Highway" and "But I Forgive You Blues" to a brace of Covay originals, including the jaunty "Four Women," the soulful "Homemade Love" (which manages to be smooth, raw, and cute, all in six minutes), and two parts of "House of Blue Lights" -- not the Freddie Slack/Don Raye song popularized by the Andrews Sisters, Merrill Moore, and Chuck Berry, but, rather, a mournful lament akin thematically and in tempo to the original "House of the Rising Sun," only more intense and serious. The organ, mouth harp, and guitar textures achieved on that seven-minute song ripple and shimmer as though lifted and slowed down from the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man," while "But I Forgive You Blues" goes back to '20s and early-'30s basics (and is really cool, with the guitars isolated on one channel so you can appreciate the playing up close and personal). Much of the album sounds like the sonic and spiritual blueprint for Let It Bleed andExile on Main Street and parts of Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs. Reissued in 2002 by the Sepiatone label in state-of-the-art sound and worth tracking down at twice the price they're charging (which is about what a vinyl copy would cost if you did find one). AMG.

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Bayeté (Todd Cochran) - Worlds Around the Sun 1972

While it's often a mixed bag when a 20-year-old musician who believes anything and everything is possible gets absolute freedom in a recording studio, in Todd Cochran's case, his faith was a truth. A child prodigy, by age 19 he had arranged and played piano on Bobby Hutcherson's 1971 Blue Note date Head On; he also composed most of it. As a result, Cochran, who had by this time changed his name to Bayeté, scored his own record deal with Prestige in 1972. Accompanied by Hutcherson,Hadley Caliman, Oscar Brashear, James Leary III, Michael Carvin, Wayne Wallace, and more, he composed, produced, and arranged this set of six wide-ranging tunes. The jazz world flipped: Worlds Around the Sun topped Downbeat's year-end list; number two was Miles Davis' On the Corner. In retrospect, there was great reason for the enthusiasm. The array of textures, dynamics, and musical shapes here are dazzling; yet diverse as they are, they create a seamless, unified whole where the musical horizon not only comes into view, it's integrated. Check the opener "It Ain't" that touches on everything from bop to modal jazz to 20th century classical music -- and the composer's piano solo cooks. Likewise, "Njeri (Belonging to a Warrior)" is an Eastern-tinged spiritual jazz tune with fine inside vibes from Hutcherson and flute from Caliman. The 12-minute "Bayeté" is initially driven by Carvin's drums, layers of percussion and the composer's Rhodes. It is reminiscent of Joe Chambers' "The Almoravid," but was released a year earlier. It gradually transforms itself into a galloping modal tune with taut, free-thinking soloing by various members of the group. In addition to sophisticated jazz, there is driving jazz-funk here too, most notably in "Free Angela (Thoughts...And All I've Got to Say)." WithCarvin's stop-and-go breaks and Leary's popping electric bassline atop a group percussion orgy and chant, Bayeté's wah-wah clavinet resembles an electric guitar. (Perhaps that's why Santana delivered an instrumental jam version of the live Lotus in 1973.) The tune's last third gives way to a sweet, electric soul groove turning it on its head. "I'm On It" is another stomping jazz-funker with chanted vocals, clipped syncopated clavinet, Rhodes, vibes, and a thudding bass vamp. Caliman shifts it all with an outside yet bluesy tenor solo to carry it out. Closer "Eurus (The Southeast Wind)" is an impressionistic ballad with stellar pizzicato from Leary, Hutcherson's spacious vibes, and elegant flute from Caliman. Worlds Around the Sun is indeed a masterpiece that sounds every bit as convincing in the 21st century as it did upon release. AMG.

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Curved Air - Midnight Wire 1975

One of the most dramatically accomplished of all the bands lumped into Britain's late-'60s prog explosion, Curved Air was formed in early 1970 by violinist Darryl Way, a graduate of the Royal College of Music, and two former members of Sisyphus, keyboard player Francis Monkman and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa. Adding bassist Robert Martin, the band named itself from

The quartet originally came together to provide accompaniment for producer Galt McDermott's musical Who the Murderer Was; it was McDermott who suggested, once the stage show closed, that they add vocalist Sonja Kristina, with whom he had worked in the U.K. production of Hair. In this form, the band launched a well-received U.K. tour and, that summer, they signed with Warner Bros. -- the first British band on the company's roster.avant-garde composer Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air, a touchstone that would inform much of their early work.

Way was the first to depart, following one final unsuccessful single, a contrarily vibrant version of "Baby Please Don't Go"; he was replaced by Alex Richman, but the group lasted only a few more months before splitting in early 1977. Copelandpromptly joined the Police, Reeves re-formed Greenslade, and Kristina finally launched that long-delayed solo career.Two albums released over the next year, however, did nothing to reverse the band's fortunes -- neither Midnight Wire nor Airborne offered much more than fleeting glances of the group's original, pioneering brilliance, with even the naturally effervescent Kristina appearing overpowered by the anonymity of her surroundings.Kristina initially intended to launch a solo career. In fall 1974, however,Curved Air's original core quartet of Kristina, Way,Monkman, and Pilkington-Miksa reunited for a one-off British tour. With the lineup completed by bassist Phil Kohn, the band rekindled all of the past's most precious memories, captured for posterity on the blockbusting Curved Air Livealbum. The rejuvenation could not, however, heal the breaches that had destroyed the lineup the first time around and, when Curved Air resurfaced in fall 1975, Kristina andWay alone remained, alongside guitarist Mick Jacques, bassist John Perry, keyboardist Pete Woods, and drummer Stewart Copeland. (Perry would be replaced by Greenslade's Tony Reeves during 1976.)Retaining the band name, Kristina and bassist Mike Wedgwood (who replaced Eyre for Phantasmagoria) brought in an entire new lineup -- Jim Russell (drums), Kirby Gregory (guitar), and Eddie Jobson (violin, synths). In this form, the band released spring 1973's Air Cut album, but it was very much a last gasp. Although the group did record a second album, Love Child was shelved when Curved Airbroke up that summer. (The album was finally released in 1990.) Jobson swiftly resurfaced as Eno's replacement inRoxy Music; Wedgwood joined Caravan.Curved Airbounced back in spring 1972 with their masterpiece,Phantasmagoria, home to the spectacular "Marie Antoinette" and Monkman's side-long "Phantasmagoria" suite. Once again, however, sales were low and, with the album bottoming out at number 20, Curved Air split up, victims of inter-band disputes that had already seen the two sides ofPhantasmagoria pointedly divided between Kristina/Way's rock-tinged instincts and Monkman's more portentous contributions. Way formed a new band, Wolf, Pilkington-Miksa joined Kiki Dee's band, and Monkman moved into session work.With Ian Eyrereplacing bassistMartin, the band crossed that precipice the following summer, when the incandescent "Back Street Love" rocketed to number four, ahead of the prosaically named Second Album. Disappointingly, the album emerged a somewhat lesser achievement than its predecessor, and climbed no higher than number 11, while a non-LP followup single, the lovely "Sarah's Concern," went by unnoticed.Curved Air's first album, Air Conditioning, was released in November 1970, a monumental recording that was flamboyantly issued as rock & roll's first-ever picture disc. Divided neatly between ambitious hard rockers and deeply classically influenced pieces, the album reached number eight in the U.K. chart and, while an accompanying single, "It Happened Today," did little, still Curved Air entered 1971 on the very edge of superstardom.

Since that time, Curved Air has been best recalled by the Collector's Choice label's reissues of their first three albums and the excellent BBC Sessions collection, home to Way's otherwise unavailable showcase "Thinking on the Floor" alongside recordings dating from 1970, 1971, and 1976.Occasional reunions with Darryl Way have brought theCurved Air name back to life -- 1984's "Renegade" single was followed by a short tour in 1988; 1990 then brought a fresh reunion by the originalKristina/Way/Monkman/Pilkington-Miksa quartet for a show at London's Town & Country 2. Featuring one new song, the appropriately themed opener "20 Years On," the performance was captured on the Alive 1990 album. AMG.

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Blues Magoos - Electric Comic Book 1967

The Blues Magoos' first album, Psychedelic Lollipop, earned the band a major hit single, "(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet," and in the grand tradition of striking while the iron was hot, the New York-based quintet were back with their second LP, 1967's Electric Comic Book, less than five months later. The sophomore effort is a noticeably more ambitious piece of work than the Magoos' debut, and while psychedelia was a catchphrase more than anything else on the first record, Electric Comic Booksounds trippier and a bit more expansive by comparison (the goofy "Intermission" tosses in some fairly obvious marijuana and cocaine references which would have been almost unthinkable in 1966, and the drug angle in "Pipe Dream" isn't exactly subtle). In addition, a few months of playing live had tightened up a combo who already sounded pretty good together, as well as bolstering the confidence in Ralph Scala's vocals and keyboard work and the fuzzy interplay of guitarists Mike Esposito andEmil "Peppy" Thielhelm. However, the blues and R&B elements that were a large part of Psychedelic Lollipop's strength have faded into the background here (except for a overdone cover of Jimmy Reed's "Let's Get Together"), and though the band could come up with a respectable pop tune, "Baby, I Want You" and "Take My Love" sound like throw-aways that were tossed together quickly to fill out a record not quite 30 minutes long (though "Take My Love" does have the very memorable line "Take my love and shove it up your heart"). Psychedelic Lollipop is well short of a classic, but overall it's a stronger and more coherent set of songs than Electric Comic Book, which sounds like the quickly recorded follow-up that it truly was, though it does have moments that suggest the band could have made another album as good as the debut with a bit more time and attention. AMG. 

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