Edgar Winter's Whithe Trash - Recycled 1977

The much-anticipated reunion of Edgar Winter's White Trash brings the powerhouse vocalist Jerry LaCroix back to the forefront, allowing Edgar Winter to put more of his energy into the keyboards, saxophones and percussion. While Recycled is by no means any competition for their 1971 debut album or their subsequent live release, Roadwork, it still houses a few punches that will catch you with your guard down if you aren't careful. Extreme musicianship dominates, but a few classic covers might have helped endear this release to its listeners. After all, that was the key to the original success. AMG.

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Pete Sinfield - Still 1973

As expected, Pete Sinfield's only solo attempt has the fingerprints of King Crimson covering every track, and the end result is an obvious but rather gratifying piece of early progressive rock. With fellow Crimsonites Greg Lake, Mel Collins, and John Wetton helping him out, Sinfield manages to capture a sturdy-enough progressive air across the length of the album, complemented by periodic injections of classical, rock, and jazz movements. While Sinfield's vocal contributions are a little uninviting, he makes up for it with the assistance of Greg Lake for the title track, which is a spoken-word poem set to Lake's singing. "The Song of the Sea Goat" is another well-crafted piece that applies classical tendencies borrowed from Vivaldi, and Collins comes alive with some exquisite flute playing throughout "The Piper," one of the album's strongest cuts. To Sinfield's credit, his surreal lyrics are mindful and well written, with a strong regard for prog rock's fantastical milieu, and because of this the album maintains its strength when the music itself begins to falter in some areas, such as on "Will It Be You" and "Envelopes of Yesterday." Tracks like "Wholefood Boogie" and "Under the Sky" are delightful emissions of keyboard-built progressive music that are wisely infused with mild doses of blues and synth-guided rock. Although the pieces that make up Still aren't as overwhelming as most of King Crimson's repertoire at the time, they do help illustrate Sinfield's talents as an individual, since his membership within his former band was seemingly overshadowed by the other personnel. Still isn't a crucial segment of progressive rock's uprising of the early '70s, but it does make for an entertaining sidebar for anyone interested in King Crimson's stock. The album was later reissued as Stillusion, with a different track sequence and revised liner notes. AMG.

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Mandrake Paddle Steamer - Mandrake Paddle Steamer 1971

Comprising Brian Engel (vocals), Martin Briley (b. London, England; guitar/vocals), Barry Nightingale (drums), Martin Hooker (keyboards) and Paul Riordan (bass/vocals), Mandrake Paddle Steamer were responsible for recording one of the most cherished singles of the psychedelic era - ‘Strange Walking Man’. Subsequently reissued by Bam Caruso in 1988, the song’s popularity has continued to revive interest in the band, and was eventually featured on a compilation CD issued by Forgotten Jewels Records in 1991. Unfortunately, Mandrake Paddle Steamer never received a similar level of acclaim in their era, and issued only one further single, ‘Sunlight Glide’, which was released on Parlophone Records in 1969 but only for the Swedish market. Engel left in August 1970, leaving Riordan and Briley to take over on vocals. David Potts subsequently replaced Nightingale on drums as the band shortened their name to Mandrake, but the departure of Briley hastened their demise. Engel and Briley joined up again in the less celebrated Prowler and Liverpool Echo, the latter recording a single and an unreleased album, Liverpool Echo, for Spark Records in 1973. Briley then went on to play with Greenslade and enjoy a minor hit with the solo ‘Salt In My Tears’, before establishing himself as an in-demand session player and songwriter. Engel recorded two albums with Limey before joining the New Seekers. AMG.

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Sally Eaton - Farewell American Tour 1970

Sally Eaton is a Wiccan High Priestess, liturgist, singer and actress, whose credits include creating and playing the role of Jeanie in the stage production of the hit Broadway musical Hair, and, as a member of Doric Wilson's professional theater company TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), acting in the Doric Wilson plays Now She Dances! and Street Theater.
In the mid-1970s she migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, becoming a third-degree Priestess in New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn and was heavily involved in the West Coast Craft Tradition and the California revival of the Ordo Templi Orientis.
She contributed to many of the early ADF rituals and published material, and to the music and lyrics of the songs on the album, Avalon is Rising! Her eclectic magical background ranges from Golden Dawn and O.T.O. material to Wiccan and Druidic styles and she has presented lectures, rituals and performances at Neo-Pagan events. Eaton remains a professional singer, best known for her rendition of the song "Air" in the hit Broadway musical Hair, and sings the blues professionally.

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Pisces - A Lovely Sight 1969

A small independent label based in Chicago, the Numero Group are known for unearthing obscure but worthwhile recordings -- and they have acquired an enthusiastic cult following among hardcore collectors. The Numero Group have paid a lot of intention to soul and gospel rarities, but Pisces' A Lovely Sight is neither soul nor gospel. The focus of this 2009 release, which was recorded in the late '60s, is psychedelic pop/rock. If one has never heard of Pisces, that doesn't mean that he/she isn't knowledgeable of psychedelic music. Pisces were a little-known group from Rockford, IL; in fact, they never released a full-fledged vinyl LP when they were together. But this 44-minute CD contains 15 of their late-'60s recordings, and their material is generally enjoyable. Back in the late '60s, psychedelic music was diverse. There was psychedelic hard rock, psychedelic blues-rock, psychedelic folk-rock, and psychedelic pop/rock -- and Pisces are mostly psychedelic pop/rock but show some appreciation of folk-rock on occasion. Some of these tunes might have become AM radio hits had Pisces been discovered by Columbia or RCA and received the right promotional push, but they never enjoyed that type of support. Of course, obscurity isn't a negative among the obsessive collectors who buy the Numero Group's releases -- in fact, obscurity is a major plus for them -- and lovers of '60s psychedelic music will find that A Lovely Sight, although mildly uneven, has a lot going for it and is well worth checking out. AMG. 

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Rustix - Come On People 1970

Formed in 1967, The Rustix showcased the talents of drummer Bobby Bladino (replaced by former Invictas drummer David Colon Jr.), singer Chuck Brucato,, lead guitarist Bob D'Andrea, singer Albin Galich, bassist Kit Nelson, and keyboardist Vince Strenk, the group became quite popular throughout New York state, eventually scoring a one-shot contract with Chess' Cadet subsidiary resulting in the release of a cover of Eddie Holland's 'Leaving Here' as their debut single.
While the single did little commercially outside of upper New York, manager/Rochester DJ Ferndinand Jay Smith III was responsible for getting the band signed by Motown's newly formed Rare Earth subsidiary.  Apparently signed as part of the label's attempt to dip it's a corporate toe in rock and roll, the band was teamed with Motown artist R. Dean Taylor in the producers' role.
Like the band's debut album, fellow Motown artist R. Dean Taylor produced their sophomore release - 1970's "Come On People".  This time out the creative spotlight was clearly focused on the band with Brucato responsible for penning seven of the ten tracks.  That said, musically the album featured a modest change in direction compared to their debut.  Gone was most of the blue-eyed soul that characterized the debut.  In its place the band could be heard pursuing a more blues-rock oriented sound.

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Ross - Pit & the Pendelum 1974

British hard-rock and prog band fronted by guitarist/singer Alan Ross (formerly with John Entwistle's group), also featuring Bob Jackson who played Keyboards and Lead Vocals with Indian Summer (3). They existed about two years 1973/1974 gaining international release on RSO Records, with some success in Germany and the States, but failing to get an audience in their home UK they soon split-up after the release of "The Pit & The Pendulum" an ambitious sophomore concept album.

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Paul Brett's Sage - Jubilation Foundry 1971

Nicky Higginbottom departed Paul Brett's Sage after the release of the band's eponymous debut album, and with her went the haunting flute that gave much of the album such a rich, pastoral sound. But the band was already moving in a new direction, exploring rock's roots and the genre's many permutations. Jubilation Foundry welds Sage's varied influences onto their sleeves, from "Cottage Made for Two," an homage to the Everly Brothers, to the gospel fired "Help Me Jesus" and the Stax inspired "Hold My Hand Mother." There are tributes to Southern blues and Southern rock, nods to singer/songwriters Cat Stevens and Harry Nilsson, and even a tip of the hat to the Beatles. With the group here sporting rich harmonies, the emphasis is on great songs in a variety of musical veins and moods, with singalong choruses, memorable melodies, and flashy musicianship evident throughout the album. AMG.

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Os Mutantes - Jardim Elétrico 1971

Jardim Elétrico is a natural follow-up to Os Mutantes's previous effort, A Divina Comédia Ou Ando Meio Desligado and a step further away from the '60s psychedelics that characterized the groups first two albums. Some consider Jardim Elétrico to be the beginning of the decline of Os Mutantes, but the album is very popular among the fans of the group. One of the absolute highlights of the album is the humorous "El Justiciero," which features Spanish lyrics and also some Spanish-style guitar play. Other great songs are "Tecnicolor," which has lyrics in English, the melodious and slightly Beatlesque "Virgínia," and "Tudo, Tudo, Tudo," a song that features a bluesy mouth harmonica. On these and other tracks on the album, the music of Os Mutantes is just as playful and creative as ever. On the whole, this is a very enjoyable album that will almost certainly appeal to any fan of the group. The casual listener, though, will probably be better off starting with one of the group's three first albums. It may be worth noting that five of the songs on Jardim Elétrico were really recorded in France in 1970 to appear on the album Tecnicolor, which aimed at the international market, but wasn't released until the year 2000. To get hold of these songs, Jardim Elétrico is definitely a better choice than Tecnicolor. AMG.

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Sam Cooke - Twistin' The Night Away 1962

This was one of Cooke's more successful LPs, only his second ever to chart (the first was his 1957 debut long-player), and from here on, all of his albums would sell in serious numbers. Twistin' the Night Away remains one of Cooke's most accessible records, despite the fact that it was a "twist" album, aimed by the producers at cashing in on that craze, and Cooke was shoehorned into doing numbers like "Camptown Twist," "Twistin' in the Kitchen With Dinah," and "Twistin' in the Old Town," as well as his version of Hank Ballard's "The Twist." Around them, the singer is at his most soulful, exciting, and passionate, on the bluesy "Somebody Have Mercy"; the romantic lament "Somebody's Gonna Miss Me"; the ebullient "Sugar Dumpling"; the achingly beautiful, yearning "A Whole Lot of Woman"; the soaring "Soothe Me" (with Lou Rawls); and the slow dance number "Movin' and Groovin' ." One of the great dance albums of its period, but a brilliant soul album as well, which is why it holds up 40 years later.

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East Of Eden - Another Eden 1975

East of Eden is a perfect illustration of the futility that England's Decca Records faced in cultivating progressive rock (apart from the Moody Blues). A critically acclaimed jazz-fusion band with a strong Eastern music influence, they were a natural for stardom during the late '60s; indeed, they might've taken the wind out of the sails of the Mahavishnu Orchestra very fast, but they never became more than a cult act in England, with a strong local following in London, especially on the underground scene, even as they attracted serious audiences in continental Europe. The band was formed in Bristol in 1967 by Dave Arbus (flute, sax, trumpet), Ron Caines (alto sax), and Geoff Nicholson (guitar, vocals). Caines and Nicholson had previously played together in an R&B-based band, and the Caines and Arbus had been playing together for a couple of years. Future Wings member Geoff Britton was their original drummer, although the group's rhythm section was never an essential focus of their work, and they went through quite a few musicians. Arbus had been trained in the violin, but it wasn't until he saw Jean-Luc Pontyplaying on-stage in Paris that he realized the possibilities that the amplified instrument offered. He added the electric violin to his repertoire, greatly broadening the band's range and sound, and the following year, they moved to London.
The group was signed to Decca's progressive rock imprint Deram label in 1968, and cut two LPs, Mercator Projectedand Snafu, of which the latter made it into the British Top 30, while a single, "Ramadhan," got to number two in France. Their one big hit in England, "Jig-a-Jig," made the Top Ten there and became something of a stylistic albatross around the band's neck, since it didn't resemble their usual sound or anything else they normally played. Caines and Nicholson left the band as the '70s began, and Arbus kept it together. They jumped to the Harvest label, but their work there never caught on, coinciding as it did with a change in style and a veering away from Eastern music to a country-ish sound. Arbus left in the early '70s and was replaced by future Rory Gallagher collaborator Joe O'Donnell. The band carried on through the mid-'70s as almost exclusively a European act, recording and releasing albums in Europe only. The three original core members reunited in 1999 for the recording and release of the album Kalipse, which was followed by two additional albums after the turn of the century, Armadillo (2001) and Graffito (2004). AMG.

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National Health - National Health 1977

Purchasers of National Health's 1977 debut album might have looked at the band's lineup and figured that the group was Hatfield and the North with a new bassist, but the back-story was actually more complicated. The band was originally conceived by keyboardists Dave Stewart of the Hatfields and Alan Gowen of Gilgamesh as a merger of the two groups, which would have resulted in a rather massive nine-piece aggregation. But this grandiose scheme arose precisely at a time when rock listeners and, of course, labels were turning away from progressive rock toward punk. Or, as Stewart wrote in the liners to the 1990 East Side Digital comp National Health Complete, toward "some of the most crass, simplistic, brutal, ugly and stupid music imaginable, in an atmosphere where an admitted inability to play one's instrument was hailed as a sign of genius...." Well, true enough, but Stewart did pick "rock" as his art form, and rock has always been mainly for teenagers and twentysomethings, so maybe he should've seen punk coming. Plus, nobody likes a whiner. Anyway, back in the mid- to late '70s, National Healthwould briefly fight the good fight against all that crassness, simplicity, brutality, ugliness, and stupidity. Prior to this debut album's release, however, the struggle proved sufficiently daunting to force a paring down of the initial Stewart-Gowen dream to a quartet lineup consisting of Hatfields members Stewart, guitarist Phil Miller, and drummer Pip Pyle, plus bassist Neil Murray (later of Whitesnake fame; go figure) -- with Gowen relegated to guest status along with former Northette vocalist Amanda Parsons, Canterbury mainstay reedman Jimmy Hastings, and percussionist John Mitchell (later of Nixon/Watergate fame; no, sorry, that was a different John Mitchell from a different country).
At times, National Health's four lengthy multifaceted suites present the Hatfield-esque instrumental Canterbury sound at its most accomplished. Gowen, with writing credits for "Brujo" and "Elephants," came to be known for a jazzy, improvisational sensibility in contrast to the more thoroughly scored compositional approach of Stewart, who penned "Tenemos Roads" and "Borogoves," but National Health presents a perfect meld of their styles, utterly without tension between them. There are vamps over which Stewart, Gowen, or Miller solo (great fuzz organ from Stewart; fluid Moog from Gowen; inimitable phrasing and tone from Miller), but most notable is the music's organic flow through its twists and turns of melody, harmonics, rhythm (Pyle again proving both his dynamism and sensitivity), texture, and timbre. Music this complex and densely varied, particularly in the rock realm, seldom feels as light and breezy. Parsons' high-flying soprano vocals, whether she is singing wordless "la-la-las" in the Hatfield style on "Borogoves" or doubling Stewart's memorable "Tenemos Road" theme, add considerably to the ethereal mood. The result might be considered an equal-parts mash-up of Tarkusand Light as a Feather, as inconceivable as that might sound. What the heck, throw in some Stravinsky. It's rare to hear music as wonderful these days. Whine, whine, whine. AMG.

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East - East 1972

Criminally overlooked in the psychedelic scene of the early '70s, East was a Japanese band that made music seemingly right at home in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Despite the usage of traditional Japanese instruments such as the koto, biwa, taisho-goto, and the shakuchi, they sounded more like authentic West Coasters than a quintet born on the Land of the Rising Sun. Performing lyrics in perfect English, and with enough of an Americana influence to sound at times like the Flying Burrito Brothers -- at other times, more like Love or Jefferson Airplane -- the five bell-bottom- and paisley-clad lads put out only one self-titled album in 1972 before disbanding. In 2007, Fallout Records, the accomplished crate-diggers that they are, reissued Easton CD. AMG.

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O'Donel Levy - Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky 1973

Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky, O'Donel Levy's follow-up to his excellent Simba, is something of a letdown in comparison. Simba featured a bunch of solid tunes, written and dynamically arranged by Manny Albam. Although both albums were produced by label head Sonny Lester, without Albam's input these sessions seem somewhat lost. The title cut is not a direct ripoff of the Allen Toussaint tune, but it is fairly derivative. The second tune is a direct ripoff. "Marbles," credited to Levy, is actually a John McLaughlin tune, from his album Devotion, and it's downhill from there. Billy Preston's "Will It Go Round in Circles" is taken at breakneck speed, and let's just say Levy is better off sticking with instrumentals. "Livin' for the City" gets a heavy wah-wah makeover, but is one of the better tracks on the album. The rest is just unremarkable. "Sideshow" shows the ballad side of Levy's playing, and the standard "Willow Weep for Me" is treated as a pretty straight blues. None of this is awful; it just lacks the great tunes and arrangements of its predecessor. Unless you simply can't get enough O'Donel Levy, skip Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky and stick with Simba. AMG.

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Ornette Coleman - Twins 1960

Ornette Coleman's Twins (first issued on LP in 1971) has been looked at as an afterthought in many respects. A collection of sessions from 1959, 1960, and 1961 with different bands, they are allegedly takes from vinyl LP sessions commercially limited at that time to 40 minutes on vinyl, and not initially released until many years later. Connoisseurs consider this one of his better recordings in that it offers an overview of what Coleman was thinking in those pivotal years of the free bop movement rather than the concentrated efforts of The Art of the Improvisers, Change of the Century, The Shape of Jazz to Come, This Is Our Music, and of course the pivotal Free Jazz. There are three most definitive selections that define Coleman's sound and concept. "Monk & the Nun" is angular like Thelonious Monk, soulful as spiritualism, and golden with the rhythm team of bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins driving the sweet and sour alto sax of Coleman and piquant trumpeting of Don Cherry. "Check Up" is a wild roller coaster ride, mixing meters, tempos, and dynamics in a blender in an unforgettable display of sheer virtuosity, and featuring bassist Scott LaFaro. "Joy of a Toy" displays the playful Ornette Coleman in interval leaps, complicated bungee jumps, in many ways whimsical but not undecipherable. It is one of the most intriguing of all of Coleman's compositions. Less essential, "First Take" showcases his double quartet in a churning composition left off the original release This Is Our Music, loaded with interplay as a showcase for a precocious young trumpeter named Freddie Hubbard, the ribald bass clarinet of Eric Dolphy, and the first appearance with Coleman's groups for New Orleans drummer Ed Blackwell. "Little Symphony" has a great written line with room for solos in a joyful hard bop center with the quartet of Coleman, Cherry, Haden, and Blackwell. All in all an excellent outing for Coleman from a hodgepodge of recordings that gives a broader view of his vision and the music that would come later in the '60s. AMG.

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