Sarofeen & Smoke - Sarofeen & Smoke 1971

Sarofeen's vocal style has been compared to Janis Joplin, Ellen McIllwaine, & the Shocking Blue's (recently deceased) Mariska Veres, and if you like those vocalists you should give her a chance. Even if you don't like that heavy, bluesy 60's female vocal style you should still give it a try. Sarofeen & John Martin (especially the latter) wrote some excellent material for the album and the band.

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Ian Carr - Belladonna 1972

Ian Carr has been on the cutting edge of the British jazz scene for nearly four decades. Self-trained as a musician,Carr played an important role in the development of jazz-rock fusion, playing with John McLaughlin in the early '60s, forming one of England's first electronic jazz-rock fusion groups, Nucleus, in 1969 and playing with the international band the United Jazz Rock Ensemble, since 1975. In 1982, Carr received a Calabria award in southern Italy for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Jazz. Wire Magazine presented him a special award for services to British jazz in 1987. Carr has been equally influential as a music journalist and educator. The co-author of a jazz encyclopedia, The Essential Companion, Carr was also the author of Music Outside, an examination of contemporary British jazz published in 1973; Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography, published in 1982; and Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music, published in 1991. Since 1992, Carr has written a monthly column for BBC Music Magazine. Carr is an associate professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Dance and lectures weekly on jazz history. Born in Scotland and raised in England, Carr thought little of a career in music until he was nearly 30 years old. Educated at King's College in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where he studied English literature, Carr served in the Army in the late '50s. Shortly after his discharge, he formed a band, the EmCee Five, with his brother Mike and John McLaughlin. Carr remained with the band for two years, leaving to form the Rendell-Carr Group with saxophonist Don Rendell in 1962. During the seven years he worked with Rendell, Carr helped the band record five albums.

In September 1969, Carr helped form the groundbreaking fusion bandNucleus. The group attracted international acclaim when it took the top prize in a competition at the Montreaux International Festival in 1970. Carrcontinued to play with Nucleus until 1989 when he left to tour the United Kingdom and Europe as a soloist on electric trumpet with an Anglo-American orchestra led by American composer George Russell. Old Heartland was recorded with the Kreisler String Orchestra in 1988 while Sounds and Sweet Airs was recorded with organist John Taylor in 1992. AMG.

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Time - Before There Was 1968

This album adds a "chapter zero" to Time's story, as the demos included here predate the material released on Dog Days. These 35 minutes of music were recorded in January 1968, when Tom McFaul, Lynn David Newton, Richard Stanley, and David Rosenboom drove twice from Buffalo to a recording studio in Toronto. Their original brand of psychedelic music had already gelled, as songs like "Introductory Lines" and "Sad Benjamin" illustrate. The 11 tracks included here go back and forth between post-Sgt. Pepper's psychedelic pop and acid folk with medieval leanings. The inclusion of Stanley's solo rendition of "Kemp's Jig" is somewhat surprising -- the same traditional tune would become one of medieval progressive icon Gryphon's early live staples. "A Song for You," "Introductory Lines," and "Elin Experience" are the most interesting tracks. Quite experimental for 1967, they feature odd meters and shifting sections of straight pop songwriting and abstract developments. "Dover Beach" is a straightforward pop song in theKinks/Turtles vein, while "Waking" and "Lily Has a Rose" fall back to delicate folk, with Stanley playing the lute. Despite the obscurity of the band and the imperfect sound quality (the tapes were discovered over 30 years after they were recorded), Before There Was... Time makes a very decent listen. This band had stumbled upon something good early on. It is a shame that they could not develop fully in Buffalo's conservative climate. AMG.

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The Dave Clark Five - American Tour 1964

One of the Dave Clark Five's finest hours, American Tour (so named in commemoration of their first U.S. tour -- it's not a live album) is excellent from start to finish. The album encompasses slightly retrograde instrumental rock & roll, like the "Green Onions"-styled "Move On," in addition to the sophisticated pop/rock and driving garage rock of their vocal cuts. "Because" was one of the band's biggest American hits and, like everything on the album, was composed by its members. The mixture of jazzy chords, straight-ahead rock, and saxophone (which was pretty passé in 1964) is an interesting one, making the group less enigmatic than the Zombies and more obviously rooted in earlier rock traditions than the Beatles. Despite the adventurous construction of their vocal songs, they're willing to use standard chord progressions for their instrumentals. In that sense, the Dave Clark Five bridged the gap between the music ofBill Haley, the Bill Black Combo, and the Beatles in a way that few other British Invasion acts did. AMG.

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Shocking Blue - At Home 1969

American listeners tend to remember Shocking Blue as the one-hit wonder behind the chart-topper "Venus," a melting pot of rock rhythms, country guitar licks, organ riffs, and Mariska Veres' heavily accented vocals. Sounding something like a cross between "96 Tears" and "Sugar, Sugar," "Venus" was not entirely representative of the group's first album,At Home. Like their fellow countrymen Golden Earring, Shocking Blue purveyed a mild strain of psychedelic rock, but leaned more toward country and folk music than bubblegum. Guitarist and principal songwriter Robby Van Leeuwenwas already preoccupied with Americana at this early stage, from "Harley Davidson" and "California Here I Come" to a surprising rendition of the folk song "Boll Weevil" that sets the traditional lyrics to music reminiscent of the Easybeats' "Good Times." (The group's country music fixation would manifest itself more overtly on later albums). Van Leeuwen's sitar is pictured on the album cover and dominates the instrumental "Acka Raga," but, thankfully, is not overused. "Mighty Joe" and "Never Marry a Railroad Man" were minor U.S. chart hits that few people remember, but "Love Buzz" gained a measure of fame decades later when Nirvana covered it. Veres has great presence -- like a gypsy incarnation of Grace Slick -- but Van Leeuwen's English-language lyrics can be awkward at times. On "Venus," all the components clicked perfectly into place, but there is much more to Shocking Blue than their biggest hit. AMG.

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Larry Coryell - Lady Coryell 1969

This 1968 set is for anyone who felt let down when the early '70s promise for a truly creative, genre-busting fusion of jazz and rock swiftly disappeared in a wave of vapid, show biz values and disco frippery.

On Lady Coryell, the 25-year-old Larry Coryell already possessed a virtuoso's technique and a rich harmonic and melodic imagination. He uses these gifts here to build swirling, multi-tracked, oftentimes intensely psychedelic performances that range seamlessly across the jazz and rock landscape. The most important tracks are "Treats Style" and "Stiff Neck." On the former, the guitarist is teamed with jazz masters Jimmy Garrison (bass) and Elvin Jones(drums) in a power trio of cool swagger and screaming blues. "Stiff Neck"is a furious duet between Jones and the guitarist. Coryell begins in a driving, post-bop vein, segues to a raw, acid blues and then out into a splintered, barrage of power chords and feedback.Jones navigates the way ahead, countering Coryell's audacity with controlled fury and an assured, muscular pulse. On the rest of the session, Bob Moses, a bandmate from the guitarist's first recordings, takes the drum chair, while Coryell overdubs the bass parts. Together they calmly probe the shifting sections and layers of the title track before transforming a Junior Walker R&B shuffle, "Cleo's Mood," into a mind-bending, rave-up. Even Coryell's hoarse-throated singing is effective. On "Sunday Telephone," -- over a maelstrom of phased, fuzzed, and wah-wahed guitars -- he yowls dementedly, "One more dime operator, can't you see it's Dr. Strange on the line." The album's only lapse is the country corn of "Love Child Is Coming Home," where Coryell tries to transcend one genre too many. AMG.

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Black Widow - III 1972

These guys have sometimes been described as a Black Sabbath-like band, and the name Black Widow itself invites a comparison. Yet if that had any validity at the start of their career, by this, their third album, they really sounded more like solid mid-level British prog rockers than satanic hard rockers. This is really closer to early King Crimson andEmerson, Lake & Palmer territory than Black Sabbath, given their lengthy, shifting compositions; stress on forceful organ and vocal harmonies; substantial jazz, classical, hard guitar rock, and folk influences; and the color supplied byClive Jones' sax and flute. Not that Black Widow is that close to ELP and King Crimson, and the tunes on III aren't nearly as stick-in-the-brain as the songs penned by those two groups in their early days -- but they're respectable within that style. Perhaps some of their supposed satanic mindset is still evident in the opening three-part epic "The Battle," divided into The Onslaught, If a Man Should Die, and Survival sections. Otherwise that isn't evident, and occasionally the tunes are rather cheerful, as on "The Sun." The lack of annoying stentorian qualities in Kip Trevor's lead vocals removes this further from standard hard rock territory. There are even some traces of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to be heard in "Old Man," although it was a bad idea to end that tune with quotes from "Hey Jude." This was reissued as a 180-gram gatefold LP by Get Back in 2000. AMG.

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After Shave - Strange Feeling 1974

2nd unreleased album form this Swiss hard rock group. While their first album was more in a heavy bluesy direction, this one steers more into a progressive rock zone with long tracks and extended guitar work. Excellent 70s progressive rock with an underestimated guitarist. Includes the epic side long title track with long spiraling guitar jam.

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Clark-Hutchinson - A=MH2 1969

Andy Clark (vocals, keyboards, percussion, flute, saxophone, rhythm guitar) and Mick Hutchinson (lead guitar, percussion, piano, bass) first worked together in Vamp, a short-lived UK-based quartet founded by ex-Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince in the late 60s. The group split up after completing one single, but Clark and Hutchinson remained together to record the remarkable A=MH2. This improvisatory set proved immensely popular, particularly for the latter’s impressive guitar work. A former member of Sam Gopal’s Dream, Hutchinson brought that group’s neo-Eastern influence to his new venture, highlighted superbly by the 13-minute track, ‘Improvisation On An Indian Scale’. The album’s success inspired a full-time line-up which was completed by Stephen Amazing (bass) and Del Coverly (drums). Subsequent releases lacked the innovation of the group’s debut release and Clark-Hutchinson split up following a third set, Gestalt. 
Psychedelic raga-rock guitar-dominated instrumentals can be a gas -- just listen to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's "East-West" or the Mystic Tide's "Psychedelic Journey," or even some of Robbie Krieger's solos on long Doors tracks. It can also be a bore, as demonstrated by this 49-minute rarity, comprised of five long, doodling Indian-blues-fusion instrumentals, though some vocal chanting is heard. It might be a cliché when complaining about such albums to whine that it only sounds good if you're stoned, but that axiom does seem to apply to these pieces, any one of which grows tiresome, the effect multiplied when five of them are strung together. Sure, there's some skill applied by the players, who are reasonably nimble, using throbbing Indian-influenced tempos as the backdrop. They're songs and musicians in need of some kind of structure, however, and the incessant high-pierced pitches of the guitar become grating. The results are not so much far-out as they are the sort of thing you might hear blasting away for a minute or two at a time in the background of drug orgies in some low-rent psychsploitation flicks. AMG.

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Ginger Baker's Air Force - Ginger Baker's Air Force 1970

On a purely musical level, Ginger Baker's Air Force were arguably the pinnacle of the legendary drummer's achievements of the 1960s. Even allowing for the many and varied virtues of the Graham Bond Organisation, Cream, and Blind Faith, they didn't approach the breadth or ambition that characterized the Air Force sound. Sadly, despite their prodigious musical attributes, Ginger Baker's Air Force are mostly remembered in the music business as one of the great nonstarters among the heavily press-hyped supergroups of the late '60s and early '70s. Air Force essentially grew out of Ginger Baker's six-month stint with Blind Faith, a supergroup that collapsed after generating one album and finishing one tour. Baker's ex-Cream bandmate Eric Clapton abandoned that venture in favor of the vastly different (yet more rewarding) musical styles of Delaney & Bonnie, but Baker persuaded Steve Winwood and Rick Grech, the other members of the band, to stay on with him. Baker planned to put together a new band that would explore music on a new scale, and in new directions, different from Blind Faith or Cream -- the projected band, christened Air Force, would embrace jazz, R&B, blues, folk, and African music.

Baker's old bandmate Graham Bond came aboard on saxophone, joined by legendary jazz drummer Phil Seaman, whom Baker regarded as a mentor and inspiration, along with Traffic's Chris Wood, and Harold McNair, both on sax and flute. As a guitarist and singer, the new group featured Denny Laine, the former lead singer and guitarist of the original Moody Blues. Singer Jeanette Jacobs and African percussionist Remi Kabaka were also in the lineup that played two extraordinary gigs at Birmingham's Town Hall and London's Royal Albert Hall at the end of 1969. Baker's initial plan hadn't extended beyond the two shows, but the first one was so successful musically and critically that he began laying bigger plans, including the recording of the Albert Hall show and keeping the band going. By January of 1970, events were starting to break both inside and outside of the band that would have a profound effect on its future. The reviews from Birmingham were so good that the Albert Hall show turned into one of those press events that became the talk of the entire music trade in England and, by extension, America. The fact that the show had been recorded made it even better -- there was proof on hand that the press enthusiasm was justified. Those Albert Hall recordings were extraordinary, Air Force thundering along amid blazing sax, organ, guitar, and bass virtuosity, fiery solos, and extended jams that, for a change, actually went somewhere, while three percussionists who seemingly were busy all the way through played several layers of rhythm. At its best, and the Royal Albert Hall tapes were their best, Air Force's music was like this wonderful huge array of Chinese boxes, each opening to a smaller but more beautifully ornate box inside.

The live album Ginger Baker's Air Force was issued by Polydor in Europe and Atlantic Records in America. In keeping with the excesses of the times, Ginger Baker's Air Force was a double LP, an extraordinary debut for a band that had yet to play a regularly scheduled concert. Devised with artwork that seemingly reversed the design of the CreamWheels of Fire double set, and released amid extraordinary press, the live album reached number 33 in America and 37 in England, a long way from Cream or Blind Faith's chart-scaling days, but not bad (or, at least, it wouldn't have been if Atlantic, in particular, hadn't pressed hundreds of thousands of copies more than would ever be needed, which turned Ginger Baker's Air Force into a perennial bargain-bin cutout in America) for a group that had only played two gigs. Those were the days of supergroups and all-star jams, all of them heavily advertised and discussed in the rock press, and Air Force, in contrast to a lot of their rivals, delivered the goods.

The biggest problem facing the group, however, was that three key members, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, and Chris Wood, left -- as Baker knew they had to -- in early 1970. Graham Bond took over on organ and vocals for Air Force, and new members Steve Gregory and Bud Beadle joined on saxes, while Colin Gibson took over on bass. Neemoi Acquaye came in on African percussion, and Catherine James, Aliki Ashman, and Diane Stewart sang. It wasBaker's plan to be an old-style bandleader in the traditional sense, opening up Air Force to experimentation by the bandmembers while he hung back, concerning himself as much as possible with the drums. He hoped to play a role akin that which Count Basie or Duke Ellington did in their respective bands, with his members. The problem was that keeping an 11-piece group going was a difficult and expensive proposition under the best of circumstances, and without a hit single or a hugely successful album to their credit, it proved impossible for Baker and Air Force. In addition, bands like Basie's supported themselves by getting lots of outside work, supporting singers on record and in concert, even touring as part of rock & roll shows in Basie's case in the late '50s, to keep the money coming in around their less lucrative gigs; that was clearly not a role that Air Force were ever going to play. And Ellington had income from his huge and vastly successful songwriting catalog to guarantee him the money needed to sustain the band during the lean times, if there were any. Baker, by contrast, had only a tiny smattering of songs to his credit, none of them very successful on their own terms except to the degree that the Cream and Blind Faith catalogs kept selling. And then there was the American tour.

The assumption, based on the media blitz out of England, was the Ginger Baker's Air Force would be another Blind Faith, an arena act whose tickets would disappear as fast as they were put on sale. In point of fact, the new group was two or three times more complex musically than Blind Faith and a lot more surprising. Without Eric Clapton or at leastSteve Winwood in the lineup with Baker, however, and without a single that clicked as a popular track on the radio, it was discovered that Air Force were a phenomenon that many potential ticket-buyers could pass up. The tour was in trouble from the start, and it got worse as advance ticket sales to vast halls were far below what anyone anticipated. The whole thing collapsed just about the time that the group was completing its second and final album. By the end of 1970, after a short tour and a very short spurt of press interest in Air Force 2 -- which had some rewarding moments, but was really little like the first album -- the second album disappeared without a trace, as did Air Force. Baker went on to a career as a solo artist, starting with Stratavarious the following year, which featured a far smaller band and was much more steeped in African rhythms, while Laine joined Paul McCartney's new group Wings and, after a rough start for the group, did a decade of arena shows and became a household name. Ginger Baker's Air Force lingered in the memory for one great album and one decent album, but also as a classic non-event. Their final indignity came in 1972 when the National Lampoon released their comedy album Radio Dinner, one highlight being a commercial for "Greatest Hits of the '60s," with (supposedly) Bob Dylan as the announcer hawking it and Blind Faith and Ginger Baker's Air Force as two of the specific groups mentioned as being on the K-Tel-type record. In the late '80s, Polygram reissued the live album on CD, and that record, Air Force 2, and Stratavarious were later combined into a double CD entitled Do What You Like. AMG.

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Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - Burnt Weeny Sandwich 1970

Burnt Weeny Sandwich is the first of two albums by the Mothers of Invention that Frank Zappa released in 1970, after he had disbanded the original lineup. While Weasels Ripped My Flesh focuses on complex material and improvised stage madness, this collection of studio and live recordings summarizes the leader's various interests and influences at the time. It opens and closes on '50s pop covers, "WPLJ" and "Valarie." "Aybe Sea" is a Zappafied sea shanty, while "Igor's Boogie" is named after composer Igor Stravinsky, the closest thing to a hero Zappa ever worshipped. But the best material is represented by "Holiday in Berlin," a theme that would become central to the music of 200 Motels, and "The Little House I Used to Live In," including a virtuoso piano solo by Ian Underwood. Presented as an extended set of theme and variations, the latter does not reach the same heights as "King Kong." In many places, and with the two aforementioned exceptions in mind, Burnt Weeny Sandwich sounds like a set of outtakes from Uncle Meat, which already summarized to an extent the adventures of the early Mothers. It lacks some direction, but those allergic to the group's grunts and free-form playing will prefer it to the wacky Weasels Ripped My Flesh. AMG.

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Flora Purim - Encounter 1976

This was one of Flora Purim's finest all-around jazz recordings, and it is luckily available on CD. Purim is featured in a variety of challenging and stimulating settings: on two numbers ("Above the Rainbow" and "Tomara") with pianistMcCoy Tyner; teamed up with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson on Chick Corea's "Windows" and "Black Narcissus"; and utilizing such players as bass trombonist Raul DeSouza, keyboardists Hermeto Pascoal and George Duke, and singer Urszula Dudziak (who is heard on "Encounter") plus Flora's husband, percussionist Airto. The music is primarily group originals and finds Flora Purim in peak form. Highly recommended. AMG.

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