Kathi McDonald - Insane Asylum 1974

Kathi McDonald was one of the friends recruited by Big Brother & the Holding Company to perform on their two post-Joplin releases, Be a Brother and How Hard It Is. David Briggs, producer of the second Alice Cooper album Easy Action and multiple early Neil Young discs is at the helm on Insane Asylum. With arrangements by The Jefferson Starship's Pete Sears, this is a showcase for the chops and musicianship of McDonald. There's a terrific reading of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" (which Janis Joplin covered years earlier), and an interesting first track co-written by McDonald and Pete Sears, "Bogart to Bowie," with Nils Lofgren on guitar and Bobbye Hall on percussion. The photos of McDonald on the back cover are chaotic and beautiful, a cartoon caricature of these adorns the cover, the illustration by Seiko Kashihara. With Ronnie Montrose on guitar and Pete Sears on keys for a heavy version of "(Love Is Like A) Heatwave," you basically have Big Brother & the Holding Company/ Montrose/Jefferson Starship covering Martha & the Vandellas. This 1974 recording was a year before Linda Ronstadt repeated Martha's feat of going Top Five with the song. There is something about the record that feels like the band is holding back. That evaporates with what may be the best performance on the disc, "Threw Away My Love," the second Sears/McDonald original. Kathi's great, bluesy vocal fights and Journey's Neil Schon on guitar give the track lots of soul, which is missing in much of the record. Surprising because Briggs is usually intuitive enough to bring out the best in artists. There is an abundance of talent here, creating a nice platform for this important singer. "Freak Lover" features the late Starship violinist Papa John Creach and is appropriately manic for an album about insanity. Willie Dixon's composition, "Insane Asylum," with Pete Sears and Nils Lofgren, is a blues workout deluxe. Neil Schon and Pete Sears accompany Kathi on a Peter Frampton tune, "All I Want to Be." Lofgren and Sears do a heavy cover of Neil Young's "Down to the Wire" for the singer to display her wonderful voice. With such a stellar cast and so much input this record could have been much more. It's still a respectable showcase for the talents of Kathi McDonald. AMG.

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