Groundhogs - Blues Obituary 1969 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Recorded during June of 1969 at Marquee Studios in London with Gary Collins and Colin Caldwell engineering, the trio of Groundhogs put the blues to rest on Blues Obituary in front of a castle on the Hogart-designed cover while six black and whites from photographer Zorin Matic grace the back in morbid Creepy or Eerie Magazine comic book fashion. Composed, written, and arranged by Tony "T.S." McPhee, there are seven tracks hovering from the around four- to seven-minute mark. The traditional "Natchez Burning," arranged by McPhee, fits in nicely with his originals while the longest track, the six-minute-and-50-second "Light Is the Day," features the most innovation -- a Ginger Baker-style tribal rant by drummer Ken Pustelnik allowing McPhee to lay down some muted slide work. As the tempo on the final track elevates along with manic guitar runs by McPhee, the jamming creates a color separate from the rest of the disc while still in the same style. Vocals across the board are kept to a minimum. It is all about the sound, Cream without the flash, bandleader McPhee vocally emulating Alvin Lee (by way of Canned Heat's Alan Wilson) on the four-minute conclusion to side one that is "Mistreated." While Americans like Grand Funk's Mark Farner turned the format up a commercial notch, Funk's "Mean Mistreater" sporting the same sentiment while reaching a wider audience, the Groundhogs on this late-'60s album keep the blues purely in the underground. The pumping beat on "Mistreated" embraces the lead guitarist's vocal, which poses that eternal blues question: "what have I done that's wrong?" Blistering guitar on the opening track, "B.D.D.," sets the pace for this deep excursion into the musical depths further down than Canned Heat ever dared go. While "Daze of the Weak" starts off sludgy enough, it quickly moves like a train out of control, laying back only to explode again. "Times" get things back to more traditional roots on an album that breaks little new ground, and is as consistent as Savoy Brown when they got into their primo groove. AMG.

listen here

Terry Reid - Terry Reid 1969 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Reid's initial pair of albums are very similar, and it's really a toss-up as to which one is better. If either rates a slight edge, it would be Terry Reid, as it finds his songwriting skills slightly more developed. The Donovan influence is again apparent on the cover of the Scotsman's "Superlungs My Supergirl," and "Stay with Me Baby" is another well-done blue-eyed soul showcase. As a songwriter, Reid still had a way to go, sounding better on the gentler, folkier numbers than the all-out power trio numbers. Such unfulfilled promise was understandable to a degree, as Reid was not yet 20 when this was released; unfortunately, he would never significantly expand on the promise of his first two LPs. The CD reissue on BGO adds four bonus cuts from the two rare non-LP singles he recorded in 1967 and 1968, prior to the issue of Bang, Bang You're Terry Reid. AMG.

listen here

Gilberto Gil – Gilberto Gil 1969 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

It's not only ironic that the record with Gilberto Gil's first major hit ("Aquele Abraço") is also his most experimental album; it also speaks to the diversity of Brazil's emerging pop superstar. Beginning with the loose-jointed groove-pop of "Cérebro Eletrónico" (the album's subtitle), this second of three straight self-titled LPs includes a few Carnival-styled pop songs, as on his previous album. Most of the experimentation comes at the end of side two with "2001" and "Objeto Semi-Identificado," both of which are filled with odd tape-music portions, spoken-word elements, and a reliance on studio trickery rarely seen on any Western pop albums. Even the pop songs are produced with an eye toward noise; the tropicalia anthem "Volks Volkswagen Blue" features a few psychedelic guitar lines breaking into distortion, and a small but devastatingly brassy horn section punctuating the melody. It's a very disjointed album, not quite as consistently entertaining as last year's entry, but definitely a masterpiece of forward-looking pop. AMG.

listen here

Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso 1969 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

This second Caetano Veloso solo LP was recorded in June 1969, when Veloso and Gilberto Gil were behind the bars of the military dictatorship. The albums (Gil also recorded his own) were devised in part to provide them with a connection to the outside world through which authorities would be discouraged of attempting some violence against them. The voices were unsophisticatedly recorded with the sole backing of their own violões and a metronome, and the arrangements were added later in the studio, which was an indigenous and competent subversion of the basics of production, especially if you take into consideration the available technology at that time. The general tone of this album is coherent with the depressing moment Veloso and the rest of the country were going through. The English lyrics of his "The Empty Boat" have several strong images of desperation and sadness, and "Irene" has been largely misunderstood -- especially the verse "quero ver Irene rir" (I want to see Irene laughing). "Irene" was the "name" of a machine gun owned by Tenório Cavalcanti (a robber somewhat celebrated by leftists at the time). His fado "Os Argonautas" represents implicitly the aspiration that, as Portugal had got ridden of Salazar (in the precedent year by a stroke), Brazil could also got rid of its dictatorship. The superbly modern arrangements of Rogério Duprat and the songs "Não Identificado," "Acrilírico," and "Marcianita," on the other hand, contribute to the anarchic, chaotic, and psychedelic setting of Tropicalia in which make part the rustic fuzzed-out guitars. But maybe the most important thing here is the evident artistic sincerity felt throughout the album: it is when the listener feels himself as a voyeur, peeping through the artist's deepest emotions. AMG. Even if Caetano is not mentioned he was also in exile in England with his friend Gilberto Gil and it seems they performed together.

listen here

Isle of Wight 1970 Thursday 27th August

Here I'm back with the festival second day's performances. Gary Farr, Supertramp, Andy Roberts with Everyone, Frankie Miller's Howl, Black Widow, Groundhogs, Terry Reid, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. It's a fine warm up before the three festival big days.

Enjoy!

Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison 1968

Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash's legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail. Surely, this dark outlaw stance wasn't a contrivance but it was an exaggeration, with Cash creating this image by tailoring his set list to his audience of prisoners, filling up the set with tales of murder and imprisonment -- a bid for common ground with the convicts, but also a sly way to suggest that maybe Cash really did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Given the cloud of death that hangs over the songs on At Folsom Prison, there's a temptation to think of it as a gothic, gloomy affair or perhaps a repository of rage, but what's striking about Cash's performance is that he never romanticizes either the crime or the criminals: if anything, he underplays the seriousness with his matter-of-fact ballad delivery or how he throws out wry jokes. Cash is relating to the prisoners and he's entertaining them too, singing "Cocaine Blues" like a bastard on the run, turning a death sentence into literal gallows humor on "25 Minutes to Go," playing "I Got Stripes" as if it were a badge of pride. Never before had his music seemed so vigorous as it does here, nor had he tied together his humor, gravity, and spirituality in one record. In every sense, it was a breakthrough, but more than that, At Folsom Prison is the quintessential Johnny Cash album, the place where his legend burns bright and eternal. [This Expanded Edition of At Folsom Prison added three bonus tracks to the songs included in the original 16-track LP.] AMG.

listen here

New York Dolls - Too Much Too Soon 1974

After the clatter of their first album failed to bring them a wide audience, the New York Dolls hired producer Shadow Morton to work on the follow-up, Too Much Too Soon. The differences are apparent right from the start of the ferocious opener, "Babylon." Not only are the guitars cleaner, but the mix is dominated by waves of studio sound effects and female backing vocals. Ironically, instead of making the Dolls sound safer, all the added frills emphasize their gleeful sleaziness and reckless sound. The Dolls sound on the verge of falling apart throughout the album, as Johnny Thunders and Syl Sylvain relentlessly trade buzz-saw riffs while David Johansen sings, shouts, and sashays on top of the racket. Band originals -- including the bluesy raver "It's Too Late," the noisy girl-group pop of "Puss N' Boots," and the Thunders showcase "Chatterbox" -- are rounded out by obscure R&B and rock & roll covers tailor-made for the group. Johansen vamps throughout Leiber & Stoller's "Bad Detective," Archie Bell's "(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown," the Cadets "Stranded in the Jungle," and Sonny Boy Williamson's "Don't Start Me Talkin'," yet it's with grit and affection -- he really means it, man! The whole record collapses with the scathing "Human Being," on which a bunch of cross-dressing misfits defiantly declare that it's OK that they want too many things, 'cause they're human beings, just like you and me. Three years later, the Sex Pistols failed to come up with anything as musically visceral and dangerous. Perhaps that's why the Dolls never found their audience in the early '70s: Not only were they punk rock before punk rock was cool, but they remained weirder and more idiosyncratic than any of the bands that followed. And they rocked harder, too. AMG.

listen here

Redbone - Redbone 1970

Redbone was a Los Angeles-based group led by Native American Pat and Lolly Vegas. They hit paydirt in 1974 with the million-seller "Come and Get Your Love." Lead singers Pat and Lolly Vegas had previously worked under their own names, appearing in the 1965 film It's a Bikini World prior to forming Redbone. Their first success as Redbone came in 1970 with "Maggie" on Epic. "The Witch Queen of New Orleans" did somewhat better the next year, and "Come and Get Your Love" gave them their largest and last hit in 1974. AMG.

listen here

Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark 1974

Joni Mitchell reached her commercial high point with Court and Spark, a remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz which stands as her best-selling work to date. While as unified and insightful as Blue, the album -- a concept record exploring the roles of honesty and trust in relationships, romantic and otherwise -- moves away from confessional songwriting into evocative character studies: the hit "Free Man in Paris," written about David Geffen, is a not-so-subtle dig at the machinations of the music industry, while "Raised on Robbery" offers an acutely funny look at the predatory environment of the singles bar scene. Much of Court and Spark is devoted to wary love songs: both the title cut and "Help Me," the record's most successful single, carefully measure the risks of romance, while "People's Parties" and "The Same Situation" are fraught with worry and self-doubt (standing in direct opposition to the music, which is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last). AMG.

listen here

The Herd - From The Underworld 1972

Before '70s superstardom, even before Humble Pie, Peter Frampton got his first taste of celebrity as a singer and guitarist in the Herd, who chalked up several hits in Britain in 1967 and 1968. Frampton was only 17 when the single "From the Underworld" went into the British Top Ten in late 1967; "Paradise Lost" and "I Don't Want Our Loving to Die" were hits for the group in the first half of 1968. The Herd's brand of mod was extremely commercial and good-timey- and pop-oriented, a bit like a muted and mainstream Small Faces. Much of their material (including all of the hits) was written by their management team of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had supplied songs for the Honeycombs (of "Have I the Right" fame). Frampton and keyboardist Andy Bown wrote most of the band's original tunes, and one can presume that the limitations of the Herd's overtly pop approach (which sometimes encompassed MOR ballads and orchestrated arrangements) were a factor in his decision to leave for Humble Pie after the Herd had issued just one album and a few singles. After a few Frampton-less singles, the Herd scattered; Andy Bown released a few solo albums and has done session work with Frampton and Pink Floyd. AMG.

listen here

David Bromberg - Wanted Dead Or Alive 1974

This is a reissue of Bromberg's 1974 album. Backing musicians include several members of The Grateful Dead as well as Andy Statman on mandolin and tenor sax. Some of Bromberg's strongest and best-loved material can be found here, including "The Holdup," "Danger Man," "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair," "The New Lee Highway Blues," and Bob Dylan's "Wallflower." AMG.

listen here

Judas Jump - Scorch 1970 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Judas Jump was a heavy progressive rock band, with lots of Mellotron, flutes, and sax in their sound and who had the distinction of inaugurating Parlophone Records' new numbering sequence with their first (and only) album, Scorch, as PAS 10001. Their members made them a kind of U.K.-level super-group with guitarist/keyboardman Andy Bown and drummer Henry Spinetti having come from the Herd and woodwind player Alan Jones an alumnus from the Amen Corner. A trio of singles in 1969 and 1970 was followed by a rather ornately designed album that didn't get a U.S. release until 1972, when the group was already on its way into history. Their music was on the bombastic side of progressive rock, which may be one reason why it didn't succeed, as well as explain why they didn't get signed to EMI's progressive rock imprint Harvest Records. After attracting a decent amount of press, the records proved lacking and the group faded away, with Bown passing through the band Storyteller before joining Status Quo for a time. AMG.

listen here

Kathy Smith - Some Songs I've Saved 1970 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Originally released in 1970 on the miniscule Stormy Forrest label, Kathy Smith's Some Songs I've Saved is no lost treasure on the level of, say, Linda Perhacs' Parallelograms, no matter how much obscurantist collectors may want it to be. Stormy Forrest was Richie Havens' label, and Havens' signature blend of folk and jazz influences is all over this album musically, with flutes and upright bass alongside the acoustic guitars, strings, and Indian instruments. But Smith is not a particularly soulful or jazzy singer: indeed, if anything, she's oddly stiff and proper, over-enunciating her lyrics in songs like "Same Old Lady" like a much more mannered version of the early Judy Collins, when a looser, more rhythmically freewheeling approach would have worked better. Similarly, the songs are fine examples of the whole chamber folk school of female singer/songwriters from this era, but the arrangements are neither trippily psychedelic nor old-school Elizabethan enough to attract the full attention of the Judee Sill and Vashti Bunyan devotees one would assume to be the target audience for this reissue. At its worst, Some Songs I've Saved is merely drearily competent, and at its best (the opening "Topanga," the delicate ballad "If I Could Touch You"), it's a solid L.A. folk-rock album in the early Joni Mitchell school. Don't approach it expecting a magical lost treasure and you likely won't be disappointed, but Some Songs I've Saved is a fairly slight curio overall. AMG.

listen here

Rosalie Sorrels - Folk songs of Idaho and Utah 1961 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Rosalie Sorrels is a collector and performer of traditional American folk songs, but in all her music, traditional and original, there is a deeply personal vein. Sorrels' music is about loss and survival. When she was 16, she had an illegal abortion; when she was 17, she gave up a child for adoption. She married and had five children, left her husband, and struggled to raise her family alone, and then saw her eldest child take his own life. Finally, she suffered a cerebral aneurysm in 1988. Through all her suffering, Sorrels has found solace in her ability to make music, an ability that has enraptured audiences for years.

Sorrels' musical career began in the 1950s, when, as a way of alleviating the tedium of domestic life, she took a class on American folk songs while living in Salt Lake City. Work for that class resulted in her first album, Folk Songs of Utah & Idaho. Her albums since then have been a mix of traditional and original material; always sung with great passion and personal feeling, they have become increasingly autobiographical. AMG.

listen here

David Bromberg - David Bromberg 1971 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Years after he left Columbia University, where he majored in music, David Bromberg graduated from sideman status on his Columbia Records debut. Bromberg has paid his dues, playing guitar on Jerry Jeff Walker's chart single "Mr. Bojangles," among dozens of other recording sessions and gigs as a backup musician. Notably, he played on Bob Dylan's Self Portrait and New Morning albums, and, though uncredited, Dylan has reportedly returned the favor, contributing harmonica on this LP's searing final track, "Sammy's Song." Just before that comes the jocular highwayman romp "The Holdup," co-written by Bromberg and George Harrison, with a lead guitar part that sounds characteristic of the co-author. Those may be Bromberg's heaviest friends, but he also employs a batch of folk and country compatriots throughout the album, among them David Amram, Norman Blake, and Vassar Clements. Typical of a debut album, this one finds the artist determined to demonstrate the range of his talent, and that range extends from pop/rock to bluegrass, with lots of blues and folk-blues thrown in. Bromberg sings in a matter-of-fact style, often with a comic edge, although he also brings out pathos in such tracks as "Dehlia" and "Sammy's Song." The album seems to be a combination of live and studio recordings, the better to bring out the spirit of the music, and the musicians spark each other with lively performances. Bromberg may still be more of a player than a frontman, and more of a tradtionalist than a songwriter, but this disc presents a new wrinkle in some very familiar styles, suggesting that it's possible for an accomplished sideman to move downstage and take over the spotlight. AMG.

listen here