Redbone - Potlatch 1970 - (Isle of Wight 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. Their first of six Epic releases is a strong follow-up to the self-titled debut the same year. The album-opening "Maggie" is a perfect example of their distinctive sound, a funky, highly rhythmic itch that gets under your skin. The limitations of Lolly Vegas' singing means the all-native California quartet is more adept on faster numbers, although "Alcatraz" is a touching ballad with a seldom-heard Indian perspective. The segue on "Chant: 13th Hour" from tribal chanting to Redbone-style funk predates Robbie Robertson's similar experiments by more than 20 years. AMG. Thanks to RareMp3!

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Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson 1970 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

Kris Kristofferson was approaching his mid-thirties and had been kicking around Nashville for several years when he belatedly became an overnight success in 1969-1970. The impetus was "Me and Bobby McGee," which he co-wrote with Fred Foster, who ran Monument Records. Roger Miller cut the song, and his recording peaked in the country Top 20 in August 1969. By that time, Kristofferson had performed at the Newport Folk Festival at the behest of Johnny Cash, and Foster decided to sign him to Monument as a recording artist. Before this debut album was released in 1970, Ray Stevens had scored a pop and country chart entry with Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." AMG.

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Mighty Baby - Mighty Baby 1969 - (Isle of Wight 1970)

This hour-long CD is one of the best bodies of British psychedelia ever released. It contains the complete Mighty Baby album from Head Records, expanded to 13 tracks with the addition of five tracks cut by the Action during its 1967 transition period. The opening number, "Egyptian Tomb," sets the tone for the entire album -- in terms of content, structure, and beat, it sounds like the early Allman Brothers, or maybe the Grateful Dead in one of their harder-rocking moments, jamming with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on an impromptu version of CSN's "Pre-Road Downs." The beauty of the original Mighty Baby album tracks is that they're psychedelia with a solid beat, none of that noodle-rock that drugged-up Brits usually engaged in. "A Friend You Know But Never See" mighthave passed muster on the Byrds' Notorious Byrd Brothers album. Other songs noodle around too much, but overall this is some of the most energetic psychedelia to come out of England, and anyone who enjoys psychedelic guitar will love Martin Stone's and Alan King's work on this album. The bonus tracks, all "lost" demos, are even better: highly rhythmic, driving rock (check out "Understanding Love") with lots of spacy guitar and tougher-than-normal flower-power introspective lyrics, with some gorgeous harmonies dressing it all up -- a near perfect meld of garage rock and psychedelic sensibilities. AMG.

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Isle of Wight 1970 - Wednesday 26th August

The next seven post have the goal to revisited the famous Isle of Wight Festival, I will post the records of the time from Mighty Baby, Kris Kristofferson, Redbone, David Bromberg, Rosalie Sorrels, Kathy Smith and Judas Jump! Soon I'll come with the next days of the Festival.

Info taken here

Hope you enjoy and have a nice trip!

Roy Harper - Sophisticated Beggar 1967

Recorded under primitive circumstances and not distributed well on initial release, Harper's debut proves that the definitive cult folk-rock singer's idiosyncratic weirdness was firmly in place from the start. Mostly but not wholly acoustic, there are lingering similarities to Donovan and Bert Jansch, as well as a light similarity to Al Stewart on occasion. But Harper's scrambled lyricism is already his own, as is his peculiar melismatic phrasing. Those two traits combine to give the impression of a singer-songwriting dyslexic, not able or willing to write words that are easily digested and apparently unsequenced in any linear fashion. That isn't the most appetizing recipe, but it's leavened by fairly attractive British folk melodies and very accomplished guitar work (the liner notes infer that John Renbourn and Ritchie Blackmore helped out). Although this is largely acoustic, electric guitar and backing are used from time to time, as well as reverb and backwards effects that give it a dated charm. Certainly the most uncharacteristic arrangement is "Committed," a crunching, ominous rock tune whose first-person account of madness recalls Syd Barrett's most distraught work (and is if anything more distraught than Barrett's loony tunes). And speaking of Pink Floyd, "October 12th" makes you wonder if Harper's influence didn't find its way into the post-Syd Floyd on tunes like "Grantchester Meadows." AMG. Thanks to ChrisGoesRock.

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Ahmed Abdul-Malik - Jazz Sahara 1958

Ahmed Abdul-Malik was one of the first musicians to integrate non-Western musical elements into jazz. In addition to being a hard bop bassist of some distinction, he also played the oud, a double-stringed, unfretted Middle Eastern lute, played with a plectrum. Abdul-Malik recorded on the instrument in the '50s with Johnny Griffin and in 1961 with John Coltrane, contributing to one of the several albums that resulted from the latter's Live at the Village Vanguard sessions.

Abdul-Malik was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. In his twenties and thirties, he worked as a bassist with Art Blakey, Randy Weston, and Thelonious Monk, among others. He played the oud on a tour of South America under the aegis of the U.S. State Department, and performed at one of the first major African jazz festivals in Morocco in 1972. Beginning in 1970, he taught at New York University and later, Brooklyn College. In 1984, he received BMI's Pioneer in Jazz Award in recognition of his work in melding Middle Eastern musics and jazz.
This CD reissue is an early example of fusing jazz with world music. Abdul-Malik switches between bass and oud; interacts closely with the droning violin of Naim Karacand, Jack Ghanaim's kanoon (a 72-string instrument), and Mike Hamway's darabeka (a percussive drum); and mixes in Al Harewood's drums and (on three of the four selections) the tenor of Johnny Griffin. The music is a qualified success, essentially Middle Eastern folk music with Griffin added in. This set is interesting and, in its own way, innovative but not essential. AMG.

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Twink - Think Pink 1970

As far as overlooked geniuses of the U.K. psychedelic underground go, the man known as Twink certainly belongs on the shelf alongside Kevin Ayers, Kevin Coyne, Syd Barrett, and Robert Wyatt. As drummer for the Pretty Things and, later, the Deviants, as well as being one-half of Shagrat with Steve Peregrin Took, Twink was integral in the creation of some of the U.K. psychedelic underground's most brilliant artifacts. His Think Pink session contains the classic Twink tracks "The Sparrow Is a Sign" and "The Coming of the Other One," which were cut with Steve Peregrin Took of Tyrannosaurus Rex fame. Incidentally, both tracks appear on the Shagrat album that was only officially released in 2001: Pink Jackets Required, which plays the sister album to the Twink solo outing in question. Think Pink is an incredibly varied album with no two songs resembling each other, but then one assumes an acid masterpiece like "Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box" will stay on high rotation for at least a week on the stereos of most psychedelia fans, so overall album flow may not be such an issue. This is pure psychedelic acid rock of the highest order. If one can imagine a fusion of the Incredible String Band, Deviants, early Pink Floyd, and a fair dose of Twink's heredity as a member of Tomorrow and the Pretty Things, you get an idea of what he was up to. Not known for doing things in halves, he shows little restraint in the assembly of a group designed to tear the roof of the psychedelic scene. The band was made up of the Deviants guitarist Paul Rudolph -- the U.K. equivalent of Fred "Sonic" Smith -- who provides the most astonishing fuzz freak-outs and arrangements on the album. Other players included Viv Prince; Wally Waller; John Povey; Victor Unitt; Deviants bassist Honk; John Wood of Tomorrow; and, of course, the not-to-be underestimated contributions from Steve Peregrin Took. Regardless of the connotations the term "psychedelic" carries with it, it's not all Pink Fairies and Tolkien. Things get ominous and dark on "Fluid" and "I Remember Nothing"; then, by the first half of the album, the mind is expanded enough to take in side two, where the presence of Steve Took really starts to come into play. His brilliant "The Sparrow Is a Sign" is a psychedelic anthem that is worth acquiring the album for alone. Essential stuff, not to be missed by those following the U.K. underground psychedelic scene circa 1968-1972. AMG.

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Edgar Broughton Band - Oora 1973

The Broughtons' fifth album has never been as well-regarded as its predecessors, although that has more to do with timing than with the record itself -- by 1973, after all, the Broughtons' brand of post-hippie revolution was feeling just a little tired, particularly in the face of the glam scene that had emerged all around, and no matter how strong the songwriting and performances remained, there was still a sense of too little, too late. Which was colossally unfair. No, Oora isn't a patch on either Wasa Wasa or Sing Brother Sing. But it was an improvement on the previous year's Inside Out, and a handful of its contents -- notably "Exhibits from a New Museum/Green Lights" and "Roccococooler" -- could rub shoulders alongside any of the band's earlier, better-feted material. Indeed, the sheer diversity of Oora flies defiantly in the face of anybody hoping to pigeonhole the band with its past reputation, as Oora reveals a tight, concise, and extraordinarily melodic band whose members had clearly been listening to Neil Young as much as the Mothers of Invention, and weren't afraid to prove it. AMG.

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Yes - The Yes Album 1971

The album that first gave shape to the established Yes sound, build around science-fiction concepts, folk melodies, and soaring organ, guitar, and vocal showpieces. "Your Move" actually made the U.S. charts as a single, and "Starship Trooper," "Perpetual Change," and "Yours Is No Disgrace" became much-loved parts of the band's concert repertory for many tours to come. AMG.

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Big Brother & The Holding Company - Be A Brother 1970

Whether Big Brother & the Holding Company would have made any waves at all in the late-'60s San Francisco music scene sans Janis Joplin could be argued. Be A Brother is a good indicator of what they would have sounded like without her amazing voice. Recorded in 1970, guitarist David Schallock and singer/songwriter/producer Nick Gravenites were added to help fill the space created with the absence of Joplin. These ten original compositions include "Home on the Strange," "Mr. Natural," "Funkie Jim," and "I'll Change Your Flat Tire, Merle" dedicated to Merle Haggard. This is a decent blues-based session similar to early Butterfield Blues Band records, which isn't a bad thing at all. AMG.

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Buddy Miles - Live! 1971

Best known as the drummer in Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, Buddy Miles also had a lengthy solo career that drew from rock, blues, soul, and funk in varying combinations. Born George Miles in Omaha, NE, on September 5, 1947, he started playing the drums at age nine, and joined his father's jazz band the Bebops as a mere 12 year old. As a teenager, he went on to play with several jazz and R&B outfits, most prominently backing vocal groups like Ruby & the Romantics, the Ink Spots, and the Delfonics. In 1966, he joined Wilson Pickett's touring revue, where he was spotted by blues-rock guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Bloomfield had left the Paul Butterfield Blues Band earlier in 1967 and was putting together a new group, the Electric Flag, which was slated to be an ambitious fusion of rock, soul, blues, psychedelia, and jazz. Bloomfield invited Miles to join up, and the band made its debut at the Monterey Pop Festival; unfortunately, the original lineup splintered in 1968. With founder Bloomfield gone, Miles briefly took over leadership of the band on its second studio album, which failed to reignite the public's interest.

With the Electric Flag's horn section in tow, Miles split to form his own group, the similarly eclectic Buddy Miles Express. Signed to Mercury, the group issued its debut album, Expressway to Your Skull, in 1968, with Miles' fellow Monterey Pop alum Jimi Hendrix in the producer's chair. In turn, Miles played on Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album, and later took part in an all-star jam session that resulted in Muddy Waters' Fathers and Sons album. Hendrix also produced the Miles Express' follow-up, 1969's Electric Church, and disbanded his backing band the Experience later that year; shortly afterward, Hendrix, Miles, and bassist Billy Cox formed Band of Gypsys, one of the first all-black rock bands. Bluesier and funkier than Hendrix's previous work, Band of Gypsys didn't last long in its original incarnation; Miles departed in 1970, replaced by Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, but not before his powerhouse work was showcased on the group's lone album, the live Band of Gypsys.

After backing John McLaughlin on 1970's Devotion, Miles returned to the role of bandleader and recorded his most popular album, Them Changes, in 1971; it stayed on the charts for more than a year, and the title cut became Miles' signature song. From December 1971 to April 1972, Miles toured with Carlos Santana, which produced the CBS-released concert document Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles! Live!; recorded inside an inactive volcano in Hawaii, the album sold very well, climbing into the Top Ten. Miles cut a few more albums for CBS, participated in a short-lived Electric Flag reunion in 1974, then moved to Casablanca in 1975 for a pair of LPs. Aside from a one-off album for Atlantic in 1981 (Sneak Attack), Miles kept a low profile over the next decade, partly to battle personal problems.

Miles returned in 1986 as the lead voice in a TV ad campaign that featured clay-animated raisins singing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"; the ads proved so popular that a kid-friendly musical franchise was spun off, and thus Miles became the lead singer of the California Raisins, performing on two albums (mostly R&B covers) and a Christmas special. Additionally, Miles rejoined his old friend Carlos Santana as the official lead vocalist of Santana during part of the late '80s, making his studio debut on 1987's Freedom. In the early '90s, Miles played with Bootsy Collins (both solo and as members of Hardware), and in 1994 he formed a new version of the Express and recorded Hell and Back for Rykodisc. Miles Away From Home followed in 1997 on Hip-O. Miles toured steadily through the '90s, and subsequently formed a more straightforward blues band called the Blues Berries with guitarist Rocky Athas; their first album, Blues Berries, appeared on Ruf in 2002. AMG.

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Edgar Broughton Band - Sing Brother Sing 1970

Sing Brother Sing almost equals the psychedelic cohesiveness and insouciant air of the Edgar Broughton Band's debut album, but, even without doing so, it still stands as their second strongest release. All the songs on Sing Brother Sing wallow in a hippie-ish, kick-backed experimental blues-rock style, extenuated to perfection by Broughton's resonant grumble and vocal staunchness, and surrounded by chem lab mixtures of guitar and bass. The group's peculiar instrumental outputs give odd tracks such as "There's No Vibrations but Wait," "Momma's Reward," and the two parts of "Psychopath" progressive rock-type tendencies with a homemade wit, which would be the band's most daunting characteristic outside of Edgar Broughton's singing. Although the Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa comparisons are unavoidable, the rest of Sing Brother Sing's facets and odd instrumental avenues emit a distinctness that remains the whole album through. The quaint but humorous English air that encircles "Officer Dan" and "Old Gopher" reflects Broughton's adept satirical approach, maybe without him even knowing it. Held together with elements of jazz, rock, and blues, the music on Sing Brother Sing is captivating because of its raw integrity, and in its refusal to adhere to structure, formula, or to travel a beaten path. AMG.

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Junior's Eyes - Battersea Power Station 1969

Junior's Eyes are one of the more well-known unknowns -- if such an oxymoron can be applied -- of the late-'60s British psychedelic scene. Most people who have seen any reference to them at all are apt to know them only as an act that served as David Bowie's backup group briefly in the late '60s. Mick Wayne, Junior's Eyes' lead guitarist and songwriter, played guitar on Bowie's "Space Oddity" and some of Bowie's other recordings. Prior to forming Junior's Eyes, he had briefly been in the Hullaballoos, a lightweight British Invasion band that had a bit of success in the States. He had also been in the Bunch of Fives with ex-Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince. As part of the Tickle, he wrote their sole 1967 single, "Subway (Smokey Pokey World)," one of the greatest obscure psychedelic 45s. He also played acoustic guitar on James Taylor's Apple album.

All of these interesting peripheral contributions might lead one to suspect that Junior's Eyes' 1969 album, Battersea Power Station, could be a hidden nugget of psychedelia. But although it is well-respected by some cultists, it's actually a letdown, with a very ordinary if somewhat eclectic assortment of tunes (all penned by Wayne) which reflect the British scene's juncture between psychedelia and hard rock/progressive rock. The melodies aren't memorable, the intricate song structures tend to make one's mind ramble rather than intrigue, and there's an overall sense of pedestrian ploddiness, in spite of the ambition of much of Wayne's songwriting.

Other than Wayne, Junior's Eyes' personnel was variable during its brief existence. Members of some note who played in the lineup at some point included drummer John Cambridge, who went on to another David Bowie backup band, the Hype; guitarist Tim Renwick, who much later would play with Pink Floyd; and Steve Chapman, who later played drums with Poco. After Junior's Eyes broke up in early 1970, Wayne went on to session work and a stint with the Pink Fairies. Battersea Power Station was reissued on CD by Castle in 2000, with the addition of three non-LP singles, four demos, and both sides of the Tickle's 1967 single. AMG.

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Robert Calvert - Captain Lockheed And The Starfighters 1974

Lockheed remains something of an overlooked landmark for the backing musicians alone. Besides assorted Hawkwind types and associates like author Michael Moorcock, other sorts from Brian Eno and producer Roy Thomas Baker to dyed-in-the-wool English musical nutters like Arthur Brown and ex-Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band member Viv Stanshall, lead participant on the weird and wooly "dialogues" peppered throughout, make an appearance. The latter's ranting German-accented performance on the opening snippet, "Franz Joseph Strauss," sounds like someone escaped from an insane asylum, while his more-English-than-thou bits on the other parts are just as gone: check out "Board Meeting" and "Ground Control" for quick but effective examples. If not quite as space rock/trip-out as Hawkwind itself, Calvert brings a lot of that band's chugging, freak-out atmosphere to the fore, while his own vocals, when they appear, are, a touch surprisingly, fairly cool and calm in comparison. The occasionally explicit nods surface more than once; there's talk about a "silver machine" on "The Aerospaceage Inferno," while one can tell Dave Brock and Lemmy are playing guitar and bass almost by default. Similarly, the sax player could only be Nik Turner. The whole album allegedly is something of a concept story about said captain and the sleek combat planes he flies (the Starfighters being a type of plane used by the US Air Force in the '60s), but even without the story at work it's still a trip. There's the aggressively tweaked vocals on "The Right Stuff," which with what sounds like Eno on keyboards sends things halfway to the freaked-out zone of prime Roxy Music. "The Song of the Gremlin, Pt. 1," meanwhile, has an introduction that Ween must have assuredly heard somewhere along the way, it's that completely crazy. Well worth searching out. AMG.

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Edgar Broughton Band - Live At Abbey Road 1969

Formed in Warwick, England, the Edgar Broughton Band arrived on the London underground music scene in 1968. Led by the Broughton brothers, vocalist/guitarist Edgar and drummer Steve, and fleshed out by bassist Arthur Grant and guitarist Victor Unitt (who also briefly served with the Pretty Things), they soon signed with the Harvest label and issued their debut, Wasa Wasa, a collection of underground electric blues jams anchored by Edgar's Captain Beefheart-like vocals, in late 1969. The Edgar Broughton Band returned in 1970 with Sing Brother Sing, which reached the U.K. Top 20 and spawned a pair of minor hit singles, "Out Demons Out" and "Apache Drop-Out" (a fusion of Beefheart's "Dropout Boogie" and the Shadows' "Apache"). The group seemed poised for a major commercial breakthrough, but even as their brand of heavy rock was flourishing thanks to groups like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, the Broughton Band made an about-face, and their music became considerably more quiet and politically charged. Their chart momentum stalled, and a 1971 self-titled effort failed to catch on.

After both 1972's Inside Out and 1973's Oora met a similar fate, the group left Harvest for NEMS. Legal wrangles locked them out of the studio for a number of months, but they finally resurfaced in 1975 -- minus Unitt, who'd been replaced by guitarist John Thomas -- with Bandages. A brief breakup followed, but in 1978 they returned with Live Hits Harder. By the release of 1979's Parlez Vous English?, the group had expanded to a six-piece, using the name the Broughtons. Returning to the Edgar Broughton Band moniker, the band became a three-piece for 1982's Super Chip: The Final Silicon Solution, a concept album filled with synthesizers and new wave tempos. Touring continued throughout '80s, '90s, and 2000s. In 2004 the band's six albums for the Harvest label were reissued, each featuring numerous bonus tracks. AMG.

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