Sarofeen & Smoke - Love In Woman's Heart 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.

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El Ritual - El Ritual 1971

El Ritual is well-crafted progressive/psych bluesy rock with nice organ, some Tull like flute here and there, nice guitars, with softer and harder rock/prog/blues-rock passages, sometimes with rather hard rock vocals, and a few times Uriah Heep-kind of vocal harmonies, with lyrics in English. The fourth track, “Satanas” is a more experimental, theatrical track mixed with bluesy rock, and a long drum solo, a song about being the devil. “Muerto E Ido” has a slight Canterbury touch. This deserves to be heard by all prog/psych collectors. It sounds as interesting as many English & American examples.

El Ritual was a Mexican band born in Tijuana, Baja California, founded in the late 60s by musician and singer Frankie Barreño; who was accompanied by Gonzalo Hernández on bass; Abelardo Barceló on drums, and vocalist and keyboardist Martín Mayo.

They arrived in the Federal District in 1971, months before the celebration of the historic Avandaro festival, in which they participated without much success since they had to face serious audio and lighting problems. The ''Rock and Wheels Festival'' held in 1971 in Avándaro, Mexico, was like a kind of Mexican Woodstock, a historic rock concert held on September 11 and 12, 1971, near the Avándaro Golf Club, in the State of Mexico, in Mexico. The arts festival celebrated life, peace, love, ecology, the arts and experimental drugs and has been compared to the Woodstock Festival for its psychedelic music, countercultural art, overt drug use, exercise of free love and Due to the enormous attendance of people who participated in it, it is said that between the two days that the festival lasted, the audience was between 100,000 and 500,000 attendees.

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A Bolha - Um Passo a Frente 1973

This group formed in 1965 as the Bubbles and made their first single in 1966 -- two versions of hits by the Rolling Stones and the Shakers (an Uruguayan group).

Upon returning to Brazil (they saw the Isle of Wight Festival in England), they decided to re-formulate themselves in a more Brazilian fashion and became A Bolha. To their chagrin, they were already well-established as the Bubbles and as a dance group. On their first gig after returning from London, the ballroom was crowded with 5,000 people, in the beginning; by the end, there remained 500. Moreover, the bill at the door said: "The Bubbles back from the Isle of Wight!"

But they retained the nerve and swagger to affirm their new selves. And in 1971 came their single "Sem Nada," with co-author, playwright Geraldo Carneiro, who is also a partner of various artists such as Egberto Gismonti, Tom Jobim, Astor Piazzola, Wagner Tiso, and Eduardo Souto Neto, a well-known conductor and producer. Working with Ivan Lins, Simone, and others since the '70s, the latter was a runner-up in the VI Festival Internacional da Canção (the famous Brazilian version of the Eurovision Song Contest) and A Bolha won the Best Group Award.

The first LP, Um Passo à Frente, was recorded in 1973, and their second, É Proibido Fumar, in 1977. The only constant member in the band's career was guitarist Renato Fronzi Ladeira, son of Renata Fronzi, a well-known Brazilian actress. A Bolha members played with illustrious Brazilian artists like Gal Costa and Erasmo Carlos. They also fragmented into many other groups, such as A Cor do Som, Herva Doce, and others. AMG.

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David Axelrod - Messiah 1971

When David Axelrod's Rock Interpretation of Handel's Messiah was originally released in 1971, there was something of a trend in the meeting of hippie subcultures and religious themes. The enormous popularity of Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell had opened the gates for legions of groovy Christians and flower children of the Lord, and underground of psychedelic Christian folk artists was building to an apex around this time. Axelrod's intentions with Messiah were removed from these trends, as the record was more a continuation of the strange work he had begun with the Electric Prunes a few years earlier on concept records Mass in F Minor and Release of an Oath. As with these records, Messiah was Axelrod's attempt at psychedelicizing a mode of music he was obsessed with and, in his words, "making Handel more accessible." 
The album was initially met with poor reviews and unremarkable sales, perceived by many reviewers as an overwrought cheese-fest. Axelrod's enduring legacy and the passing of time have both shed a brighter light on Messiah. The album is indeed an ambitious production. Axelrod's signature dark-funk arrangements and foreboding strings are applied to a 38-piece orchestra conducted by jazzhead Cannonball Adderley and joined by a chorus of gospel singers. The album shifts between relatively faithful interpretations of the classical themes and way-out takes. The rocket ship fuzz guitar that introduces "And the Glory of the Lord" sets the scene for subdued funk bass, strutting drums, and triumphantly wandering string and horn arrangements all in Axelrod's classic voicings. Breakbeats and slick but tasteful wah-wah guitar noodling abound on parts of the grooved-up "Overture" and the album-closing chorus "Worthy Is the Lamb." The straight string arrangement of "Pastoral Symphony" doesn't stray very far from Handel's original score or implement any newfangled jamming. It's the more ubiquitous sections of Messiah that come off cloying. "Glory to God" is just a little too modernized for its own good, trying to smash a heavenly hymn into the framework of what sounds like an Exile on Main St. outtake. The omnipresent familiarity of the "Hallelujah" chorus makes it impossible to sound anything except corny when played in a similar vein. This is when the Jesus Christ Superstar comparisons become more understandable. Taken lightly, however, even the moments that fall a little flat are part of a bigger overall success. Axelrod was hitting a stride of epic productions that would go on to inform his style entirely. Messiah becomes another part of Axelrod's legacy when held up with what came afterwards. While not his finest work, it transcends its time period in a way similar to Handel's compositions that inspired it. At the same time, it exists also as a crate-digger's dream, full of wild sounds that shouldn't work together but do, the calling card of Axelrod's productions. AMG.

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Johnny Adams - Heart & Soul 1969

Renowned around his Crescent City home base as "the Tan Canary" for his extraordinary set of soulfully soaring pipes, veteran R&B vocalist Johnny Adams tackled an exceptionally wide variety of material for Rounder in his later years; elegantly rendered tribute albums to legendary songwriters Doc Pomus and Percy Mayfield preceded forays into mellow, jazzier pastures. But then, Adams was never particularly into the parade-beat grooves that traditionally define the New Orleans R&B sound, preferring to deliver sophisticated soul ballads draped in strings.

Adams sang gospel professionally before crossing over to the secular world in 1959. Songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie -- the woman responsible for cleaning up the bawdy lyrics of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" enough for worldwide consumption -- convinced her neighbor, Adams, to sing her tasty ballad "I Won't Cry." The track, produced by a teenaged Mac Rebennack, was released on Joe Ruffino's Ric logo, and Adams was on his way. He waxed some outstanding follow-ups for Ric, notably "A Losing Battle" (the Rebennack-penned gem proved Adams' first national R&B hit in 1962) and "Life Is a Struggle."

After a prolonged dry spell, Adams resurfaced in 1968 with an impassioned R&B revival of Jimmy Heap's country standard "Release Me" for Shelby Singleton's SSS imprint that blossomed into a national hit. Even more arresting was Adams' magnificent 1969 country-soul classic "Reconsider Me," his lone leap into the R&B Top Ten; in it, he swoops effortlessly up to a death-defying falsetto range to drive his anguished message home with fervor. Despite several worthy SSS follow-ups ("I Can't Be All Bad" was another sizable seller), Adams never traversed those lofty commercial heights again (particularly disappointing was a short stay at Atlantic). But he found a new extended recording life at Rounder; his 1984 set, From the Heart, proved to the world that this Tan Canary could still chirp like a champ. With producer Scott Billington, he recorded some nine albums for the label prior to his cancer-related death on September 14, 1998. AMG.

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Jackson C. Frank - Jackson C. Frank 1965

Jackson C. Frank's original 1965 album is a lost classic, daringly complex and honest, filled with virtuoso playing that is all the more impressive for the offhanded way that Frank makes it look so easy. There is a convergence of elements here that may confuse the uninitiated, because of their seeming contradictions -- a flashiness and assertiveness on the acoustic guitars and the approach to singing on numbers like "Don't Look Back" and "Yellow Walls" that are byproducts of Frank's early history as a rock & roller, depth and complexity of blues playing that derives from life as much as from talent and dexterity; and the meld of American and English folk sounds is like nothing that any listener has heard from either side of the Atlantic anywhere else. Derived from a song bag that included "Blues Run the Game," "Yellow Walls," "My Name Is Carnival," and "You Never Wanted Me," the album is kind of overpowering -- rather ironically, it's the downbeat nature of those same songs that likely would have prevented Jackson C. Frank from being anything much more than a major cult favorite; even "Blues Run the Game," for all of its beauty, has an underlying sadness that makes it difficult to hear, at least in its album version. [The 2002 reissue by Castle Records has five bonus tracks from an attempted 1975 comeback by Frank, which are still extremely impressive and perhaps even more attractive in their lyrical and musical complexity. AMG.

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Miroslav Vitous - Mountain in the Clouds 1969

A groundbreaking LP for fusioneers -- pre-Weather Report -- with John McLaughlin, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Jack DeJohnette, and Joe Chambers. All Vitous originals except "Freedom Jazz Dance," clocking in at 11 minutes. Originally "Infinite Search." AMG.

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The Druids of Stonehenge - Creation 1967

Formed as the Druids in 1965, the Druids of Stonehenge started out as a garage rock band playing the sort of British Invasion-influenced R&B that was all the rage in the hipper enclaves of the teenage nation, but psychedelia had clearly entered their field of vision by the time they cut their first and only album, Creation, for Uni in 1967, and much of what makes the record enjoyable is the way they manage to walk on both sides of the fence at once. Lead singer David Budge has a vocal snarl that's an impressive fusion of Mick Jagger and Eric Burdon, and even on gossamer-weight material like "Six Feet Down," "Earthless," and a cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," he sounds like the most attitudinal kid on the block spoiling for a fight, which feels a bit incongruous at times, but also gives the quiet numbers enough muscle to stand up to their harder-rocking kin. The covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a Spell on You" and Love's "Signed D.C." are smart, effective, and show these guys had fine record collections, and while it's anyone's guess how Bo Diddley's "Bring It to Jerome" became "Bring It on Home," the six-minute-plus workout has enough bite that it doesn't overstay its welcome. Guitarists Carl Hauser and Billy "B.T." Tracy merge folky jangle and tough rock & roll crunch with nimble grace, and the rhythm section of Tom Paine Workman on bass and Steve Tindall on drums is flexible enough to float on the trippy stuff and stomp hard when the time comes to rock. And if the original material runs hot and cold, the best numbers -- the hip anti-drug number "Speed," the spooky but languid "Six Feet Down," and the tight guitar groove of "Pale Dream" -- suggest they could have moved on to better things had they stuck around longer. If you want to know what those kids who wanted to be the Stones or the Pretty Things would sound like if they dropped acid and liked it, Creation is as good a simulation of this formula as any, and it deserves its rep as a minor garage/psych classic. AMG.

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Dando Shaft - Dando Shaft 1971

The major change on Dando Shaft's second album was the addition of singer Polly Bolton, whose lead and harmony singing added considerable color and appeal to the group's vocal blend. The band might have been edging just a bit closer to the folk-rock mainstream, too, with a more standard rhythmic and melodic base to some of the tunes. Generally, though, they remained in the same mindset as they were on their 1970 debut: just barely rock-influenced folk, similar to Pentangle but folkier, and given to a greater emphasis on mandolin, violin, and unusual tempos. While something like "Whispering Ned" sounded as traditional as British folk-rock got, other songs nodded a bit toward the more wistful romantic pop song tradition, like "Sometimes," "'Til the Morning Comes," and "Waves Upon the Ether." The nature imagery of the debut was still present, too, if not as prominent, in songs like "Riverboat" (one of the highlights, with its lovely Bolton vocal). AMG.

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Clarence ''Gatemouth'' Brown - Down South In The Bayou Country 1974

Like everything on Memphis Slim's album Goin' Back to Tennessee or Alvin Youngblood Hart's "Tallacatcha" (a Western swing performance worthy of Bob Wills), Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown's 1975 Barclay album Down South in the Bayou Country completely transcends any and all attempts to confine this diverse artist within the artificial parameters of blues or any other preordained category. Consisting mostly of songs written by Hoyt Garrick, Jr., Charles Gressett, and David Craig with additional tunes by J. Loyd and Joe Stampley, this pretty parfait of country & western, Southern rock, cowboy hoedown, and electric Cajun soul music was recorded during February and March 1974 in Bogalusa, LA. Gatemouth, fresh from his tenure as Deputy Sheriff of San Juan County, NM, sounds particularly pleased to be active at the center of a project so completely infused with authentic Southern sensibilities. Perhaps the most satisfying track off of the original album is "Loup Garou." This hoodoo funk ritual with background vocals by Geraldine "Sister Gerry" Richard sounds as if it might have been influenced by Dr. John's "Loop Garoo," which had appeared on that artist's Atco album Remedies in 1970. Both songs drew upon traditional Louisiana lycanthropic folklore, a tradition that advises against wandering around in the swamp under the moon as you just might get taken out by a werewolf. Bonus tracks include a choice sampling of "studio verbiage and other appropriate banter," "Gate's Express" (a ferocious bit of fiddling based on "Orange Blossom Special"), and "Cassoulet," a very danceable Cajun fiddling boogie recorded in Paris during the summer of 1973 with a rhythm section composed of members of the rock group Canned Heat. Anyone who enjoys Down South in the Bayou Country should also investigate Gatemouth's 1975 follow-up album, Bogalusa Boogie Man. AMG.

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Accolade - Accolade 1970

Notable, more than anything, for the inclusion of busker Don Partridge (a successful solo artist with several hit singles) and singer Gordon Giltrap (who remained for only one album), Accolade were a light acoustic band who completely eschewed electric instruments, even as they developed a kind of folk/jazz fusion. They recorded two albums and one single before going their separate ways. AMG.

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The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup 1973

Sliding out of perhaps the greatest winning streak in rock history, the Stones slipped into decadence and rock star excess with Goats Head Soup, their sequel to Exile on Main St. This is where the Stones' image began to eclipse their accomplishments, as Mick ascended to jet-setting celebrity and Keith slowly sunk deeper into addiction, and it's possible hearing them moving in both directions on Goats Head Soup, at times in the same song. As Jagger plays the devil (or, dances with Mr. D, as he likes to say), the sex and sleaze quotient is increased, all of it underpinned by some genuinely affecting heartbreak, highlighted by "Angie." This may not be as downright funky, freaky, and fantastic as Exile, yet the extra layer of gloss brings out the enunciated lyrics, added strings, wah-wah guitars, explicit sex, and violence, making it all seem trippily decadent. If it doesn't seem like there's a surplus of classics here, all the songs work well, illustrating just how far they've traveled in their songcraft, as well as their exceptional talent as a band -- they make this all sound really easy and darkly alluring, even when the sex'n'satanism seems a little silly. To top it all of, they cap off this utterly excessive album with "Star Star," a nasty Chuck Berry rip that grooves on its own mean vulgarity -- its real title is "Starf*cker," if you need any clarification, and even though they got nastier (the entirety of Undercover, for instance), they never again made something this dirty or nasty. And, it never feels more at home than it does at the end of this excessive record.

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V.A. - Vertigo Annual (UK) 1970

In those times most record companies made compilations with the groups and singers of their own label in order to make themselves known, thus several compilations gave to the public in general the oportunity to know more groups. This is the prog rock from Vertigo that was linked to Philips / Phonogramm. Don't miss it. 

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New Riders Of The Purple Sage - Brujo 1974

Harking back to the era of singers who did not write their own songs, most record contracts continued to call for two albums a year in the 1970s, a provision most recording artists seemed to ignore. But Brujo was the New Riders of the Purple Sage's sixth album in just over three years. (That includes the band's previous release, Home, Home on the Road, a live LP from earlier in 1974, half of which consisted of previously unrecorded tunes.) Maybe it's not surprising, then, that a group which, on its debut, New Riders of the Purple Sage, in 1971, seemed like a songwriting vehicle for singer/guitarist John Dawson, has had to scrounge around for songs to fill up its albums. One source of material was singer/bassist Dave Torbert, who leaned in a rock & roll direction. But on Brujo he's been replaced by veteran Skip Battin, who has been kicking around the music business since the days of Skip & Flip and most recently was in the Byrds. In fact, with Dawson contributing only the nostalgic leadoff track, "Old Man Noll," the country-rocker "Instant Armadillo Blues," and the macabre story-song "Parson Brown," Battin, with his songwriting partner Kim Fowley, is the dominant voice and pen on the second half of this LP. Four of the last six songs are in his L.A. country-pop novelty style, so that the album can seem less like a New Riders record than a follow-up to Battin's solo album Skip. Happily, before that the band has found some appropriate outside material, including another of its discoveries from the country charts of the 1960s, Don Gibson's 1968 hit "Ashes of Love," as well as a good take on Bob Dylan's "You Angel You" from his comeback album Planet Waves of earlier in 1974. Also, lead guitarist David Nelson has collaborated successfully with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter on "Crooked Judge." Still, the addition of Battin skews what used to be a bunch of San Francisco hippie cowboys into much more of a Southern California-style group. AMG.

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Minette - Come to Me at Tea-Time 1968

Jacques Minette was born in Manhattan to visiting French parents, and raised in Boston. A child performer, her career as a female impersonator dates from the 1940s. As Minette she played all the big drag clubs of the period.
She, and most drag performers, were driven out of Boston in 1948 when Archbishop Cushing banned them. In New York she was a regular at 82 Club. She put out an LP, Come to Me at Tea-Time, 1968, and was a guest singer in the seminal film, The Queen, 1968, hosted by Jack Doroshow (Sabrina). She was a regular in Avery Willard’s Ava-Graph films, and also a member of the Ridiculous Theatre Company. She also worked with the underground film director, Andy Milligan, even to the point of sewing dresses when he opened a dress shop.

She is a connecting link from the drag shows in the days of vaudeville and burlesque, through the avant-garde of the 1960s to the end of the 20th century. However she says that she made more money as a sex worker than as a singer.

She was an activist in the early Gay Liberation movement in New York. Although she was non-op, she normally wore female clothing off-stage as well as on, and preferred female pronouns for herself. She was also a musicologist and gay historian.  She died at age 73.
 

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