quarta-feira, 6 de julho de 2022
The Allman Brothers Band - Idlewild South 1970
Roland Kovac New Set - The Master Said 1971
segunda-feira, 4 de julho de 2022
Mongrel - Get Your Teeth Into This 1973
Mongrel was one of the stranger, more enigmatic offshoots of the Move, mostly because their existence was brought to a sudden halt, virtually in mid-stride, just as they were starting to establish themselves, midway through finishing their first (and only) album. And the group was literally -- and, for the most part, willingly -- hijacked out of existence, and into the orbit of Roy Wood. Mongrel was formed by two ex-members of the Move, Carl Wayne and Rick Price. Wayne had left the group a few years earlier, and subsequently recruited another, slightly later-tenured ex-member, bassist Rick Price, into an outfit called Light Fantastic, which got a lot of great notices for their performances and stage presence. But Light Fantastic couldn't sustain their career momentum or translate their work into recordings and dissolved after a few months of false starts. It was after the split of the latter group that Wayne proposed a new venture to Price in 1972. He came aboard, and the members began rehearsing, but after a few weeks, all concerned realized that they were missing something: Carl Wayne, who never participated as a musician (though he did send in songs).
The members eventually decided to forget about Wayne and go out on their own, choosing the name Mongrel, a recognition of the fact that all of the members had come from different bands. The lineup was Rick Price (bass), Roger Hill (guitar), Stuart Scott (guitar), Keith Smart (drums), and Charlie Grima (percussion), with keyboard player Robert Brady taking most of the vocals. They went out cold, without a recording contract, and between them had enough recognition from their prior bands to make a lot of noise in the press in England, and were signed to Polydor for one album, which was released the following year with the title Get Your Teeth into This. And they might have lasted, and finished that album as a cohesive, functioning band, had it not been for the intervention of Roy Wood, Price's one-time Move bandmate. According to Price's account, Wood showed up at a gig where Mongrel, still working out their sound and their album, were supporting Heads Hands & Feet (featuring Albert Lee and Chas Hodges), and, after the show, simply hired them away from being Mongrel. He essentially hired them to give up the band -- he was putting together a new group and wanted Mongrel to be it, and all but Brady and Scott agreed. The keyboardist and guitarist declined to join Wood and kept some semblance of a group going long enough to complete the album, but Smart, Grima, Hill, and Price all went over to Wood, and all but Hill became members of Wizzard, as he was calling his band. Mongrel was gone before their only album was even released, and even Brady eventually joined Wood's band. AMG.
listen hereWire - 154 (1979)
Napoli Centrale - Napoli Centrale 1975
An Italian from Naples, Napoli Centrale was formed by the nucleus of The Showmen after the band's split, when James Senese and Franco Del Prete, along with American keyboardist Mark Harris and English bass player Anthony R. Walmsley veered toward a personal blend of jazz-rock and popular music leaving any traces of prog behind them. With lyrics sung in Neapolitan dialect, the first single Campagna became a hit. The six-track debut album was in a similar style, the strong lyrics dealing with social problems while the music was sometimes very original.
After the LP release, bassist Tony Walmsley left the band to join the reformed Il Rovescio Della Medaglia, and was soon followed by Mark Harris.
They were replaced by keyboardist Pippo Guarnera and various bass players, Pino Daniele (for a brief period before his solo debut), Bruno Limone, Giovanni Ferla, and the last one the Trinidad born Kelvin Bullen. This line-up had good live activity, with a couple of important concerts, in Rome opening for Weather Report and the Duke-Cobham Band, and later at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, then they broke up at the end of 1975.
A second album was released in 1976, with help from many well-known session musicians among which drummers Bruno Biriaco (Perigeo), Agostino Marangolo (Flea and Goblin), and Marvin "Bugalu" Smith, and was in the same style as the first LP.
The third album came in 1977, with the founding duo helped by other musicians, and was more jazz-oriented than their previous works. Among the band musicians in these years were keyboardist Ciro Ciscognetti from Fabio Celi E Gli Infermieri and a young Pino Daniele on bass, later a popular solo artist. Even the previous keyboardist, Pippo Guarnera, who in 1976 had joined Eugenio Finardi's band, played on Qualcosa ca nun more.
After the band split James Senese started a solo career with the first two albums in 1983-84, while both he and Del Prete were very active as session musicians.
Keyboardist Mark Harris, still living in Italy, has launched his own record label, Saint Rock, to promote new Italian artists (see link below).
A revamped line-up of Napoli Centrale was created by James Senese in the late '80s, with Savio Riccardi (keyboards), Gigi De Rienzo (bass), and Agostino Marangolo (drums). This line-up released two albums, Jesceallah in 1992, including reworkings of early tracks, and 'Ngazzate nire" in 1994. Another album followed in 2001, entitled Zitte! Sta venenn' 'o mammone.
From 2007 on, the albums released by Senese begin to appear as JNC James Napoli Centrale, placing herewith solo and group work under one roof!
listen here or hereVinegar - Vinegar 1971
Vinegar is a psychedelic rock band from Germany formed by Wolfgang Grahn, Bernhard Liesegang, and Jochen Biemann. The three men attended school together, but it wasn't until they were in the university that the idea of forming a band became more concrete. After some time playing together, they added a new member, Dagmar Dormagen (who was a very close friend of Wolfgang and lived just around the corner from his house) to sing in the band. By the end of 1969, Rolf Zwirner and Ralf Modrow joined the group and the line-up was established. They named their band Vinegar because they wanted to make music that was "hard to digest" as opposed to the "sweet stuff" others played. The band split after the recording of their first album because of musical differences.
Vinegar made one recording only in 1971. Their sound ranges from rocking guitar riffs to soft violin passages and haunting organ passages as well. There are songs that also consist of jams, but the overall sound is more structured. In some parts of their songs, they can be compared to Amon Düül II or Pink Floyd. Recommended for fans of Krautrock, psychedelic/ space rock fans who are looking for a little bit more hard rock in their music.
listen here or hereYvonne Elliman - Rising Sun 1975
terça-feira, 28 de junho de 2022
Elis Regina - Como & Porque 1969
Elis Regina was one of the most ferociously talented singers to emerge from Brazil. A perfectionist who was frequently dissatisfied, Regina drove herself and the members of her band relentlessly, leading to her being dubbed "Hurricane" and "Little Pepper" by musicians and journalists. Her tempestuous nature aside, she commanded the respect of Brazil's leading songwriters, who lined up for the chance to have her record one of their songs, and for much of her short life was the country's most popular female vocalist.
Born Elis Regina Carvalho Costa in Porto Alegre in 1945 to a working-class family, Regina began singing professionally at age 12 on a children's television show called Clube de Guri. For the next two years, she was a regular performer on the program and became a local celebrity. It was during this period that she signed her first recording contract at the age of 13. At 15 she relocated to Rio de Janeiro, where she recorded the first of three records, returning to Porto Alegre between each. Her initial recordings sold well and she was soon a teenage star, as well as the family's principal breadwinner. In 1963, at the age of 18, Regina and her father, in a move designed to further her career, relocated to Rio. Unfortunately, it was around this time that a military junta took over control of the country. Not long after her move to Rio, Regina became a fixture on Brazilian variety shows. Although the cool, supple, jazzy bossa nova sound was in vogue at the time, Regina preferred more raucous rhythms and full-throated singing. Adding to this was her dynamic, unsophisticated stage presence (which belied a career-long battle against near-paralytic stage fright) that, in American terms, might be best understood if one thinks of the tornado-like force that Janis Joplin could unleash. In 1965, Regina sang the controversial (and nearly censored) song "Arrastao" at Rio's first big popular music festival. In a performance that may well have been the defining moment of her career, she posed in Christ-like crucifixion, tears streaming down her face at the song's conclusion. From that moment on, her popularity rocketed; she went from being one of many successful Brazilian singers to the most popular and highest-paid singer in the country -- at the age of 21.
Although not as overtly political as other singer/songwriters of her generation (e.g., Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil), Regina was not shy about criticizing Brazil's military rule. While touring Europe in 1969 she told a journalist that her country was "being run by guerrillas." Normally this sentiment would lead to either jail or exile (or both in the case of Gil and Veloso), but Regina's enormous popularity protected her somewhat from any public government retaliation. However, the military junta used more insidious strong-arm tactics, such as forcing her to sing the Brazilian national anthem at a ceremony to celebrate the anniversary of the country's "independence." She was roundly attacked by leftist performers for such a public display of pro-government sentiment, and it was years later that her husband revealed that she was threatened with jail if she did not comply with the government's wishes. As the mother of a young child at the time, Regina could not afford to become a martyr. Regina's career showed no signs of slowing as the 1970s came to a close; some of her best records were recorded during this time, and one album simply called Elis & Tom (recorded in Los Angeles with Antonio Carlos Jobim) has been called by many journalists and musicians one of the greatest Brazilian pop records ever made. However, while her career was in full swing, her personal life was in disarray -- two marriages ended in divorce, and she was raising three children as well as providing for her parents. In the late '70s, after the end of her second marriage, she began using cocaine regularly but managed to keep her increasing dependence on the drug well hidden from her friends and family. Regina began 1982 by marrying for a third time, signing a new recording contract, and in general, planning for the future. All of this came to a halt on January 19, 1982, when she was found dead of alcohol and cocaine intoxication at age 36. Initially, her death was rumored to be a suicide, but there is no evidence indicating that it was anything more than a tragic accident.
A few days after her death, a memorial concert was held in São Paulo featuring many of Brazil's most famous singers. Over 100,000 grieving Brazilians came to pay their final respects to this gifted, mercurial singer who remains as popular after death as she was in life. AMG.
listen here or hereAfton - First Day of Summer 1977
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - If Music Be The Food Of Love 1966
Eddie Harris - Smokin' 1970
Long underrated in the pantheon of jazz greats, Eddie Harris was an eclectic and imaginative saxophonist whose career was marked by a hearty appetite for experimentation. For quite some time, he was far more popular with audiences than with critics, many of whom denigrated him for his more commercially successful ventures. Harris' tastes ranged across the spectrum of black music, not all of which was deemed acceptable by jazz purists. He had the chops to handle technically demanding bop, and the restraint to play in the cool-toned West Coast style, but he also delved into crossover-friendly jazz-pop, rock- and funk-influenced fusion, outside improvisations, bizarre electronic effects, new crossbreeding of traditional instruments, blues crooning, and even comedy. Much of this fell outside the bounds of what critics considered legitimate, serious jazz, and so they dismissed him out of hand as too mainstream or too gimmicky. To be fair, Harris' large catalog is certainly uneven; not everything he tried worked. Yet with the passage of time, the excellence of his best work has become abundantly clear. Harris' accomplishments are many: he was the first jazz artist to release a gold-selling record, thanks to 1961's hit adaptation of the "Exodus" movie theme; he was universally acknowledged as the best player of the electric Varitone sax, as heard on his hit 1967 album The Electrifying Eddie Harris; he was an underrated composer whose "Freedom Jazz Dance" was turned into a standard by Miles Davis; he even invented his own instruments by switching brass and reed mouthpieces. Plus, his 1969 set with Les McCann at the Montreux Jazz Festival was released as Swiss Movement and became one of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time.
Harris was born in Chicago on October 20, 1934. His first musical experiences were as a singer in church, starting at age five, and he soon began playing hymns by ear on the piano. He spent part of his high school years at Du Sable, where he studied the vibraphone under the legendary band director Walter Dyett, a disciplinarian who trained some of the South Side's greatest jazzmen: Nat King Cole, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Julian Priester, and many others (even rocker Bo Diddley). He later returned to the piano and took up the tenor sax as well, and went on to study music at Roosevelt College. He landed his first professional job as a pianist, backing saxman Gene Ammons, and got the chance to sit in with greats like Charlie Parker and Lester Young. After college, he was drafted into the military; while serving in Europe, he successfully auditioned for the 7th Army band, which also included the likes of Don Ellis, Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton, among others. Following his discharge, he lived in New York and played in whatever groups and venues he could, still chiefly as a pianist. Harris returned to Chicago in 1960 and soon signed with the successful, locally based Vee-Jay, which was better known for its R&B and blues acts. Although the label signed Harris as a pianist, he played only tenor sax on his first album. That album, 1961's Exodus to Jazz, would become one of jazz's most surprising success stories. The key track was "Exodus," Harris' easygoing rearrangement of Ernest Gold's theme from the epic Biblical film of the same name. It was an unlikely source for a jazz tune, and an even unlikelier hit, but it managed to catch on with mainstream radio; released as a single in a shortened version, it even climbed into the lower reaches of the pop Top 40. Its success pushed the LP all the way to number two on the pop album charts, and Exodus to Jazz became the first jazz album ever certified gold. AMG. listen here or hereFrançoise Hardy - Comment Te Dire Adieu 1968
Mass - Back To The Music 1977
sexta-feira, 24 de junho de 2022
Fela Kuti - Shakara 1972
John Uzonyi's Peacepipe - Peacepipe 1970
Subscrever:
Mensagens (Atom)