A group from Copenhagen, active in 1969-1971. Lived in Pocket-House and performed in the basement. Everyone could attend their rehearsals and concert, released only one single.
In 2003, the Frost label found everything (that could be found) and released this compilation disc. Heavy psychedelic with organ and guitar.
Tracks
1. I'm So Sleepybake Your Own Cake - 6:52
2. I'm In No Hurry - 5:20
3. Futte (To The 'pocket-House'-Cat!) - 5:30
4. I Can't See The Sun - 3:32
5. Opus II - 5:08
6. You Just Do What You Want To Do - 5:06
7. Love Machine - 4:29
8. In One Or Another Condition - 4:13
9. Sorry Babelook At Your Beautiness Picture - 9:44
One of Syracuse all-time greatest bands "The Seven" has members dating back to Syracuse;s very first rock band Jeff & The Notes (Nick Russo) add an original Sam & The Twister (Chuck Mellone), a few "Capitols" (Al Ruscito, Chuck & Frank Sgroi) along with some of Jimmy Cavallo's traveling Houserockers (Chuck Sgroi, Tony Licamele, John Latocha) and you end up with a band originally called "The Upsetters" in early 1966.
March 1967, with the departure of guitarist Latocha while adding Bob Canastraro, they changed their name to the "Magnificent Seven". After about a year Canastraro was replaced by Chuck Wheeler (of Surprise Package) and the band shortened their name to "The Seven". They became one of most popular and listened to bands between 1969 & 1972. The magical, mystical, and musical "The Seven" hit the road teaming with Syracuse Radio Station WOLF now known as "The Big 15".
They traveled with WOLF Radio deejay playing school assemblies throughout Central New York in one of Syracuse musics greatest promotions. This outstanding group was comprised of musical veterans Nick Russo (vocals, percussion), Chuck Mellone (keyboards, B3), Chuck Wheeler (guitar), Al Ruscito (trombone), Frank Sgroi (sax), Chuck Sgroi (bass) and drummer Tony Licamele.
The Seven played at some of New York Cities famed nightspots such as Ungano's located at 210 West 70th Street and two showcase performances at "The Bitter End", one with famed CNY songwriter Larry Santos (wrote Candy Girl for the 4 Seasons). After choosing to sign with Thunderbird Records over London's Parrot label (had both Them & Tom Jones) they entered New York's A&I Studio to records their first album.
The album "The song is Song, the album is Album" hit stores in 1970 on the Thunderbird Record label owned by Leonard Silver and Steve Brodie of Buffalo's Transcontinental Records Sales. Three songs were released as singles "Song" in January 1970, and later in May the flipside "Heatwave" that charted for seven weeks on WOLF Radio. Their third single, the old Zombies song "Tell Her No" stayed on the WOLF chart for ten weeks starting in July 1970.
In 1971, Tommy Forest (former Monterays vocalist) replaced Nick Russo who went on to form the band "Yugan" with Jimmy Cox. Mickey Nicotra and Bob Papaleoni..
The Seven one of Syracuse's greatest bands could be seen in such popular CNY night spots as The Place, Campus Inn, Captain Mac's and The Shack playing their famed one hour long "Rascals Medley". They also appeared in concert with "The Turtles" and on the popular regional television show "Upbeat" hosted by Don Webster that aired Sunday mornings from studios in Cleveland, Ohio.
Their final recording, the song "Junkyard" while not professionally completed is included on the History of Syracuse album series.
by Ron Wray, January 30, 2012
Tracks
1. Something Times Something Equals (Chuck Wheeler) - 0:42
1970s Candles in the Rain was Melanie Safka's third album, but while her first two LPs found her trying to make a coherent whole out of her grab bag of influences and ideas, this was where she seemed to truly hit the mark for the first time. "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" was that rarity, a hit single that truly presented an eclectic artist in her best light -- the Woodstock rock festival that inspired the tune was just the sort of event that would appeal to Melanie's hippie-styled idealism, and with the power of the Edwin Hawkins Singers backing her, she had a level of musical strength on hand that would prevent her from sounding histrionic.
While "Lay Down" was easily the most effective track on Candles in the Rain, the rest of the album found Melanie sounding more confident and expressive than ever before -- there's a emotional gravity to "Citiest People" and "Leftover Wine" that's compelling even when she pushes a little to hard for pathos, and "What Have They Done to My Song Ma?" was the first of her many musical broadsides against the music business, and its wit doesn't blunt its wounded passion. And while Melanie is generally thought of as a singer/songwriter, she was always an imaginative interpreter of the songs of others, and her versions of "Ruby Tuesday" and "Carolina on My Mind" exist on an entirely separate plane from the originals.
Finally, the production and arrangements by Peter Schekeryk create fine backdrops for Melanie, punctuating her performances and complementing her emotional peaks and valleys without getting in the way (and the accompanists deliver uniformly superb work). If Candles in the Rain was the album that broke Melanie to a larger audience, it did so not just because it featured her biggest hit single to date, but because it matched material and interpretation with greater skill than she had in the past, and it ranks with her finest work.
by Mark Deming
Sadly Melanie Anne Safka Schekeryk, passed away on January 23, 2024, at the age of 76.
Tracks
1. Candles In The Rain - 1:49
2. Lay Down (Candles In The Rain) - 3:49
3. Carolina In My Mind (James Taylor) - 3:49
4. Citiest People - 3:42
5. What Have They Done To My Song Ma? - 4:06
6. Alexander Beetle (Alan Alexander Milne, Melanie Safka) - 3:05
7. Good Guys - 3:11
8. Lovin' Baby Girl - 4:05
9. Ruby Tuesday (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) - 4:48
10.Leftover Wine - 6:15
11.Almost Like Being In Love (Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe) - 3:51
12.Dream Seller (Rod Clements) - 3:36
Music and Words by Melanie Safka except where noted
Quicksand were an obscure Welsh psychedelic and progressive rock band active in the early 1970s.Hailing from Neath in South Wales, the band was the original group of bass guitarist Will Youatt who was to join fellow Welsh prog rockers Man prior to the recording of the band’s sole album for Pye Records’ progressive imprint, Dawn.
Originally formed in 1969, they featured Michael “Will” Youatt (bass), Jimmy Davies (guitar) and Anthony Stone (drums). This line up recorded one single "Passing By" / "Cobblestones" (both written by Will Youatt) in 1970. Will Youatt left to join briefly Piblokto! then Man. Phil Davies (bass) and Robert Collins (keyboards) then joined the band. A second single "Time To Live" / "Empty Street, Empty Heart" was released in 1973 and was soon followed by the album “Home Is Where I Belong” later the that year. The band ceased to exist in 1975 when James Davies formed Alkatraz with Will Youatt.
In June 1976 the band decided to record another album. Booking into London's Freerange Studio the tracks on 'Harvest Time' were, if anything, even more ambitious and less "commercial" than its predecessor. There was an eight-minute plus "Scottish Suite" containing a medley of such traditional perennials as "Coming Through The Rye", the reel "Peter Gray" (expertly played by Bill Thorp), "Skye Boat Song" and "McPherson's Rant". The album also contained a highly tongue-in-cheek rendition of the Tin Pan Alley standard "Moonglow" with the group helped out by Judy Mackenzie (vocals) and Dave Cooke (guitar), the group having played some gigs with the Mackenzie/Cooke duo.
But by far the more ambitious number on 'Harvest Time' was the 18 minute plus title track. After a delicate orchestral introduction featuring George Caird on oboe, John Payne on clarinet, William Prince on horn and Jeremy Ward on bassoon, "Harvest Time" flows into a medieval-sounding Sandford/Thorp composition featuring the haunting refrain "Though the sower may be sad/Harvest time will make him glad". The song continues to build, the woodwind interweaving with Bill Thorp's elegant piano and then violin, acoustic guitar and woodwind swirl around to take the listener to the telling vocal climax "All that we need is a handful of seed/All that we want is to live/Won't you turn to the sower/Forget all your greed/Ask, and I know he will give".
Such intricate pastoral delights were of course light years away from Cliff Richard immediacy and the emergent US CCM, so there was no attempt to put 'Harvest Time' with a record label. The band pressed some copies (there seems to be some debate whether the pressing was 500 or 1000 copies) and took them to the Greenbelt Arts Festival to sell at what was to be their final concert. Trevor Sandford explained the band's decision to make the 1976 Greenbelt the Water Into Wine Band's swansong. "I guess we all had other careers and things we'd trained to do or wanted to do. We've all ended up doing completely different things. Bill, the violinist, plays with the Academy Of Ancient Music, you may have heard of them, they're a top international music ensemble. I went a different way into other things. Pete's an architect. We said let's give it a couple of years but we realised that we'd either then have to become commercial to really make a living out of it or else we'd be 60 and still earning £10 a year. We were on survival rations basically and we decided that yes, it was okay and we enjoyed it and had a great time but let's quit while we're winning."
As it turned out, of course, that wasn't the end of the story. Over the next two decades record collectors began to emerge keen to explore the obscurer denizens of progressive folk music. In America and, of all places, Japan, vinyl copies of the UK version of 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' and 'Harvest Time' began to change hands for ever increasing amounts of cash. In 1999 such was the demand amongst collectors that a Korean label Hugo-Montes bootlegged 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' without, of course, the knowledge of the band. Two years later entrepreneur Steve Smith, aware of the collector interest in the band, did his homework and tracked down members of the Water Into Wine Band and with the band's cooperation released a double CD package reissue featuring both the UK and USA versions of 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' and the 'Harvest Time' album on his Kissing Spell Records.
Today, the four original members still have some contact with each other and indeed haven't completely forgotten the days when they were long haired folkies. Explained Trevor, who when not running his business, is a County Officer with Kent County Council and a member of the Kent Chamber Choir, "I've got a bit of decking in my back garden which sits above the ground and people can gather round and hear from a distance. We did have a bit of a reunion when a round number birthday came around not that long ago. So maybe we'll do it again at that level. Most of the audience were our kids who are now at university. They thought it was quite cool to have dads who were able to do this kind of stuff."
by Tony Cummings
Tracks
1. Wedding Song (Trevor Sandford) - 4:15
2. Waiting For Another Day (Ray Wright) - 6:26
3. Scottish Suite (Traditional) - 7:54
4. Patience (Is A Virtue) (Trevor Sandford, Bill Thorp) - 3:16
5. Moonglow (Will Hudson, Irving Mills, Eddie DeLange) - 2:34
6. Harvest Time (Trevor Sandford, Bill Thorp) - 15:51
Water Into Wine Band
*Bill Thorp - Vocals, Violin, Piano, Bass, Bongos
*Pete McMunn - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
*Ray Wright - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass, Bongos
The origins of the Water Into Wine Band go back to 1971 at Cambridge University when students Trevor Sandford (vocals, guitar, bass), Peter McMunn (guitar), Ray Wright (guitar, bass, bongos) and Bill Thorp (violin, piano) met up and found they had mutual interests in theology and music. Explained Trevor, "We were all at Cambridge doing various degrees and things and we all played different things; some were from a folk background, some rock. Bill Thorp who plays the violin was from a classical music background. We all just met up and it was at the time when folk rock was in vogue and we all got together, we were there at the same time and because we got on quite well we decided to spend a week together in an old vicarage in Huddersfield, just playing music to each other. At the end of the week we did a gig in the local school. The turn out was about 1,000 kids and they liked it. So we thought fair enough, we'll carry on from here. So we did. Because there was folk rock of a different style - Strawbs folky rocky stuff but ours was very much acoustic. One guy in America when we were on tour there described it as gospel chamber music but that's a whole other story."
Although Christian bands such as Malcolm & Alwyn, the Glorylanders and Out Of Darkness were already laying the foundations of a Christian scene in the UK, the Water Into Wine Band didn't consider themselves a ministry group. Said Trevor, "We saw ourselves as a band who were Christian rather than a Christian band. In a way we just wanted to play music, a lot of which had backgrounds in our beliefs and what we wanted to say. But some of it was just fun music. We didn't see ourselves as exclusively kind of promoting the Gospel. The music kind of spoke for itself in a lot of ways. We'd play in folk clubs and so on. It was a much tougher environment to get a Christian message across but we would just do the music and let that speak."
In 1973 as well as the folk clubs Water Into Wine Band were beginning to play gigs in church halls and outreach events. Recalled Trevor, "We got grabbed by what was then the sort of emerging Christian scene a bit. Somebody must have heard us at a gig or something and we were offered the chance to make an album by Word UK. A guy called Bobbie Graham was the producer. We went down to Enfield and made the album there. It was all pretty raw stuff and we were pretty inexperienced at recording."
Trevor remembered the Enfield sessions very well. "I remember I borrowed a long scale bass - I normally played a short bass because it fitted into the car. We had an Austin A40 if you remember what those things are, and the whole band would fit inside the Austin A40. We called it the Tardis. We'd sit in the back with guitars over our knees. For the recording I borrowed a Fender Precision or something and I couldn't play the thing. If you listen to the album you'll hear the fret buzz which annoys me to this day."
Despite its crude production - Bobbie Graham's drums and bongos sound distinctly out of synch - and a lack of dynamics in the arrangements 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' showed the band to be thoughtful crafters of chamber folk. Bill Thorp's violin work was dazzling, some of the vocal harmonies truly haunting and the 11-minute epic "Song Of The Cross" one of the most ambitious works ever attempted by a UK Christian band. With crowd pleasers like "Stronger In The World" and the wonderfully named "I Used To Be Blind (But Now I'm Short-Sighted)" the album definitely had its moments. Then something unexpected happened. The December 1974 issue of Buzz magazine announced the development. "Acclaim from America has come for the acoustic outfit Water Into Wine Band. Billy Ray Hearn, A&R manager of Word Records, has described them as 'one of the most creative and original bands I've heard. And I believe they will make a big impact on the American gospel scene.' As a result the band last month re-recorded their first 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' for release in the USA."
Strangely, the re-recording of 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' for the American market occurred not in the USA but in Britain. Explained Trevor, "We recorded the new version at Wessex Studios in South London with John Pantry producing. The Americans wanted a cleaner sound and a more commercial feel, and more production and so on. So we took the opportunity to respond to that by adding extra instrumentation. So for instance we put a string quartet on one of the numbers and we also had harmonies with that. We added flute, wind and so on so whilst we weren't entirely. . . we wanted to keep it a fairly small, kind of raw group sound and not make it into pop music - we didn't use a lot of drums - we still took the opportunity to do something that we felt made the music more interesting. There were pluses and minuses but on the whole we were able to do something good with it."
The American release version of 'Hill Climbing For Beginners' didn't please everyone. Mark Allan Powell's Encyclopedia Of Contemporary Christian Music reports that "critics consider the American version a travesty, while collectors price the original British edition at £250." The release on American Myrrh did, however, get the band out to the States. Said Trevor, "I think we sold a number of albums in the US. But the thing was the American market in the '70s wanted something much more immediate than the music we were making. We did a couple of tours in the US. They liked some of the music we would do that was very straightforward, less complex - they loved it. But then we'd get into some of our chamber style music that was a bit more complex and they wouldn't know what we were up to really. If you look back at some of the progressive rock of the time it did get very creative and it wasn't maybe everybody's cup of tea and that was particularly so in America."
Neither did the band's progressive folk offerings always connect with British audiences. Remembered Trevor, "We were the support act for some Cliff Richard Tear Fund concerts (in the autumn of 1975). To be honest, our music and his was like chalk and cheese. His was mainstream pop and ours was more progressive folk rock type of stuff. But we connected with the audience."
Trevor Sandford, lead singer of Water Into Wine Band died in Kent on 28th March, 2017.
by Tony Cummings
Tracks
1. Stranger In The World (Trevor Sandford) - 4:22
2. I Used To Be Blind (But Now I'm Short Sighted) (Ray Wright) - 5:26
3. Jesus, I've Been Walking (Ray Wright) - 6:45
4. Hill Climbing For Beginners (Trevor Sandford) - 3:29
5. The Start Of A Run (Bill Thorp, Trevor Sandford) - 3:35
6. Song Of The Cross (Pete McMunn, Ray Wright) - 11:00
7. I Have Seen The Lord (Ray Wright) - 4:41
Water Into Wine Band
*Bill Thorp - Vocals, Violin, Piano, Bass, Bongos
*Pete McMunn - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
*Ray Wright - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass, Bongos
Providence, a six-piece band from the Portland area that was in effect from about 1971 to 1974. They released a single and an album entitled "Ever Sense the Dawn" in 1972 on Threshold Records
This was a really sweet group, somewhat reminiscent of the Moody Blues, but with their own individual style, very classically oriented.
Tracks
1. To Light Your Journey (Bartholomew Bishop) - 0:52
2. Mountain (Andy Guzie) - 4:01
3. Lady (Andy Guzie, Bartholomew Bishop) - 2:47
4. Sketch Number Two (Jim Cockey, Tim Tompkins, Tom Tompkins) - 0:34
5. The Stream (Andy Guzie, Bartholomew Bishop) - 3:01
6. If We Were Wise (Bob Barriatua) - 4:00
7. Fantasy Fugue (Bartholomew Bishop) - 2:58
8. Smile (Andy Guzie, Bartholomew Bishop, Bob Barriatua) - 3:18
9. Sketch Number Three (Jim Cockey, Tim Tompkins, Tom Tompkins) - 0:55
10.Neptunes Door (Andy Guzie, Tom Tompkins) - 2:57
11.Island Of Light (Andy Guzie, Tom Tompkins) - 3:25
12.Behold: A Solar Sonnet (Andy Guzie, Bob Barriatua) - 4:02
The Blues is an art form born of travail and hardship. The colorful and passionate folk of the Old South, bearing decades of mistreatment on their backs, found catharsis in a new art form - the Blues was born. As industry grew in the North, they moved to the cities. It was in the slums of these northern industrial centers that the Blues became set to the raucous, electrified tempo of modern urban life. Alexander's Timeless Bloozband has done more than merely copy older Blues styles. It has really investigated and branched out from the neuro-psychological, sociological, anthropological, bio- logical roots of Blues music. Alexander's has created a totally new music with all the emotional impact of the Blues and all the class of modern computerized American society. Here, truly, is a new art form - Alexander's timeless gift to the ages.
Liner-Notes
Tracks
1. Help Me - 5:46
2. Killing Floor (Howlin' Wolf) - 3:12
3. Guitar Song - 2:55
4. Favorite Things - 5:25
5. Sloppy Drunk (Lucille Bogan) - 4:24
6. #1 - 5:14
7. Swannoa Tunnel (Traditional) - 4:38
8. Sweet Little Angel (B.B. King) - 2:52
All songs by Tony Cary, Fritz Ashauer except where stated
Recorded Live At The Brother's Gallery in Goleta, August 1967
For a man who’s enjoyed a solid five-decade membership of the British rock establishment, Billy Nicholls must be one of its least-known figures. From being engaged as a staff songwriter to Andrew Loog Oldham’s upstart Immediate Records at the tender age of eighteen, to composer of I Can’t Stop Loving You (Though I Try), the royalties from the multiple cover versions of which should assure his pension, to MD of the Who’s and Pete Townshend’s concert activities for the last thirty-odd years, Nicholls has enjoyed a fruitful but surprisingly low-profile relationship with the industry, only recently achieving acclaim as the author of one of psychedelia’s great lost gems.
The history of Would You Believe is as engaging a tale as that of Nicholls himself. When Oldham fell out with the Stones in 1967 he redirected all his resources into making the youthful Nicholls a star of the psychedelic pop scene. The results were the single Would You Believe, which hit the racks in January 1968, and the like-titled album that followed in short order. The single has been described as the most over-produced record of the sixties, and with reason; a modest psych-pop love song, it’s swathed in overblown orchestration including baroque strings, harpsichord, banjo (!), tuba (!!), and demented answer-back vocals from Steve Marriott. A trifle late for the high tide of UK psych, it failed to trouble the charts. Unfazed, Oldham and Nicholls pressed on with the album, Nicholls providing a steady stream of similarly well-crafted ditties and a bevy of top-rated London sessionmen providing the backings, thankfully with somewhat more subtlety than on the prototype cut. The album was ready for pressing just as the revelation of Oldham’s reckless financial overstretch brought about Immediate’s overnight demise, and only about a hundred copies ever made it to wax, most of which somehow surfaced in Sweden. The album became one of the mythical lost albums of the sixties, and original copies now fetch over a grand in GBP.
The record itself was heralded then, and is still often described today, as the English answer to Pet Sounds, with Nicholls’s songwriting being compared to Brian Wilson’s. This is blatant hype, and the writing certainly doesn’t get close, but the album is still the epitome of sixties Britsike, a bunch of fine acid-pop songs rendered with glorious harmonies and superb lysergic arrangements that wouldn’t have disgraced George Martin. Put it this way, if you like Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake or A Teenage Opera or even The Who Sell Out you’ll enjoy this. The sound and the production are sometimes closer to the Stones’ We Love You / Satanic Majesties output, unsurprising since it was recorded in the same studio with many of the same sessioneers, including the incomparable Nicky Hopkins on assorted keys, though this is – the title track apart – a far more taut and less self-indulgent collection than the Glimmer Twins’ psychedelic endeavours. Sundry Small Faces hung around, with Marriott contributing huge fuzz-psych guitar to Girl From New York. Indeed there’s plenty of sonic variety, from the tight structure and Townshend-style telegraph guitar of London Social Degree (go figure the acronym there, folks), through the lush Byrdsy 1string-driven (Cut And) Come Again which garnered a cover from Del Shannon, to the full-on acid rock treatments of Being Happy and It Brings me Down with its trippy false ending.
After the failure of Would You Believe Nicholls took a back seat from stardom and began a belated apprenticeship in the music industry, initially working on low-profile projects with Ronnie Lane and old acquaintance Townshend whilst gaining an understanding of all its facets that would stand him in good stead for the next forty years. He released nothing new under his own name until 1974’s Love Songs, a solid soft-rock venture that deserves a review of its own here, and may well get one. Meanwhile Would You Believe is readily available as a CD reissue, or you can get seven of its eleven songs “ plus three outtakes from the album’s sessions, which are every bit as good as those eventually used “ on Nicholls’s fine career retrospective Forever’s No Time At All.
by Len Liechti
Tracks
Disc 1
1. Would You Believe (Jeremy Paul) - 2:44
2. Come Again - 2:36
3. Life Is Short - 3:10
4. Feeling Easy - 3:15
5. Daytime Girl - 2:45
6. Daytime Girl (Coda) - 1:39
7. London Social Degree - 2:22
8. Portobello Road - 2:08
9. Question Mark - 2:29
10.Being Happy - 2:21
11.Girl From New York - 3:22
12.It Brings Me Down - 4:40
13.Would You Believe (Jeremy Paul) - 2:45
14.Daytime Girl - 2:44
15.I Want To Be Friendly With You - 1:57
16.Always On My Mind - 2:23
17.Would You Believe (Jeremy Paul) - 2:45
All compositions by Billy Nicholls except where noted
Tracks 1-17 "Would You Believe" (The Original 1968 Album)
Disc 2
1. Would You Believe (Jeremy Paul) - 2:29
2. Happiness Song - 1:51
3. Cut And Come Again - 2:21
4. Casey Jones - 0:26
5. Always On My Mind - 2:31
6. I'm To Blame (Caleb Quaye) - 3:13
7. Feeling Easy - 2:37
8. Back About Four - 2:03
9. Umbrella Song - 1:39
10.It Brings Me Down - 2:25
11.Life Is Short - 3:00
12.Haven't Any Money - 1:36
13.Good Day Goodnight - 2:14
14.The Fortune Teller - 2:19
15.London Social Degree - 2:03
16.I Want To Be Friendly With You - 1:38
17.Being Happy - 2:05
18.Love Is All Around - 2:31
19.Walking Through The Park - 2:48
20.Portobello Road - 2:13
21.The Rest Of My Life - 1:31
22.It Brings Me Down - 5:06
All compositions by Billy Nicholls except where noted
Clover was a Marin County, California four-piece that formed in the late ‘60s and recorded this pair of albums for Fantasy Records in 1970-71. Their renown, however, stems from later exploits, including the slot as Elvis Costello’s backing band on his 1977 debut, My Aim is True, as well as spinning off Huey Lewis and the News, and launching the solo and songwriting (including Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309/Jenny”) career of Alex Call. Their original albums didn’t catch on upon initial release, and have been tough to find. Reissued on this two-fer, the performances reveal a band drawing inspiration from both the San Francisco scene and the country-rock wafting up from Los Angeles, and with additional dashes of blues and soul Clover was ready to rock the local clubs and bars.
The albums, like the band’s set list, sprinkled covers (Jr. Walker’s “Shotgun” Rev. Gary Davis’ “If I Had My Way” and a Creedence-styled jam on the spiritual “Wade in the Water” that surely stretched out to fifteen minutes on stage) amid originals that included country, electric blues, and jazz- and funk-rock. The former comes in several varieties, including the traditional-sounding lament “No Vacancy,” Bakersfield-influenced “Monopoly,” Clarence White-styled guitar picking of “Lizard Rock and Roll Band,” and bluegrass “Chicken Butt.” Guitarist John McFree shows off his steel playing on “Howie’s Song,” and drummer Mitch Howie adds funky beats to “Love is Gone.” In the end, Clover was a good band, though not particularly distinct, and their albums provide a reminder of just how deep the bench was in the San Francisco scene.
No Depresion
You know Clover, even if you think you don’t. In 1977, they backed Elvis Costello on My Aim Is True. Later, a slightly altered version of the band became Huey Lewis & the News. Members played with the Doobie Brothers, and also played with the likes of John Prine and Lucinda Williams. This is all to say that Clover has quite the musical pedigree. But before all that, they were their own band, making their own tunes and trying to make a name for themselves as nothing more than the country-soul-rock outfit Clover.
Real Gone Music has collected the band’s first two records – 1970’s Clover and 1971’s Fourty-Niner – together on one disc, and they show a band far removed from the angry power-pop of Costello or the ’80s soul-pop of Lewis & the News. Instead, Clover fell right into the thick of early ’70s, country-tinged rock music. They sounded like a more pop-oriented version of the Band, and their twangy, swampy sound is nothing if not catchy. Clover clocks in at just over a half-hour, and doesn’t waste a minute, fitting in rangy hooks and tight melodies at every turn. Opener “Shotgun” has crunchy, funky guitars and lively vocals that give the song a lean power. Love song “Monopoly” is closer to Flying Burrito Brothers’ turf, but it’s extended metaphor – which is either about government or business practice, it’s hard to tell – is charming even if it doesn’t quite hold together. The most spacious song on the record, “Wade in the Water”, dips into more bluesy sounds, dragging the guitars through the low mud and giving their riffs some space to echo out.
Fourty-Niner takes the taut energy of Clover and eases up a little, giving us a more introspective sound. Even the bouncy pop of “Harvest”, which opens the record, has a soulful, shuffling chorus backed by shadowy organs and built up by bittersweet vocal harmonies. “Keep on Trying” is an R&B-influenced heartbreak tune. The title track is a country-soul jam that gives the vocals room to stretch out and vamp. In fact, the whole record feels looser, more confident than its predecessor, and if that slows the frenetic tempo of the first record, it delves deeper emotionally and we get a better feel for who the band is.
And who the band is might be the main issue for Clover. While these two records are charming and catchy, history has done them no favors. As it stands, these feel like second-tier country-soul records, ones with energy but not much unique personality. As hook-filled as these songs are, those hooks are also often by the numbers. So it’s no real wonder Clover ended up attaching itself to move distinct musical voices later. Make no mistake, these guys can play and play well, and the best parts of these albums do show them playing their hearts out. But too often these two albums feel like exercises, like practicing getting these rock and country-western and soul sounds down perfectly instead of getting the feel of them right. In the end, then, Clover/Fourty-Niner is a pleasant, interesting listen, but in terms of significance it’s little more than a musical footnote, the solid sound of players that went on to play others’ songs better.
by Matthew Fiander / 10 December 2012
Clover
1. Shotgun (Autry DeWalt) - 2:10
2. Southbound Train (Alex Call, John McFee) - 3:38
3. Going To The Country (Alex Call, John Ciambotti) - 2:29
4. Monopoly (John Ciambotti) - 2:00
5. Stealin' (Alex Call, Ed Bogas) - 4:33
6. Wade In The Water (Traditional) - 4:31
7. No Vacancy (John Ciambotti) - 3:09
8. Lizard Rock And Roll Band (Alex Call, Ed Bogas) - 2:57
9. Come (Alex Call) - 3:45
10.Could You Call It Love (Alex Call, John McFee) - 2:30
11.Harvest (Ed Bogas, Johnny Ciambotti) - 2:24
12.Keep On Tryin' (Johnny Ciambotti) - 3:21
13.Old Man Blues (Alex Call) - 3:36
14.Forty-Niner (Alex Call, John Ciambotti) - 2:25
15.Sound Of Thunder (Alex Call) - 2:33
16.Chicken Butt (Alex Call, John McFee, John Ciambotti) - 2:24
