Francisco used to play in a band called Shanti with tabla player Zakir Hussain and, being a drummer, became friendly with Mickey when Shanti would open for the Dead. This release from 1976 is a new age, freak-jazz mind blower! It was on Francisco’s own Cosmic Beam Records & Tapes and features him playing acoustic guitar, electric space guitar, drums, chimes, zither, gongs, and some weird homegrown instruments like the one made out of a couple hundred house and car keys hanging in a bunch.
Francisco played his Cosmic Beam on the soundtracks of many films including: 1979’s Star Trek: the Motion Picture, a short film about the Tibetan Book of the Dead called Tanka and Terence Malick’s masterpieces The Thin Red Line and The New World.
Francisco Lupica has an actual I-beam electrified somehow to make ethereal noises. The Beam is held by two driftwood tree trunks with masses of roots, trimmed off evenly to be support stands. It not only looks great but must be very stable. He's performed with such folks as Lee Michaels and Taj Mahal and was even in a hillbilly band in Georgia.
This is the only album released in 1968 by ORO, a label under ESP in New York that has released many great and rare jazz albums. “All That The Name Implies’ was a hippie folk group from New York. First impression comes from the front cover, really beautiful. Musically nice male-female vocals, acoustic guitars, congas, and a faint tambourine, but the congas are actually a tricky part. The main vocalist, Nick Feva, has a great voice, and the chorus of men and women is intertwined with his vocals, floating neither too close nor too far. The temperature of the water is just right.
They released two other singles besides this album, which are included as bonuses on the CD. Of the four songs on each side of these two singles, three are alternate versions of songs from the album, but "Black Tuesday," is actually one that wasn't included on the album and this song is absolutely amazing.
Images of wilderness, the bright evening light, the sky with a gradient from ultramarine to orange as the veil of night falls. It would be nice to have a bonfire on the ground. The sound of the conga is louder than the album, and has a great effect in creating this endless world. There may be a lot of great songs that are hidden away, but for sure "Black Tuesday" is one of them. It's a great song!
Tracks
1. Lemon Train - 3:00
2. Your Day (Roy Jiminez) - 3:02
3. Simply Implied - 1:58
4. So Am I - 3:12
5. Dedication: Fred Neil (River Trilogy) (Traditional / Marlene Ryan) - 7:09
From the archives of legendary sound engineer Augustus Owsley Stanley, a long-time trusted man of the Grateful Dead, 'Before We Were Them' follows the two live shows dedicated respectively to the Allman Brothers Band and Doc & Merle Watson and captures a performance held by Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, guitarist and bassist of Jefferson Airplane, on June 28, 1969 at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa, California.
The always impeccable audio quality of the recordings made by the legendary 'Bear', recovered from the original tapes and restored - remastered for the occasion, allows us to enjoy a concert previously unreleased and only recently resurfaced in which the two great musicians, who had not yet launched into the collateral project of Hot Tuna, are joined on stage by Jefferson Airplane drummer Joey Covington.
With him, Jorma and Jack form an impromptu power trio capable of competing in power and intensity with Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, protagonists of over 70 minutes of exciting and muscular music in which blues classics such as 'Rock Me Baby' and 'Come Back Baby' and the Airplane's 'Star Track' are joined by four rarities titled for the occasion by Kaukonen and Casady ('Turnaround', 'Through The Golden Gate', 'Through The Grove', 'Inspiration In The Hall Of Arrivals') and which will make the mouths of even the completists and the most profound connoisseurs of the duo's repertoire water.
'It's not just the youthful energy that strikes me, when I listen to these songs again; 'It's the musical dialogue that Jack and I shared in those amazing moments,' Kaukonen commented about these recordings, while Casady recalls 'the unbridled fury' of those performances that 'every day, back then, represented a new adventure for our young hearts'. 'Before We Were Them' is therefore a small, very precious treasure chest of psychedelic blues exhumed and polished to a new shine, using state-of-the-art Plangent Processes technologies (which allowed to eliminate even the smallest distortions caused by recording and playback equipment) and the mastering experience of Jeffrey Norman, a long-time collaborator of Stanley himself and the Grateful Dead.
Tracks
1. Rock Me Baby (B.B. King) - 8:32
2. Turnaround - 10:30
3. Star Track (Jorma Kaukonen) - 7:45
4. Through The Golden Gate - 13:43
5. Come Back Baby (Walter Davis) - 10:28
6. Through The Grove - 11:08
7. Inspiration In The Hall Of Arrivals - 8:07
Songs 2,4,6,7 written by Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady
The Summer Sounds were a five-piece band from Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Their one and only release “Up-Down” is an album of largely self-penned material (only 2 covers) and was recorded at the Metcalf Studio in New Bedford. A beat-garage concept album detailing the highs and lows of a summer vacation romance, loads of moody teenage angst. The songs are all catchy, and there's a couple of good ballads. The opening song "Small World" is soft garage rock with a catchy organ, and the two covers of "Gimme Some Lovin'" by the Spencer Davis Group and "I Love You" by the Zombies are great too.The original vinyl is changing hands for more than 1.000$.
Steven Wright was born on 20 December 1948 in Leeds, England. His family came to Australia as assisted migrants when Stevie was nine and lived in Melbourne for a couple of years before moving to Sydney in 1960 . They settled in Villawood, in Sydney's south-west, close to the Villawood Migrant Hostel. Stevie had been bitten by the rock'n'roll bug at an early age, and in the early Sixties he fronted two local bands, The Outlaws, followed by Chris Langdon & The Langdells. The Langdells started out as a Shadows-style surf band but changed their image to Beatles clones overnight after being introduced to The Fab Four's music music by their friends, teenage vocal group The Bee Gees.
Stevie (aka "Chris") was singing with the The Langdells at Suzie Wong's Disco in Sydney one night in mid-1964 and when he met Hendrickus Vandenburg and Dingeman Vandersluys, two Dutch immigrant lads from the Hostel who were in the process of putting a new band together. Like Stevie, they too had been electrified by the new possibilities opened up by the emergence of The Beatles. Stevie was already friends with another young Villawood resident, a teenage guitarist from Glasgow called George Young. The new band tried out several local kids as potential singers, including John Bell (a great musician in his own right, who went on to form The Throb) but they knew they had their perfect frontman when the diminutive Stevie auditioned. He snapped up the offer of the lead singer spot, and through Stevie the band also met Stevie's friend, guitarist George Young. The new band was completed when they found their final member, drummer Snowy Fleet, thanks to a chance meeting on a train. With an obligatory nod to their heroes, Snowy dubbed the new band The Easybeats.
The huge post-Easybeats success of his bandmates Harry Vanda and George Young, as both writers and producers, has for a long time ovegsubadowed Stevie's contributions to the band, so it's worth repeating the fact that all of their classic Australian hits in 1965-66 -- She's So Fine, Sorry, Women (Make You Feel Alright), Come And See Her, and Wedding Ring -- were co-written by Stevie. He and George were a an accomplished and productive writing team whose knack for writing pithy, memorable, down-to-earth rock lyrics was perfectly matched by George instinctive gift for melody and arrangment. They rapidly wrote dozens of original numbers, most of them created around the piano at the George's family home in Burwood. They were productive enough to write a string of chart-topping hits of their own themselves and still have enough material to spare to provide songs for other artists, including "Step Back ", the 1966 debut hit for Perth singer Johnny Young as well as the B-side of a later single, "Good Evening Girl".
Stevie was one of the most dynamic performers on the local scene, famous for his trademarks stage technique -- the flying tambourine and his acrobatic leaps and backflips -- and he influenced many singers who followed him. He was a natural television performer, as evidenced by the Easys' surviving appearances on shows like their classic "Coca Cola Special", made for ATN-7 in Sydney in mid-'66, just before their first trip to the UK.
As lead singer Stevie was the focus of most of the publicicty and by 1967 he was one of the most popular and recognisable male performers in the country, with Normie Rowe arguably his only serious rival. The move to England and the international success of "Friday On My Mind" took the band to dizzy new heights and seemed to bode for a great future, but over the next two dispiriting years in the UK, Australia's greatest pop group gradually fizzled out and they dissolved after a desultory farewell tour of Australia in late 1969.
Stevie was one of the first new acts signed to the revived Albert label. The team commenced work on Stevie's debut solo album, with Vanda and Young producing, as well as writing and playing on several tracks. Hard Road (April 1974) is without question Stevie's finest hour, and it remains one of the best Australian albums of the period. The classic Vanda-Young tracks -- the autobiographical "Hard Road", "Didn't I Take You Higher?" and the epic "Evie" were ably complemented by Stevie's own strong compositions "Movin' On Up", "Commando Line", "Life Gets Better" and "Dancing in the Limelight".
Stevie's groundbreaking debut solo single "Evie (Parts I, II and III)" is a genuine rock epic. It is arguably the perfect rock'n'roll song, encapsulating the three basic themes of all love songs -- (A) "Baby it'll be great once w're together, (B) "Baby, it's so great now that we're together" and (C) "Baby, it's so bad since you left me". Clocking in at a whopping eleven minutes in total, it seemed an unlikely chart contender, but the three parts were wisely split across the two sides of the single, and the head-on power rock of "Evie Part I" proved irresistable. Lyrically, it revisited the perennial "gonna have a good time tonight" theme of "Friday On My Mind" and Good Times and musically it is perhaps the ultimate distillation of the full-frontal hard rock Vanda & Young had previously essayed on V&Y classics like "Good Times", and showcased the no-frills hard-rocking sound which they woudl soon hone to perfection with AC/DC.
Released in May 1974 Evie shot to the top of charts, peaking at #2 nationally during July. It did especially well in Melbourne, where it stayed at #1 for seven weeks. The Hard Road album also peaked at #5 nationally and #1 in Melbourne. It was released on Atlantic in the USA and Polydor in the UK and made a strong impression overseas -- Suzi Quatro later covered "Evie", and Rod Stewart included a version of "Hard Road" on his Smiler album. "Evie" is now widely considered to be one of best Australian singles of Seventies. Stevie (Stephen Carlton) Wright passed away 27th December 2015.
Upp was a British rock-jazz fusion band, active in the 1970s. The group was originally going to be called 3 UPP, and consisted of Stephen Amazing (bass guitar), Andy Clark (keyboards) and Jim Copley (drums). David Bunce (guitar) joined on guitar for the second album. The band was heavily influenced by other acts like Otis Redding, Sly & The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway.
According to Jim Copley, Jeff Beck came to the studio where the band were rehearsing and heard them playing James Brown and some very funky stuff. Beck was at the studio to play with David Bowie who was doing his Hammersmith Odeon farewell concert in 1973, but he liked it so much he ended up producing and playing on the album.
"This Way Upp" was released with Beck again producing and playing guitar solos on "Dance Your Troubles Away" and "Don't Want Nothing to Change”. Recording moved from Kent to LA, and the sound to slickly conventional, string-laden disco, only nodding back to prog with propulsive, jazzy instrumental There’s Still Hope. There wasn’t, so they split.
by Nick Hasted, November 2018
Tracks
1. Never Turn My Back On You - 8:22
2. Say Goodbye - 5:09
3. Nitto - 3:53
4. Dance Your Troubles Away - 3:53
5. I Don't Want Nothing (To Change) - 3:45
6. Groovin' Mood - 3:33
7. There's Still Hope - 3:27
8. Get To The Bottom - 3:33
All compositions by Andy Clark, Stephen Amazing, James Copley
Jeff Beck's is a name associated with some very great music over the past decade; not a lot of records, mind you, but a lot of great ones. For that reason alone, this debut album by UPP would be significant. That this album marks Beck's debut as a pro- ducer of a group of which he is not a member is also significant, but, as can be expected, the most significant thing about this album is that it is different and it is good. Different and good are two words that aren't always used in the same breath. A lot of times someone will say about an album that isn't particularly good "it's, well, different." That's not what I mean at all. I mean this album is as good as it is different.
It is very different, and very good. There's a lot of soul in this music, but it doesn't sound like Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. There's a lot of jazz in this music, but it doesn't sound like Miles Davis. There's a lot of rock in this music, but it doesn't sound like (what's a good example of rock?) Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Because mostly in the music of this album is music.
Sure, other bands have com- bined elements of many styles and welded them into something special. Witness the Rolling Stones. Witness the Beatles. Wit- ness Roxy Music. Witness UPP, combining the soulfulness of an AWB with the mellow jazz-rock feel of the Youngbloods. UPP is an ensemble, meaning that they play together well as a unit, not vying for the solo spotlight.
As accomplished as they are on their instruments, the thing that really floors me about UPP is their vocals: they sound like the best of Curtis Mayfield dueting with Eddie Kendricks. That soft, silky flavor really will get you where it counts.
If you're wondering about the production of the album, stop. You'll hear some technique de- signed to remind you that Stevie Wonder wrote "Superstition" when he was working with Jeff Beck. And you'll hear a clarity of sound that lets each instrument communicate to the fullest, and lets the words shine through.
This album is equally strong on ballads and uptempo mover- groovers. UPP, as a group, dis- plays a lot of diversity on their first effort, and as they grow to- gether, perhaps they'll show us even more tricks.
So the record is two begin- nings for the price of one: first, the production career of Jeff Beck; and two, the sure-to-be long and healthy career for UPP as purveyors of a smooth and soulful sound built on a solid rock foundation. There's no place to go but UPP.
by Toby B. Mamis
Tracks
1. Bad Stuff - 7:19
2. Friendly Street - 3:25
3. It's A Mystery - 3:54
4. Get Down In The Dirt - 4:44
5. Give It To You - 7:10
6. Jeff's One (Andy Clark, Jeff Beck) - 5:19
7. Count To Ten - 5:36
A;; songs by Andy Clark, Jimmy Copley, Stephen Fields, except trrack #6
Tenth is an excellent Marshall Tucker Band album. Sadly, it was also the last Marshall Tucker Band album to feature founding member Tommy Caldwell, who would lose his life in an automobile accident the same year the album was released. The album was released in 1980. The album hit number thirty two on the US Billboard Top 200 Albums Charts. Standout tracks included the album opener “It Takes Time” as well as “Cattle Drive,” “See You One More Time” and “Foolish Dreaming.”
by Brian Kachejian
Tracks
1. It Takes Time (Toy Caldwell) - 3:33
2. Without You (Tommy Caldwell) - 3:36
3. See You One More Time (Toy Caldwell) - 3:51
4. Disillusion (George McCorkle, Jerry Eubanks) - 3:57
5. Cattle Drive (Tommy Caldwell, Toy Caldwell) - 6:19
6. Gospel Singin' Man (George McCorkle) - 3:26
7. Save MySoul (Toy Caldwell) - 4:36
8. Sing My Blues (Tommy Caldwell, Toy Caldwell) - 3:27
9. Jimi (George McCorkle, Toy Caldwell) - 2:14
10.Foolish Deaming (Doug Gray, George McCorkle) - 4:50
From where we sit today in the 21st century, 1977 seems like another world, another lifetime ago.The Whitlam Experiment was over and Australia appeared to be heading back to the conservative dark ages. The most popular shows on TV were Number 96 and The Box. On Sunday nights, Countdown celebrated the Australians stars of the era: LRB, Sherbet, JPY and Dragon.
It was into this space that a young artist by the name of Richard Clapton dropped Goodbye Tiger, this most enigmatic and mysterious of Australian Rock Classics - an album suffused with bitterness and sadness, with loss and resignation, with righteous anger and acerbic disdain.
Richard Clapton was always an outsider - a young man keen to reject almost everything about his family, his upbringing and his culture. With his curtain of black hair and his dark, introspective songs, Clapton was in so many ways out of step with his time and his place, travelling a very different path to his contemporaries.
Yet despite this, or perhaps because of it, his music found its audience almost instantly. Whatever Australia was in those days - a sunburnt country of proud sportsmen, suburban values and narrow thinking - Richard wasn't buying it. Never comfortable in his country of birth nor, indeed, in his own skin, he turned his back on the parochial materialism of his homeland and wandered the world in search of a place that felt like home.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who knew the artist as a young man that he found that place in Northern Europe - and in particular the edgy, nerve-damaged mean streets of West Berlin. Richard returned to Australia with a brace of incredible songs and gathered a band with the intelligence and technical ability to realise them. In a state of siege with both his producer - Richard Batchens and his record company, Richard Clapton went into the Festival Studios in Ultimo and created Goodbye Tiger.
Goodbye Tiger was a kiss-off letter to Australia and everyone that lived there. And even now, more than 30 years later, it remains strikingly relevant and brutally on-target. Listening to the album today with fresh ears, I'm struck by it's unique perspective. Although the songs were written by a young man in the prime of what was already a successful career, it's suffused with a sad, reflective disappointment and an appreciation of some of life's inevitable certainties: hopes fade; dreams shatter. The past is another country and you can never go back. The entire album is a meditation on the very nature of reminiscence and regret.
It's a poignant and expertly crafted album from a man jaggedly out of step with his time and place, unsure how he got there and even less certain of his desire to remain. Drunk., alienated and angry, the artist stands apart from his own life and examines it with bitter clarity.
If you're reading these liner notes you've almost certainly had the good taste to purchase the album, and you'd be entitled to form your own interpretations of the songs. Suffice to say that of the eight songs here - four per side, as one did in those days I'd suggest that at least five are stone-cold classics. From the ironically upbeat opening salvo of "Lucky Country" to the strangely peaceful melancholia of closing track "Wintertime in Amsterdam", this is an album of untold riches.
"Deep Water" was the "hit" from the album - he even got to perform it on Countdown - and it still sounds fantastic with it's sparring themes of faded glory and drunken alienation. But for this writer, at least, it's the title track that leaps off the disc. "Goodbye Tiger" - written in a moment of desolate, hung-over reflection after fleeing Australia spontaneously is a deep musing on all that was and never will be again. A fond but unsentimental farewell. And one of the greatest Australian songs ever written or committed to tape.
So, music lovers, it is indeed a very long time since 1977. For all of us who were there all those years ago, it's been a long strange trip. I first met Richard Clapton the very month he released this album, and we've been friends ever since. Goodbye Tiger stands as a shining example of all that great songwriting can be and should be: it's personal, it's universal, it moves you and it makes you think. It hasn't aged one bit, unlike the rest of us. So this note's for you, Richard, with all my love. Never say Goodbye to a friend.
As the piano kicked in on “Something New” at the same time as one of the most distinctive voices in rock, Traffic were back in the American album chart on September 28, 1974 with When The Eagle Flies.
With Steve Winwood’s vocals and keyboards augmented by the work of Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and now Rosko Gee (plus the uncredited Rebop Kwaku Baah), they would once again strike gold in the States — but this would be their last chart showing with a new studio record for very nearly 20 years.
This ninth album by the British rock pacemakers gathered half a dozen new compositions by Winwood and Capaldi, and another, the equally impressive “Dream Gerrard,” that Steve wrote with inimitable performer-humorist Vivian Stanshall, late of the Bonzo Dog Band. It arrived just over a year and a half after the band’s 1973 entry Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory, after which they had released the On The Road memento of their concert in Germany that year.
Whereas Traffic’s recent studio endeavors had been produced by Winwood, When The Eagle Flies was overseen, like the live disc, by their Island label boss and confidant, Chris Blackwell. There was a subtle update to their sound, too, with the use of Moog and Mellotron keyboards, and an ever greater advance into a sophisticated jazz-rock style. But, with their status as FM album rock radio staples intact, there was no sign of any reduction in their American popularity.
While the band’s British audience showed less enthusiasm for the new album, granting it only a fleeting Top 40 place, Eagle entered the US chart at No.52 and became the group’s fourth Top 10 LP in a row there. Billboard called the album “a superb return.”
It reached No.9 in a 27-week run, going gold by November, but after a promotional tour in the US in the autumn, Traffic called it a day. They were commemorated by two compilations in 1975 but the name was not revived by Winwood and Capaldi until 1994’s Far From Home.
Encouraged by the creative and commercial success of 1971's The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, Traffic gleefully expanded upon its increasingly eclectic style with Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory, released in the early days of '73.
Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood remained, as ever, the core of the band; for these ses- sions, they were augmented by an American rhythm section, Roger Hawkins (drums) and David Hood (bass). Ghanian percussionist Reebop Kwaku-Bah, who'd been added for the live Welcome to the Canteen and Low Spark, remained in the ranks.
In '72, while Winwood recuperated from a bout with peritonitis, Capaldi flew to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record his solo album Oh How We Danced. Hawkins and Hood so impressed him during these sessions, Capaldi invited the Americans to come to England to be a part of the ever-evolving Traffic.
The Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory sessions took place at Strawberry Hills Studios in Jamaica, at the suggestion of Island Records chief (and longtime Winwood advisor) Chris Blackwell. A change of envi- ronment, it was felt, would nurture the creative ele- ment that had steadily brought Traffic to new heights since John Barleycorn Must Die had restored the band to the charts in 1970.
Right away, the new aggregation clicked, and the sessions brought five ambitious new songs out of Winwood, Capaldi and Wood. Musically, it melded R&B, pop and jazz in a stylistic gumbo Capaldi, who composed the lyrics, liked to call "Headless Horseman Music."
"Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory," the title song, allows Hawkins, Hood and Reebop to lay down a hypnotic groove while showcasing Winwood's multi-tracked electric guitars, which are joined halfway through by haunting flute from Wood.
Winwood's piano and organ set the stage for "Roll Right Stones," with some of the most plaintive singing of his career. Using the English megaliths called stand- ing stones as a starting-off point, he weaves a tale of mythology and doom recalling (in spirit) Traffic's 1970 version of the folk song "John Barleycorn." Wood added both flute and saxophone to this evocative 14- minute track, which climbs to a fever pitch before set- tling down again.
The fine ballad "Evening Blue" follows, with acoustic guitar from Winwood and sax from Wood. With a melancholy mood set by the opening line, "Sitting all alone by the fireside/Listen to the wind in the chimney top," it's perfect for Winwood's shades- of-blue vocal delivery.
"Tragic Magic," a Wood composition, is a bluesy instrumental full of fiery improvisation - Wood plays sax, with Winwood on piano, and as it builds toward its crescendo the song is punctuated by the Muscle Shoals horn section.
The album closes with "(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired," a pensive Capaldi lyric balancing sadness and optimism, leading into a lengthy jam allowing dynamic shading from each othe musicians.
Shoot Out At the Fantasy Factory rose to #6 in the American market in March 1973, earning the band a gold album.
The expanded, six-member Traffic toured through- out 1973, with many of the dates recorded for a potential live album. That live document of the tour, On The Road, would be released October 1973.
by Bill DeYoung
Tracks
1. Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory - 6:00
2. Roll Right Stones - 13:40
3. Evening Blue - 5:15
4. Tragic Magic - 6:39
5. (Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired - 7:32
All compositions by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi except track #4 by Chris Wood
If there’s one song that best illustrates the talent and imagination of Steve Winwood, it’s the 11-minute title track of Traffic’s fifth album, a hypnotic jazz-rock masterpiece and a searing indictment of the music industry.
The song rose up from a lyric Jim Capaldi roused himself to write about the withering effects of the music business on the artist. To this Winwood introduced a musical backdrop that moved like shifting sand: neither solely rock, blues or jazz, but each and more besides, changing almost from one bar to the next.
Altogether, and elsewhere on this, Traffic’s most restless record, shades and styles got jumbled up in the same pot, shaken into new shapes, then broken down and started up again. “It kind of sums up Traffic in a way,” Capaldi said at the time. “The eclectic-ness – you can’t put your finger on it at all, yet you know it’s familiar.”
"Stevie Winwood and I both grew up in the midlands," Glenn Hughes told us, choosing Low Spark... as one of the records that changed his life. "I was mad about his earlier band the Spencer Davis Group, but Traffic really hooked me in. I adored his Hammond organ playing and the subtlety and drama of his voice. Not many people would know that Stevie was a huge influence upon me whilst I was in my mid-teens, and he continued to be so all though my twenties and early thirties."
Classic-Rock, 16 August 2021
Tracks
1. Hidden Treasure (Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood) - 4:12
2. The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys (Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood) - 11:44
3. Light Up Or Leave Me Alone (Jim Capaldi) - 4:51
4. Rock 'n' Roll Stew (Jim Gordon, Rick Grech) - 4:27
5. Many A Mile To Freedom (Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood) - 7:18
6. Rainmaker (Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood) - 7:52
7. Rock 'n' Roll Stew (Parts 1,2) (Jim Gordon, Rick Grech) - 6:10
Bonus Track 7, single version
Traffic
*Steve Winwood - Guitar, Keyboards, Lead Vocals, Organ, Piano
*Chris Wood - Flute, Saxophone, Wind
*Jim Capaldi - Drums, Keyboards, Lead Vocals, Percussion
An album that became a Top 10 hit in the UK and a Top 20 hit in America cannot be described with that overused phrase “underrated”, but Traffic‘s self-titled album is a low-key addition to the classic records of 1968, a year when a sense of place distinguished the latest releases from the UK’s premier league bands.
After following the Beatles down the psychedelic rabbit hole in 1967, the Rolling Stones re-established their critical standing with Beggars Banquet, a record firmly rooted in Americana. The Kinks, banned from touring in America since 1965, were now the quintessentially English Village Green Preservation Society. While it cannot be seriously argued that The Beatles (White Album) had a sense of place, 19 of its 30 tracks had been written while they were on retreat in India. During the recording of Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix could just as well have been beaming his guitar by satellite from outer space.
Traffic, meanwhile, came from Birmingham. For much of the 20th century, Birmingham was England’s unofficial second city. Its musical identity would come to be defined by heavy metal upon the surfacing of Black Sabbath. Beneath the radar, it had boasted of a music scene that had flourished in the wake of rock ‘n’ roll, reputedly with more working bands than in Liverpool. Still, by the middle of the 1960s, it had not established the national profile of Liverpool or London.
In 1968, there was a handful of noteworthy album releases by Birmingham-based groups, including the Moody Blues, the Move, and Traffic. All three shared some psychedelic common ground, as per fashion circa 1967, but only in so far as psychedelia equated to pushing boundaries, and the bands would sooner differentiate their musical identities than did the Merseybeat and London blues bands. So, while the Move took their cue from Sgt. Pepper‘s era art-pop and the Moody Blues worked orchestral textures into their proto-prog, Traffic, whose line-up emphasized keyboards and horns, with guitars often pushed back into a supporting role, gradually distinguished themselves as a premier jazz-rock band.
Traffic occupied a plum position on rock’s family tree. Steve Winwood had sung and played keyboards as a teen prodigy with the Spencer Davis Group (and he was only 19 years old when Traffic’s debut record was released in 1967). From that group, he brought along Jimmy Miller, a producer who had “got that art of being able to put music into words” and would start work that same year with the Rolling Stones, working with them through their much-vaunted golden period until 1973. Many Traffic members would feature on Electric Ladyland, and all four would play with Jimi Hendrix at one time or another. Winwood would go on to collaborate with Eric Clapton in Blind Faith, while Clapton would also cross paths with Dave Mason as part of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, a coterie of blue-eyed soul musicians.
Yet still, the competition Traffic faced was massive. In a music industry flush with the Beatles’ success, the array of new, established, and emerging talent in the UK at this time was dizzying. The year 1968 saw significant debut records in blues-rock (Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull), folk-rock (Fairport Convention, Pentangle), heavy rock (Deep Purple, the Jeff Beck Group), and progressive rock (Soft Machine, the Nice). What was more remarkable still was how so many of these acts could distinguish themselves.
What somewhat improbably helped the most talented artists to make their mark was that, amidst this wave of talent, there remained a vital element of purism, where only the most prominent names, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, were mixing genres freely. Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac was the most expressive British blues guitarist, but his band was still playing many Chicago blues covers and originals based on the rhythms and tonality of the blues. Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention would sing stirringly both on her original songs and on Fairport’s many Bob Dylan covers, but would also be influential on the group’s future decision to record only covers of British folk standards. Rod Stewart, too, was a fervent singer, but there were no gentle moments within the blues-derived proto-metal of the Jeff Beck Group.
Traffic were relatively less constrained. Winwood, Capaldi, and Wood liked to jam. With Wood’s distinctive array of horns and Capaldi’s exciting, meticulous drumming, this dimension formed their reputation as a 1970s jazz-rock band. They would later fit neatly in with the American jam-band aesthetic and were galvanized by the American “underground” scene of the time, where “all the groups just live for their music, and jam sessions are a pretty regular thing, with everyone getting up on stage to have a blow”. Dave Mason, however, wrote concise songs. Traffic, the album, is therefore split roughly between two distinct sides of their character, with Dave Mason’s songs typically delivered in a relaxed, amiable manner and the Steve Winwood/Jim Capaldi collaborations reaching into more progressive territory. However, Winwood’s remarkable talent and soulfulness as a vocalist, organist, and guitar player unites all of the material.
Among the self-contained rock bands of the period, only the Jimi Hendrix Experience were as soulful as Traffic. Hendrix’s firsthand experience of playing with the Isley Brother aside, his pioneering work in psychedelic soul was aiming for the stars. In the Small Faces, Steve Marriott was another powerhouse vocalist, and the band had mod pedigree, but on Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, they would dilute their soulfulness with English whimsy. Traffic is shot through with down-to-earth soulfulness, with each song covering new ground and side one of the original vinyl record, especially being one winner after another. It’s a post-psychedelic record that retains the adventurous spirit of its predecessor, Mr Fantasy, while reconnecting with the roots of rock & roll. “Drugs show you the door, but they don’t open it, they don’t take you there. Music is getting honest, real, and natural,” said Winwood in an interview with his American counterpart, Al Kooper. Unlike many other groups of the time, Traffic did not see their record as a conceptual piece, with Winwood seeing it as “really ten songs rather than the concept of an album. They’re compositions. Or exercises, if you like.”
The Mason-written album opener, “You Can All Join In”, is an up-tempo rocker in which Winwood’s flowing call-and-response guitar licks meet Mason’s vocal melody. Contemporary music critics heard some country-rock flavor in the guitar, in the vein of Duane Allman, then a session guitar ace at Muscle Shoals studios, and later of the Allman Brothers Band.
“Pearly Queen”, written by Winwood and Capaldi, could be Traffic‘s most rock-orientated piece, but features a rousing, soul-inflected vocal melody, punctuated by Winwood’s stinging rhythm guitar, ala Steve Cropper of Booker T & the MGs, and vast, echoing production on the instrumental sections, giving the piece a strong Atlantic Records vibe.
“Don’t Be Sad” is a wistful, gentle ballad written by Mason, in which Mason and Winwood take turns to sing verses and harmonise on the bridge, further enriched by Mason’s harmonica and Chris Wood’s saxophone accompaniment. “Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring”, written by Winwood and Capaldi, is the funkiest cut on the record, driven by Winwood’s organ, which continuously pushes and pulls against Capaldi’s drums with an elastic groove in the manner of a soul-jazz organist like Jimmy Smith.
“Feelin’ Alright”, written by Mason, became the LP’s most well-known song, covered many times by soul and rock performers, and is bolstered by Winwood’s lolling piano, drawing on the New Orleans R&B of Allen Toussaint and the Meters, with some fantastic tenor sax soloing by Wood.
Starting side two of Traffic, “Vagabond Virgin” and “Roamin’ Thru’ the Gloamin’ with 40,000 Headmen” diverge from the overall character of the record, both tracks harkening back to the whimsical acid-folk of Traffic’s debut, although they are both worthy compositions. “Vagabond Virgin” is the album’s story song, telling the well-worn tale of a London groupie based on a Latin American rhythm and has Capaldi playing claves.
“Cryin’ to be Heard”, written by Mason, has powerful dynamic shifts and multi-part vocal harmonies, deepened by Winwood on organ and harpsichord, which brings a gospel flavor to the record. “No Time to Live”, written by Winwood and Capaldi, intensifies the melancholy of Cryin’ to be Heard, with Winwood’s vocals yearning and pleading over a desolate backdrop dominated by piano, spare ornamental saxophone, and Capaldi on the tympani. “Means to an End”, written by Winwood and Capaldi and featuring only the two performers, closes the Traffic in the most straightforward manner, with a rock ‘n’ roll rave-up. Capaldi plays drums on this track, while Winwood overdubs all the guitar and keyboard parts.
After the collapse of their record label, Capricorn, Marshall Tucker Band jumped to Warner Bros. The band's first album for their new home found them refining their blend of rock, country, R&B and jazz on a set of songs that mostly deal with life on the road ("Running Like the Wind") as well as the wives and girlfriends left behind ("Melody Ann," "My Best Friend"). In all, it’s probably Marshall Tucker Band's most bittersweet album, and it connected with fans, who made it a To 30 album.
Tracks
1. Running Like The Wind (Toy Caldwell) - 9:10
2. Last Of The Singing Cowboys (George McCorkle) - 4:16
