Backed up by some fine musicians, David Blue recorded his fifth album "Com'n Back For More" in 1975 (not counting his album "Me" under his real name Stuart David Cohen).
The album contains some nice catchy songs, a good cover of Leonard Cohen's "Lover Lover Lover" a rocker "Where Did It Go" and the beautiful folkish "23 Days #2".
Tracks
1. Com'n Back For More - 3:00
2. Oooh Mama - 4:58
3. When The Rains Came - 2:56
4. Who Love - 2:38
5. Save Something (For Me Tonight) - 3:31
6. Lover, Lover, Lover (Leonard Cohen) - 2:58
7. Hollywood Babies - 3:20
8. 23 Days #2 - 4:06
9. Any Love At All - 3:26
10.Where Did It Go - 2:32
All songs written by David Blue except where noted
David Blue, whose song publishing company is called Good Friends Music, has always relied on his fellow musicians, many of them more prominent in the record business than he is. His most prominent musical friend on his fifth album, Nice Baby and the Angel, is Graham Nash, who produced the disc in addition to singing background vocals and playing acoustic guitar and electric piano. Nash's influence has made for a fundamental change in musical style for Blue, whose previous efforts harked back to '60s folk and folk-rock. Not so Nice Baby and the Angel. Under Nash's aegis, and with sidemen including guitarist Dave Mason and multi-instrumentalist David Lindley, and additional background singers Mason, Glenn Frey of the Eagles, and Jennifer Warren, Blue is brought into the Southern California rock fold of country-inflected singer/songwriter music à la Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Jackson Browne.
The changeover is apparent right at the start with the rocking leadoff track "Outlaw Man." (The song was quickly taken up by the Eagles as appropriate for their Desperado concept album and released by them as a singles chart entry, giving Blue his biggest payday.) Mason makes himself felt right away with an electric guitar solo that runs right through the song. Anchored by Nash's keening tenor, the background vocals considerably sweeten this and other songs. Another potential single is "True to You," which is reminiscent of the First Edition hit "But You Know I Love You," while the catchy "Darlin' Jenny" makes lots of room for Lindley's slide guitar work. There are a few tracks on the LP that hark back to Blue's earlier style, the first of which is "On Sunday, Any Sunday," which features an arrangement for two acoustic guitars augmented by Lindley's violin and viola and Terry Adams' cello. "Yesterday's Lady" and "Troubadour Song" boast similar instrumentation, and the latter in particular is more characteristic of the old Blue with its downcast, introspective lyrics.
Otherwise, Blue's words are somewhat less personal and involved than usual, although his outlook is much the same as ever, expressing the views of a lonely, sensitive man who encounters love but doesn't retain it. As he puts it in the album-closing "Train to Anaheim," "I'm still on the road/I can't be satisfied." Thanks to Nash, Nice Baby and the Angel dresses such sentiments in highly accessible musical garb that may make it easier for a larger audience to appreciate.
by William Ruhlmann
Tracks
1. Outlaw Man - 2:50
2. Lady O' Lady - 3:20
3. True To You - 3:40
4. On Sunday, Any Sunday - 3:44
5. Darlin' Jenny - 3:54
6. Dancing Girl - 2:48
7. Yesterdays Lady - 4:35
8. Nice Baby And The Angel - 3:06
9. Troubadour Song - 3:46
10.Train To Anaheim - 3:29
All songs by David Blue
For this album only, David Blue reverted to his name, David Cohen. By this time, impressively, the overt Bob Dylan-isms of his 1966 debut had faded far enough that most listeners would not automatically peg him as a Dylan imitator anymore. It's a little Dylan-esque, certainly, but not more so than several other singer/songwriters of the period. More specifically, his voice was coming more into his own personality as a low-key country-rocker who was able to keep in tune much more than he had as a Dylan clone.
Recorded in Nashville, as was fashionable among folk-rock singer/songwriters in the late '60s and early '70s, it's a low-key but pleasant record, coming as close to Townes Van Zandt as Bob Dylan. There are sturdy, somber story songs like "Atlanta Farewell"; breezy, poetic romantic ones like "Turning Towards You," which has an almost jazzy, breezy feel at points; and an occasional Tex-Mex border mood (as there had been on 1968's These 23 Days in September), which comes particularly to the fore on "He Holds the Wings She Wore" and "Better off Free." Certainly the most ambitious track is "Sara," which mixes Leonard Cohen-style spoken poetry with Mexican-influenced barroom lament. It might be a minor 1970 singer/songwriter/folk-rock album, but as such albums go, it's one of the better ones.
by Richie Unterberger
Tracks
1. Mama Tried (Merle Haggard) - 4:37
2. Lady Fair - 3:12
3. Atlanta Fairwell - 5:45
4. Turning Towards You - 3:35
5. Isn't That The Way It's Supposed To Be - 2:12
6. Beautiful Susan - 3:14
7. He Holds The Wings She Wore - 3:56
8. Better Off Free - 3:50
9. Me And Patty On The Moon - 2:50
10.How Much My Life Means To Me - 3:52
11.Sara - 5:56
All songs by David Blue except track #1
Musicians
*David Blue - Guitar, Vocals
*Charlie McCoy - Harmonica
Bodkin was a Scottish quintet that released a self-titled album in 1972 (over the years this current title has become attached to its release). A very palatable blend of dark organ-rock and dirty blues, Bodkin will surely please listeners interested in the murky and mysterious early years of the Heavy Prog scene and anyone seeking rare prog.
They made a classic-sounding, rough-edged heavy progressive rock with the emphasis on Doug Rome's Hammond organ and complimented by Mick Riddle's guitar, Bill Anderson's bass, Dick Sneddon on drums, and the cool wailing of Zeik Hume. Somewhat more jam-oriented than contemporaries such as Atomic Rooster or Uriah Heep (and not quite as hard-hitting), Bodkin nevertheless delivered spirited rock music with energetic interplay between guitar and organ, fine musicianship, and distractingly good compositions from the 21 year-old Doug Rome. Give it a listen, it will crush you against the wall until it is all over!
Tracks
1. Three Days After Death (Part 1) - 9:28
2. Three Days After Death (Part 2) - 7:09
3. Plastic Man - 5:59
4. Aunty Mary's Trashcan - 10:48
5. After Your Lumber - 5:12
6. Three Days After Death (Part 2) - Instrumental - 7:09
All compositions by Zeik Hume, Mick Riddle, Doug Rome, Dick Sneddon, Bill Anderson
Bonus Track 6
The first official CD release of the album Dog Soldier. Keef Hartley formed the band bringing together Mel Simpson keyboards/vocals, Miller Anderson vocals/guitar, Paul Bliss bass/vocals, Derek Griffiths guitar/vocals and Hartley on drums. Hartley a British drummer got his start when he was one of the drummers to replace Ringo Starr in the band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes in 1963 when Ringo left to join the Beatles. From the Hurricanes Hartley joined the Artwoods which was a band headed by Arthur Wood the oldest brother of Ronnie Wood of The bands Faces and Rolling Stones. Derek Griffiths was a member of Artwood with Hartley and Miller Anderson was a part of Keef Hartley Band and a member of Savoy Brown band in 1974.
Another member of Artwood was Jon Lord who went on to be a founding member of Deep Purple and Hartley went to John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. In the late 60s Hartley formed Keef Hartley Band and in 1969 it was one of the few British bands to play Woodstock Festival. The sole album of Dog Soldier was recorded between November 18 and December 15, 1974 and featured excellent material such as Pillar To Post , Thieves And Robbers and the twelve minute long Looks Like Rain .According to Miller Anderson's interview:Dog Soldier was an Indian name that Keef Hartley thought of as a band name. When Al Teller, the boss of United Artists in the USA, heard I had more or less turned down the gig with BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS, he was interested to see what else I was doing. Keef knew that if anything came from this it would be because of this interest and wanted to be just part of the the band for a change. Al Teller came to London to hear the band and signed us to United Artists. And that was the "Dog Soldier" album.
Tracks
1. Pillar To Post (Miller Anderson) - 5:03
2. Several People (Keef Hartley) - 5:21
3. You Are My Spark (Derek Griffiths) - 7:18
4. Long And Lonely Night (Mel Simpson) - 5:31
5. Giving As Good As You Get (Paul Bliss) - 4:52
6. Thieves And Robbers (Miller Anderson) - 5:52
7. Stranger In My Own Time (Mel Simpson) - 4:34
8. Looks Like Rain (Miller Anderson) - 11:36
9. Looks Like Rain (First Version) (Miller Anderson) - 15:33
The only album ever released by Hemlock is truly one of 70's British rock's hidden jewels! Soulful, melosic, unpretentious, this was the next careere step for Miller Anderson who'd just left Keef Hartley Band a year earlier, and could easily be construed as his second solo album (you wouldn't be too far off the mark thinking that it was, anyway).
It had all the right ingredients for succes, however it failed due to miserable promotion and the general lack of effort on behalf of Deram, which caused this short lived formation to dissolve.
CD Liner Notes
Tracks
1. Just An Old Friend - 5:44
2. A Lover's Not A Thief - 3:28
3. Mister Horizontal - 3:23
4. Ship To Nowhere - 5:51
5. Monopoly - 3:21
6. Broken Dreams - 3:50
7. Fool's Gold - 2:41
8. Garden Of Life - 3:12
9. Young Man's Prayer - 5:38
All compositions by Miller Anderson
"David Blue's strikes something like a warning with the cover, a vintage Highway 61 shot with a sullen Blue in a leather jacket. His delivery is quite like Dylan's on Blonde on Blonde. But behold, the lyrics are among the best I've recently heard. Though the stance is like Dylan's, the words themselves indicate he really knows some things Dylan knows, and some things the master doesn't,"
by Arthur Schmidt, September 28th, 1968
While Inside Llewyn Davis is loosely based on "the King of Greenwich Village" Dave Van Ronk, you could draw just as many parallels between the Coen brothers' creation and David Blue. Also a regular of the Greenwich Village folk scene, Blue frequently performed in the company of Van Ronk, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. After his own solo career stalled, Blue briefly joined Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue before trying his hand at acting, including roles in Wim Wenders' The American Friend and Neil Young's still-out-of-print oddball comedy Human Highway. Blue died suddenly of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 41. Kris Kristofferson and Joni Mitchell were among the musicians who attended his memorial.
by Daniel Kreps
Tracks
1. These 23 Days In September - 5:25
2. Ambitious Anna - 3:25
3. You Need A Change - 3:01
4. The Grand Hotel - 4:00
5. The Sailor's Lament - 5:19
6. You Will Come Back Again - 3:30
7. Scales For A Window Thief - 5:44
8. Slow And Easy - 3:24
9. The Fifth One - 2:46
All songs by David Blue
One of the most unique rock groups of the 1960s, The Hello People, was created during late 1967 in New York by producer Lou Futterman. There is precious little information on this group that is available on the Internet. This is an attempt to fill that void.
The idea for creating the group stemmed from Marcel Carné's film Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis). Etienne De Crux, the father of French mime, plays the part of Bapties's father in the film. During the sixties De Crux taught painting to a group of musicians. Since these musicians learned to paint so quickly, De Crux reasoned that musicians could also learn mime and apply it in some new way to create a new form. The manager of the musicians De Crux taught, Lou Futterman, decided he would implement this new concept. He then put together a new group of musicians who would perform in mime makeup and do mime routines between songs, never speaking a word to the audience.
The group recorded for Philips Records, performed at the Café Wha? in Greenwich Village in 1968 and at The Players Theater, upstairs above the Café Wha? Although the group didn't have a hit record they were often seen on major network television shows such as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and the controversial Smothers Brothers Show.
Tracks
1. It's A Monday Kind Of Tuesday (Nancy Reiner) - 3:26
2. Sunrise Meadow - 6:09
3. A Stranger At Her Door - 2:39
4. Movin' And Growin' - 3:38
5. Paisley Teddy Bear - 2:53
6. (As, I Went Down) To Jerusalem (W. S. "Sonny" Tongue) - 4:15
7. Lamplight, Nightlight - 4:29
8. Mr Truth Evading, Masquerading Man - 2:21
9. Paris In The Rain - 4:52
Chad and Jeremy are remembered for little more than being posh – a shame because their sunny, gently psychedelic final album was genuinely amazing.
The Ark is a genuinely amazing album. It's luscious sound sits somewhere between baroque psychedelia and the sunshine pop Usher would go on to explore with his revered band Sagittarius (think the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle basking in the Californian sunshine). Chad and Jeremy couldn't quite stop themselves metaphorically dressing up as bowler-hatted city gents or guesting on Batman one last time – it concludes with a cover of a novelty single by Bernard Bresslaw called You Need Feet, which no one in the world needs to hear – but elsewhere, they came up with a string of utterly beautiful songs.
The gorgeous title track drifts lazily in on a sea of brass and woodwind, swelling into a mass of tumbling drums and fuzz bass: he probably wouldn't have agreed as he cleared his desk, but Usher's production was worth every penny. The harpsichord-decorated Pipe Dream is equally lovely, Sunstroke's distorted vocals and sitar perfectly capture the image of a stoned Englishman wilting in the west coast heat, while Imagination is a gleeful pop song – albeit one with a surprising amount of xylophone on it – that conjures a childlike sense of wonder without cloying. Transatlantic Trauma 1966 is, perhaps unwittingly, an intriguing snapshot of pop star self-absorption and ennui: writing to his girlfriend in London in the middle of a US tour, Clyde first explains that he won't be paying her airfare to join him, then – less of a gentleman than you might expect given his aristocratic lineage – tries to fob her off with some free albums.
You could argue that The Ark is a record very much of its era – it's the kind of album that features an Indian raga-influenced instrumental called Pantheistic Study for Guitar and Large Bird – but that's not quite true. One of the umpteen reasons for its failure was probably that The Ark arrived out of time. Its emotional tone is a kind of pacific stoned wistfulness (as you might expect from a duo who must have realised in their heart of hearts that their 15 minutes of fame was up), but in 1968, events had conspired to turn rock music darker and angrier. In fact, some of the year's darkness had seeped into The Ark: Sidewalk Requiem, Los Angeles, June 5th and 6th ruminates on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, on whose campaign Chad Stuart had worked, but it doesn't provoke the kind of man-the-barricades anger of Street Fighting Man or Revolution; just bewildered sadness. Perhaps Chad and Jeremy were just too well brought up for that kind of thing. Either way, The Ark proves they should be remembered for something more than being posh.
by Alexis Petridis, Tue 29 Jan 2013
Tracks
1. The Emancipation Of Mr. X (Jeremy Clyde) - 2:20
2. Sunstroke (Keith Noble) - 4:10
3. The Ark (Jeremy Clyde) - 4:52
4. The Raven (Chad Stuart, Jeremy Clyde) - 1:29
5. Imagination (Jeremy Clyde) - 2:48
6. Painted Dayglow Smile (Al Gorgoni, Estelle Levitt) - 3:29
7. Pipe Dream (Jeremy Clyde) - 3:34
8. Transatlantic Trauma 1966 (Jeremy Clyde) - 3:21
9. Sidewalk Requiem, Los Angeles, June 5th And 6th (Chad Stuart, Keith Noble) - 3:04
10.Pantheistic Study For Guitar And Large Bird (Chad Stuart) - 3:35
11.Paxton Quigley's Had The Course (Jeremy Clyde, Chad Stuart) - 3:20
12.You Need Feet (You Need Hands) (Roy Irwin) - 4:29
13.Painted Dayglow Smile (Al Gorgoni, Estelle Levitt) - 2:32
14.Sister Marie (David Morrow) - 3:03
15.You Need Feet (You Need Hands) (Roy Irwin) - 2:58
16.Paxton Quigley's Had The Course (Jeremy Clyde, Chad Stuart) - 3:26
Tracks 13-16 Mono Single Versions
When David Blue came out in August 1966, folk-rock singer-songwriters with folk roots were scurrying to ride Bob Dylan's coattails into the rock mainstream. For David Blue, however, it was not enough to be influenced by Dylan, or even to emulate Dylan. David Blue, from all the sonic and even visual evidence on his Elektra debut album, wanted to be Bob Dylan.
If that seems like an extreme or rash conclusion to draw in an era that saw several "new Bob Dylans," it's justified by a listen to the end result. The surrealistic lyrics, the half-spoken half-sung vocal style, the interjection of atonal howls at the end of phrases, the basic blues-rock melodies on the hardest-rocking cuts, the rich electric keyboards and raw tremoloed electric guitars, the occasional love songs to mysterious, nebulous goddesses -- it's all there, albeit in a somewhat garage-band variation. There seems little doubt that the songs were largely the product of multiple listenings to Highway 61 Revisited - at their raunchiest and Blonde on Blonde - at their most tender. If it sometimes sounds as if you're listening to outtakes from those records, it really is no accident, as bassist Harvey Brooks and keyboardist Paul Harris played on various 1965 Dylan sessions. Drummer Herbie Lovelle, meanwhile, had played on Dylan's very first electric recordings in late 1962, which yielded the obscure "Mixed Up Confusion" single.
If he nonetheless hoped to avoid Dylan comparisons, Blue did himself absolutely no favors by putting a head shot on the cover that replicated Dylan's curly late-1965 haircut to a T. Blue's pose in 1965-66 vintage Dylan sunglasses on the back sleeve reinforced the sense of a Village hanger-on auditioning for a film role as Dylan's stunt double. You could also toss in how Blue, like Dylan, had changed his name from an obviously Jewish one - David Cohen.
Yet Blue was not some cat plucked off the street to mimic the Dylan sound as closely as possible, but an actual friend of Dylan, with similar roots in the folk circuit. The Rhode Island native had worked in the Cambridge folk scene as part of the Unicorn Jook Band, which also featured another future folk-rock singer-songwriter of note, Eric Andersen. In the early 1960s, he was one of many young folk singers scuffling around Greenwich Village alongside Bob Dylan. In the Village Voices television documentary, Blue claimed to have helped Dylan during the writing of "Blowin' in the Wind," not to the extent of contributing any music or words, but by playing chords that Dylan suggested as the composer worked out the lyrics.
Blue's association with Elektra actually began not with David Blue, but the earlier compilation album Singer Songwriter Project. For this LP, Elektra had four young songwriters -- Blue, Richard Fariña, Patrick Sky, and Bruce Murdoch -- contribute three or four songs apiece. Blue, under the name Dave Cohen, sang three average, old-timey-styled acoustic folk originals - none of which appeared on David Blue that were not especially indebted to Dylan, in either compositional or vocal style. The emulation became more egregious when Elektra went for an entire David Blue LP. By that time Dylan had gone electric, and Blue was part of the legendary in-crowd -- with Dylan as the centerpiece, but also including Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, and Tom Paxton -- that traded verbal spars and barbs in Greenwich Village cafes.
Producing the album was Arthur Gorson, who managed and/or produced several other acts making the transition from folk to folk-rock in the mid-1960s, including Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, and Jim & Jean. Filling out the session musicians were guitarist Monte Dunn, who had played on Ian & Sylvia's Early Morning Rain album, and Buddy Salzman, who shared the drum chores with Lovelle. Several of the session men on David Blue, particularly Harris and Brooks, ended up playing on many early singer-songwriter folk-rock albums in the mid-1960s, which Gorson confesses was no accident: "At a time when we wanted to expand our audience base a bit and make slightly more commercial records, we wanted to use electric instruments in the studio. But we really didn't know much about it. We ended up using a very small group of musicians who perhaps played on a Dylan album or something like that."
If the songs on David Blue sometimes seemed like Dylan prototypes that had been thrown in the kitchen sink and tossed in the washing machine several times over, its stronger tracks were nevertheless quite enjoyable variations of their obvious model. "So Easy She Goes By," in addition to boasting the vibrating organ-piano blend that was so much a part of the sound Dylan innovated in the studio, was melodic enough to be a hit in the hands of a more conventional singer than Blue. "Midnight Through Morning" had the late-night romantic mood of several of Blonde on Blonde's more introspective numbers, pivoting around the arresting image of a would-be lover fantasizing about falling with a woman's hair as it tumbled down. "Grand Hotel," probably the album's best-known track, was also somewhat of a fetching son-of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" creation, demonstrating conclusively that Blue was a better singer when he turned down the volume and turned up the yearning longing. Both it and another song from the album, "About My Love," were effectively covered on Jim & Jean's underrated 1966 folk-rock album Changes - which included yet another Blue composition, the outstanding "Strangers in a Strange Land," that somehow didn't make it onto David Blue.
"I guess that was the sound of the moment that he was looking for," shrugs Gorson when asked about the record's strong resemblance to mid-1960s Dylan. "It was a tough thing for [David], 'cause that's what he knew." It couldn't have been any easier when, according to Gorson, "Dylan would come to the studio and taunt David during the making of the album."
David Blue ended up being the only LP the singer recorded for Elektra. He went on to release half a dozen other albums over the next decade - one under the name David Cohen, never rising even to established cult status. Those records found him growing away from his Dylan fixation, yet, perversely, he's probably most remembered for David Blue, in which his Dylan fixation was second to none. Also achieving some small recognition as an actor - particularly for a brief part in Wim Wenders's An American Friend, he died on December 2, 1982, of a heart attack while jogging in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.
by Richie Unterberger
Tracks
1. The Gasman Won't Buy Your Love - 3:04
2. About My Love - 2:39
3. So Easy She Goes By - 3:34
4. If Your Money Can't Get It - 3:01
5. Midnight Through Morning - 4:55
6. It Ain't The Rain That Sweeps The Highway Clean - 3:32
7. Arcade Love Machine - 3:50
8. Grand Hotel - 4:05
9. Justine - 3:02
10.I'd Like To Know - 2:27
11.The Street - 6:01
12.It Tastes Like Candy - 4:09
13.House Un-American Blues Activity Dream - 3:30
14.Birmingham Sunday - 4:00
15.Bold Marauder - 4:48
16.Talking Socialized Anti-Undertaker Blues - 2:11
17.Many A Mile - 3:51
18.Rompin' Rovin' Days - 2:21
19.Down In Mississippi - 1:44
20.Farewell My Friend - 2:53
21.Try 'n' Ask - 1:50
22.I Like To Sleep Late In The Morning - 2:23
23.It's Alright With Me - 2:03
24.Don't Get Caught In A Storm - 2:10
Tracks 1-12, 22-24 written and perfomed by David Blue
Tracks 13-15 written and perfomed by Richard Farina
Tracks 16-17 written and perfomed by Patrick Sky
Tracks 18-21 written and perfomed by Bruce Murdoch
