By the time they came to record Psi-Fi it seems that Seventh Wave were suffering something of an identity crisis. The back of the album sleeve depicted Elliott, O'Connor and producer Neil Richmond decked out in glitzy costumes and face paint suggesting they had jumped on the 70’s glam-rock bandwagon. And this time rather than it being a two man effort they brought in a host of guest musicians that included Hugh Banton (Van Der Graaf Generator), Pete Lemer (Mike Oldfield) and Steve Cook (Gilgamesh). Ironically, with the exception of bass player Cook, the guests duplicated the contributions of Elliott and O'Connor (keys, vocals and percussion) suggesting that the music was intended to be reproduced live utilising a full band (minus a guitarist of course).
If there was an identity crisis as I suggested earlier then it also carried through to the music on Psi-Fi. Although there were fewer tracks this time around (10 in total), overall the album was a more fragmented affair with quirky pop and funk tunes rubbing shoulders with prog-rock extravaganzas. Compare the opening and closing tracks for example where the bubbly vitality of Return To Foreverland is in stark contrast to the epic grandeur of the exotically titled Star Palace Of The Sombre Warrior. Whilst retaining the pomp and grandeur of the first album, it seems that Queen and David Bowie had gate crashed the party.
Although Star Palace may have been the single best thing ever recorded by Seventh Wave, overall Psi-Fi for me didn’t reach the dizzy heights of Things To Come. Perhaps the lasting legacy of Psi-Fi is that it was a pre-curser of the synth-pop boom that would follow a few years later with the emergence of bands like Ultravox, OMD and later the Pet Shop Boys. The lively Manifestations for example is very much a forerunner of The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star whilst there is also similarities between Seventh Wave and Howard Jones both in the vocal department and in the harmonious fusion of upbeat pop and keyboard based prog.
There’s no telling in which direction Seventh Wave would have developed had they stayed the distance. In a recent interview Elliot relates a story whereby they were approached by Peter Gabriel to become his backing band when he originally left Genesis but this fell through when the increasingly unreliable O'Connor failed to show for the audition. Although it’s impossible to predict how long the band’s career would have lasted had circumstances been different, I find it hard to imagine how they could have ever bettered Things To Come. Re-mastered from the original studio tapes, this 2CD digipack retailing at a tantalisingly low price is an excellent reminder of one of the most innovative but shamefully overlooked bands of the 70’s.
by Geoff Feakes
Tracks
1. Return To Foreverland - 3:52
2. Roads To Rome - 3:18
3. Manifestations - 5:41
4. Loved By You - 2:55
5. Only The Beginning - 8:03
6. Aether Anthem - 1:26
7. Astral Animal - 3:12
8. El Tooto - 2:12
9. Camera Obscura - 9:01
10.Star Palace Of The Sombre Warrior - 5:42
11.Manifestations - 2:59
12.Only The Beginning - 3:44
All songs by Ken Elliott except tracks #8 co-written with Neil Richmond
Following protracted recording sessions that began in 1972, Things To Come originally appeared on vinyl in April 1974 followed by its successor Psi-Fi in August 1975. Both albums were the creation of multi-keyboardist Ken Elliott supported by drummer Kieran O'Connor. Prior to forming Seventh Wave both men were members of early prog come psychedelic incarnations Second Hand and Chillum although their relationship had its ups and downs. Sadly further disagreements between the pair during a US tour to promote Psi-Fi led to the premature demise of Seventh Wave in 1976.
Going their separate ways, Elliot revived his career as a writer of TV themes and jingles which despite paying the rent was a great loss to the prog world as without question Things To Come (and to a lesser extent Psi-Fi) is one of the most memorable, ground breaking and inspired albums of the prog genre (or any genre for that matter).
A glance at the track listing above will show that Things To Come is divided into 14 tracks with an average length of just 3 minutes although in reality when played it flows as two continuous pieces. The midway break was necessitated to allow the music to be split between sides 1 and 2 of a vinyl disc although on CD such considerations become redundant.
Each song on Things To Come is generally preceded by an instrumental track, a strategy that was not uncommon at the time. The instrumental tracks feature lush, tuneful and occasionally ambient arrangements courtesy of an arsenal of keyboards that include ARP, Moog and EMS synthesizers. Obvious comparators would be Tangerine Dream, Rick Wakeman, Vangelis, Keith Emerson and pioneering electronic composers like Walter Carlos although with a far greater accent on melody. Despite the absence of guitars I would also cite Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells released less than a year earlier which was similarly a product of meticulous overdubs. In fact it’s quite impressive how Elliott and O'Connor infuse the music with weight and power without the need to resort to guitars or bass.
Fronted by Elliott’s distinctive falsetto delivery, the songs themselves on Things To Come are almost contradictory being ridiculously catchy in the pop/rock sense with lyrics that occasionally border on the banal (as in Old Dog Song) whilst layered keyboards and assorted percussion provide a sweeping orchestral backdrop. This combination may on the face of it seem a tad incongruous but somehow it works resulting in a listening experience that’s infectious and exhilarating without ever sounding pretentious. This is particular true of the final 10 minutes where the listener is literally swept along on a tide of swirling synths and exotic percussion. As one American reviewer remarked at the time, "Two men from Britain sounding like twenty".
Eddie Baird is most well-known for his first (and only) recording band, Amazing Blondel, although he was also a session musician (e.g. on Paul Kossoff’s solo album) and auditioned for Dire Straits to replace Knopfler in the late ’70s. By then Amazing Blondel, one of the foremost exponents of what’s now called prog-folk (when superlatives like Amazing and Incredible String Band were legitimate not hype), were fragmented by the leaving of their principal song-writer after three Island albums. On many tours that included St. Paul’s Cathedral (on a bill with Cliff Richard!), they forged their own distinctive style that was as outside folk as it was any mainstream.
Forty instruments for medieval-style ballads mixed with bawdy humour. Tuning the final lute, the first would be out of tune in the hot concert hall, until they had built 7-string guitars tuned to them with internal amplification, to play alongside 12 and 6 strings, crumhorn, cittern, the orbo, flutes, ocarina (also used by Dr. Strangely Strange), glockenspiel, and assorted keyboards and percussion. Group harmonies also required specific tunings: these guys knew their stuff! Shades of Jethro Tull’s and Forest’s whimsy from periods of yore, ISB’s inventiveness, and Dr. Strangely Strange’s uniqueness, with more breadth than Gryphon or Third Ear Band who, sadly, rarely went into the realm of comparable beauty.
An early influence for Baird were The Shadows and Everly Brothers while in a school band that gigged for £2.10 shillings shared five ways (Spangles and Squash presumably rather than Whisky Macs). Typical school-leaving manual jobs then photographer on the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph, the locale of Blondel, didn’t interrupt gigging as far afield as Brigg, which attracted the attention of two professional musicians: John Gladwin and Terry Wincott. They had recorded an album with Methuselah, heavy prog rockers whose acoustic interlude live prompted their own band in ’69. Baird and a friend were invited to their house then a bit later he was invited to join them, after the debut Amazing Blondel album had been finished for Bell Records in late 1969. Four of the most beautiful band albums of the whole era appeared via Island Records from 1970-73: Evensong, Fantasia Lindum, England, and Blondel.
John Gladwin left immediately after a three-week US tour in 1973, gigs with Genesis in Germany, and when a tour with Traffic was in the pipeline. Years of non-stop touring and recording (which the band loved most) had taken its toll. Baird had contributed to the song-writing but most were written by Gladwin. Island then rang for a new album, with a deadline of six weeks. Baird wrote all Blondel in five weeks, known as the purple album (they hadn’t dropped the full name, as the LP’s back cover proves), which includes Simon Kirke and Paul Rodgers both of Free, plus Steve Winwood on bass and top session singers (Jim Capaldi had guested on an earlier album continuing the Island link). Most of the songs would grace later concerts. Three studio albums as a duo for DJM followed in 1974-76 (Mulgrave Street, Inspiration, Bad Dreams), sadly declining a little after the first that had some strong material. The label issued Live in Japan in ’77, actually recorded live in Europe though easier for the marketeers during glam then punk and disco.
Eddie Baird did session work and moved to Cornwall, when the well-known producer Tony Cox invited him to his Sawmills studio for a solo album. It was earmarked for Island but their A&R man left and the platter was shelved. This solo album is, however, far removed from that band's renaissance folk style. A classy set of concise pop rock songs played entirely by Baird, it was recorded in Cornwall, England, in the summer of 1975 and released in 1976.
Sunshine pop cult favorites Eternity's Children were formed in Cleveland, MS, in 1965 by singer/keyboardist Bruce Blackman and drummer Roy Whittaker, fellow students at Delta College. With the addition of lead guitarist Johnny Walker, rhythm guitarist Jerry Bounds, and bassist Charlie Ross, the group (originally dubbed the Phantoms) began developing the complex, overlapping vocal harmonies that remained the hallmark of their sound throughout their career. According to Dawn Eden's comprehensive liner notes in the 2002 Rev-Ola reissue Eternity's Children, in 1966 the Phantoms relocated to Biloxi, becoming the house band in the basement nightclub of the Biloxi Hotel and backing visiting performers including Charlie Rich and B.J. Thomas. With the addition of local folksinger Linda Lawley, the fledgling band adopted the more contemporary moniker Eternity's Children, and after Baton Rouge health club magnate Ray Roy caught one of their live appearances, he convinced business partner Guy Belello to form a management company (Crocked Foxx Productions and Music), which soon signed the group to a contract.
Eternity's Children quickly recorded a demo that made its way to A&M producer Allen Stanton, and in the spring of 1967 recorded their lone effort for the label, the David Gates-penned single "Wait and See." (It was produced by Keith Olsen, the former Music Machine bassist best known as the production partner of studio wizard Curt Boettcher.) The record went nowhere, and despite touring as part of a package headlined by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Seeds, and the Blues Magoos, Eternity's Children were quickly dropped by A&M. Crocked Foxx soon landed their charges a deal with Capitol's tax-shelter subsidiary, Tower; Olsen again manned the boards, this time bringing Boettcher, who'd previously enjoyed massive success with vocal groups like the Association as well as his own Sagittarius and the Millennium. Despite some flashes of brilliance, Eternity's Children's self-titled debut does not rank among the Boettcher/Olsen duo's crowning achievements -- both producers were distracted by other concurrent projects, and for every potential smash like the lilting first single "Mrs. Bluebird" or the beautiful "Again Again," there was a "Rupert White" (which simply added a new vocal to a backing track issued the year earlier as the Chocolate Tunnel's "The Highly Successful Rupert White") or "You Know I've Found a Way" (which doesn't even feature the group at all -- a Boettcher production demo, it later resurfaced in much more complete form on Sagittarius' Present Tense).
During production of the album, relations between the members of Eternity's Children and their management became increasingly strained, and prior to the LP's mid-1968 release, Blackman, Walker, and Bounds all exited. Only Blackman was replaced, by classically trained keyboardist Mike "Kid" McClain, previously of the Houston group the Neurotic Sheep. An appearance on American Bandstand spurred "Mrs. Bluebird" up the pop charts, but Tower did little to promote the single or the band, and after three weeks at number 69 on Billboard, both quickly plummeted out of the Hot 100. Eternity's Children nevertheless reconvened to begin work on their second album, Timeless, this time recruiting Boettcher's longtime engineer, Gary Paxton, to helm the sessions. With primary songwriter Blackman now out of the mix, Ross, Lawley, and McClain all contributed original material, and Paxton also wrangled songs from future Byrds Clarence White and Gene Parsons. After Whittaker left the group sometime during the sessions, drummer Bo Wagner was brought into the studio to complete the tracks -- coincidentally, Wagner would later join Blackman and Walker in their post-Eternity's Children project, dubbed simply the Children. (Blackman and Walker finally achieved massive chart success in the mid-'70s as members of Starbuck, which scored the Top Five smash "Moonlight Feels Right.") The album, titled Timeless, wrapped in late 1968, and promo copies of the first single, "Till I Hear It from You," were soon dispatched to radio.
But when "Till I Hear It from You" caused little excitement among radio programmers, Tower abruptly scuttled Timeless' U.S. release; the album did appear on Capitol's Canadian branch ("Mrs. Bluebird" was a sizable hit north of the border). Desperate for a change in geography and approach, Eternity's Children decamped to Memphis, home of Chips Moman's legendary American Studios. Abandoning the lush, pristine production of their previous efforts for a more earthy, blue-eyed soul sound, the group teamed with Moman and ace session bassist Tommy Cogbill to record the single "The Sidewalks of the Ghetto." It went nowhere -- by now, Capitol was shuttering the entire Tower imprint, although one last Eternity's Children single, the Spooner Oldham-penned "Blue Horizon," slipped through the cracks, as did solo singles from Lawley ("When the World Turns") and Ross ("A Railroad Trestle in California"). Remarkably, there was one last gasp -- Liberty Records, reeling from the loss of the 5th Dimension to rival Bell, seized upon Eternity's Children as a replacement. They signed to record a single, "Alone Again," but when Liberty was folded into parent company United Artists, the band was dropped. No subsequent recordings ever saw official release, but various Eternity's Children lineups continued performing during the 1970s.
by Jason Ankeny
Tracks
1. Time And Place (Bruce Blackman) - 1:55
2. Can't Put A Thing Over Me (Bruce Blackman) - 2:40
3. Wait And See (David Gates) - 2:12
4. Rumors (Bruce Blackman) - 1:52
5. Mrs. Bluebird (Bruce Blackman, Johnny Walker) - 3:04
6. Little Boy (Dearis P. Anthony) - 2:21
7. Sunshine Among Us (Bruce Blackman) - 2:46
8. Rupert White (Kenneth Johnson, Jerry Ritchey, Bob Hopps) - 2:09
9. Till I Hear It From You (Gary Paxton, Jan Paxton) - 2:05
10.I Wanna Be With You (Mike McClain) - 2:06
11.Sidewalks Of The Ghetto (John Christopher) - 2:57
12.Look Away (Charlie Ross, Linda Lowley, Mike McClain) - 2:16
13.My Happiness Day (Steven Hudson Dell) - 3:14
14.Blue Horizon (Spooner Oldham, Mark James) - 3:26
15.Lifetime Day (Steven Hudson Dell) - 2:42
16.Alone Again (Mike McClain) - 3:05
17.From Us Unton You (Curt Boettcher) - 1:59
18.When The World Turns (John Christopher) - 2:52
19.Living Is Easy (Linda Lowley, Mike McClain) - 2:59
20.Laughing Girl (R. Sellers, T. Russell) - 2:27
21.A Railroad Trestle In California (Ronnie Self) - 3:11
22.Wait And See (David Gates) - 2:09
23.Mrs. Bluebird (Bruce Blackman, Johnny Walker) - 2:13
In September Warners flew them to Los Angeles where they recorded the remaining tracks for their second LP If Only... with Talmy. They returned to Australia for a few months in November 1970 and then headed back to England in February 1971. If Only was released in March 1971, just after the band split. Talmy was interviewed by music writer Richie Unterberger in 2000. Almost thirty years down the track, he still spoke of Axiom group and the album in glowing terms:
"Warner Brothers hired me to record them. Super-duper band. It was a super album. Two weeks before the album was to be released on Warner, they decided to break up. And they did, and Warners said, "Bye!! If you think we're promoting this album, you're out of your fucking minds!" I was real pleased with that album. It was fun to do, they were talented, the songs were great."
Coming from the man who produced such classics as "My Generation", "You Really Got Me", "Friday On My Mind" and "Waterloo Sunset", this is high praise indeed.
Axiom had their third and last Aussie hit in early 1971 with the first single lifted from the LP, "My Baby's Gone" (the verses of which bear a suspicious resemblance to the 1980s World Party hit "Ship of Fools"). The only surviving videos of the band are performances of the song from Happening '71 and the shortlived Channel 9 pop show Move, and they also filmed a promotional clip for the song, one of the first such clips made in colour in Australia. Given that Australia wasn't to get colour TV for another four years, this was clearly done with overseas markets in mind. When released in January, the single did extremely well -- it was Top 10 by February, peaking at #8, a fact that is at odds with conventional wisdom, which says that interest in the band was waning while they were away in England.
Unfortunately the difficulties of slogging it out in England and cracking the international market undoubtedly took their toll, and it seems there was growing tension within the band by the start of 1971 and Lebler and Mudie both quit, following Doug Lavery into The Mixtures in March, which precipitated the band's break-up. Sadly, as Shel Talmy relates, this came only two weeks before If Only... was released. One can only speculate on the result if they had been able to stay together to promote it. Both album and single were released later that year in America but in the absence of the band, they sank without trace.
Brian Cadd continued to write and record with Don Mudie. They returned to Australia and released a duo single in late 1971, after which Brian hooked up with Ron Tudor to form the Bootleg label. He enjoyed a hugely successful solo career in the '70s and '80s both in Australia and overseas. He moved to America in 1975 and became a prominent member of what was dubbed the "Gumleaf Mafia", the group of Aussie expats based in L.A. that included John Farrar, Billy Thorpe and Olivia Newton-John. In recent years he has also been a member of the reformed Flying Burrito Brothers. He returned to Australia in the early '80s and eventually settled back here in the early 90s. He has worked regularly on the club and casino circuit since then. During his 1999 tour Cadd and his first wife had a 'close shave', and had to be rescued by a passer-by after their car was swept off a bridge on the Gold Coast during local floods. Brian continues to perform as well as running his own record label, among other music interests.
Glenn Shorrock returned to the UK for several years, singing and recording with the multi-national group Esperanto, before accepting an invitation to team up with members of Mississippi, which soon became the mega-successful Little River Band. Glenn reunited with Brian Cadd in 1993 for the album Blazing Salads.
Chris Stockley went on to a very distinguished career in the 70s with The Dingoes and Stockley, See & Mason.
Unfortunately we have no current information about the later careers of Don Mudie, Doug Lavery and Don Lebler, so if anyone can fill us in, we'd love to hear from you!
After the powerful performance at Woodstock in the open church of Man, Santana released this eponymous album into the world, setting into motion a phenomenon that continues strong some forty years on. While the band has undergone myriad lineup changes and shifted its purpose slightly to suit the tastes of the time (disco, pop), it has remained remarkably true to the vision outlined here: Latin jams driven by percussion and punctuated by guitar and organ solos; pop songs that put a uniquely Latin spin on the psychedelic/San Francisco scene; and magic jams that delve into jazz forms, often containing an ingenious guitar solo.
This first album contains classic examples of each: “Soul Sacrifice” and Babatunde Olatunji’s “Jingo” in the jam department, “Evil Ways” as the quintessential Santana cover, “Shades of Time” as the clever original. For all their confidence, however, this is still a young band finding its voice. Heavy blues-rock numbers like “Persuasion” and “You Just Don’t Care,” for example, are typical of the post-Cream landscape but not emblematic of the Santana sound.
While the acts that went before them (Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Cream, The Doors) certainly influenced Santana, and a cynic might see them as no more than a custom Latin chassis on a commercial engine, their voice is a unique one in rock. No one plays guitar quite like Carlos Santana, their instrumentation (percussion, guitar, organ & bass) is hypnotic and original, and Gregg Rolie left behind some of the greatest organ work in rock music. What the band lacks is a true lead singer; Rolie and Santana share the duty out of necessity. It’s when one of the pair queues up a solo that the music really sings. As with Led Zeppelin’s first album, this is more than a sign of things to come; it’s an arrival at a special destination where new sights and sounds flood the senses.
Formed in Melbourne in 1969, Axiom were arguably Australia's first true supergroup. Yet, in spite of a wealth of talent and promise, some notable chart successes and two superb Albums of original material, they failed to achieve lasting popularity, due in part to waning public support in Australia as they vainly tried to crack the fickle English market, and the band fizzled out after less than two years. Nevertheless, Axiom deserve to be recognised as an important musical bridge between Sixties pop and Seventies rock in Australia, as one of the first serious attempts to make Australian rock with international appeal, and as one of the finest bands of their time.
Axiom was formed by Brian Cadd and Don Mudie, both former members of leading Melbourne popsters The Groop. Cadd, who began his career with Melbourne's The Jackson Kings, was already a prominent singer, songwriter and keyboard player. Besides his success with The Groop, he wrote hits for other acts, including "Elevator Driver" for the Master's Apprentices and "When I Was Only Six Years Old" for Ronnie Burns (which was also a UK hit for Paul Jones) and both he and Mudie worked as session players on a number of important recordings including the Russell Morris' classics "The Real Thing" and "Part III into Paper Walls".
After linking up in The Groop, Mudie and Cadd formed a successful songwriting partnership that carried on through Axiom and beyond. Shorrock was the former lead singer of The Twilights; Lavery was from Perth's (in)famous The Valentines; Stockley was from leading Melbourne group Cam-Pact.
The formation of Axiom was apparently somewhat controversial, and there have been suggestions (probably based on reports in Go-Set) that Cadd & Mudie had deliberately engineered the break-up of The Groop in order to be able to form Axiom. The offer was evidently an attactive one -- Lavery and Stockley quit their respective bands and Shorrock withdrew from managing Melbourne band The Avengers to join. The Groop split after Mudie and Cadd had conducted lengthy (and apparently secret) negotiations to recruit Terry Britten who, like Shorrock had been a member of the recently defunct Twilights. They were unsuccessful in snaring Britten, but this evidently enabled them to make the link that resulted in the recruitment of Shorrock.
Axiom signed to Ron Tudor's Fable Records. Their first single "Arkansas Grass" (co-written by Cadd and Mudie) was an immediate hit, reaching #7 in December 1969. Cadd, like many other Aussie musicians, had been deeply influenced by the trend towards a fusion of country and folk elements with rock, spearheaded by acts like Dylan, The Byrds, Crosby Stills & Nash and especially The Band. Songs like "Arkansas Grass" show how well and how quickly Axiom mastered the idiom, and proved that they were able to create material that could stand up against (or indeed pass for) that of any major American group.
Axiom, and Brian Cadd in his later solo work, have sometimes been criticised for the overt "American-ness" of some of their songs. There is no denying it, but there are several important factors that need to be understood when considering why Cadd and Mudie took to this style so enthusiastically. It's tempting to think that they had the US market in mind but Brian Cadd . Moreover, The Groop had been leading local proponents of soul and R&B, but Australian radio's entrenched resistance to black music -- even of the homegrown variety -- made it clear that this route would soon be a musical dead-end, at least in commercial terms (and it was not until the advent of disco in the late 1970s that this changed).
Brian Cadd was by no means the only ones smitten by the charms of innovations of The Band. George Harrison and Eric Clapton have openly admitted that lyrical honesty and the rootsy, organic musical style of The Band's first two LPs completely transformed the direction of their own music (a fact clearly in evidence on Clapton and Harrison's early solo albums) and as well a providing a rich new musical vocabulary, The Band caught the ears of many songwriters with their use of American Civil War imagery (also prominent on "Arkansas Grass"). The currency has faded now, but at the time it provided a convenient allegory that writers like Cadd and Mudie could use to refer to the controversial war then raging in Indochina, without facing the very real risk of having their anti-war messages censored by record labels or denied airplay by radio.
Doug Lavery left the band in early 1970 to join The Mixtures and was replaced by Don Lebler (ex-The Avengers). Axiom left for London in April with publishing deal from Leeds Music and reported record deal offers from both Apple and Decca. Their attempts to break into the English scene were understandable in the context of the time, but in retrospect their material clearly suggests that they would have been much more likely to succeed in America (as LRB would ultimately prove). Indeed, the latter part of their career suggest that they were heading in that direction, as so often happened, it seems that they lacked the necessary management and record company support.
They released their second single "Little Ray of Sunshine" just prior to leaving for England. Fool's Gold unquestionably ranks as one of the best and most original Aussie albums of the period, and (in my opinion) one of the best Australian pop-rock albums ever. It was also a significant step forward in creative control, being one of the very first Australian rock albums released on a major label that was produced by the artists themselves. Axiom was able to take advantage of the great improvement in sound provided by the new 8-track facilities at Armstrong's Studios, which showcased a selection of superb songs, brilliantly performed. Like the equally overlooked 1970 LP Prepared In Peace by Flying Circus, Fool's Gold was an important bridge between pop and country rock, and another notable feature is the closing track, "Who Am I Gonna See?", which is probably the first Australian pop-rock recording to use a didgeridoo in the arrangement.
Although there is a strong American flavour to many of the songs, Fool's Gold anticipated the approach taken by later acts like The Dingoes and Skyhoooks, and features some of the first examples of Australian pop songwriters tackling distinctly Australian themes and using local references, notably on the tracks "Mansfield Hotel" and "Once A Month Country Race Day". Soon after arriving in England, Axiom signed a three-year contract with Warner's Reprise label. Evidently Warners were sufficiently impressed to assign the making of band's third single to legendary American-born producer Shel Talmy (The Kinks, The Who, Creation, Manfred Mann, The Easybeats). The single "Father Confessor" was released in July, but after the spectacular success of the first two singles, this one curiously failed to chart at all in Australia, probably due to the effect of the recently imposed 1970 Radio Ban.
Carlos Santana is one of the three new guitarists who border on B. B. King's cleanliness. His only two contemporaries are Eric Clapton and Michael Bloomfield, but Santana is playing Latin music and there are no other Latin bands using lead guitars. The paradoxical thing about Santana has been their acceptance by a teenybop audience that digs Grand Funk and Ten Years After when they should be enjoyed by people who are into Chicago and John Mayall.
The heart of Santana is organist Gregg Roli and bassist Dave Brown, who hold the rhythm together over which the percussion unit can jam and bounce. Timbales, congas (Puerto Rican) and drums take off on Brown's rhythm and then Santana himself comes in to make his statements on lead guitar.
Carlos Santana is a Chicano and he loves the guitar, which has always been used heavily in Mexican music. He has perfected a style associated with blues and cool jazz and crossed it with Latin music. It works well, because the band is one of the tightest units ever to walk into a recording studio. Of white bands, only Chicago can equal their percussion, but Chicago is held together by horns, while Santana is held together by timbales and congas.
"Oye Como Va" is the highlight of the album. It's only weakness is that Roli's fine organ has been mixed too low. This is a different trip for Santana, much more into the styles of the younger Puerto Rican musicians in New York, like Orchestra DJ and Ray Olan, and farther from the Sly trip that dominated their first album. Unless you really dig Latin music or some of the middle period work of Herbie Mann and the Jazz Messengers, you may not enjoy this cut or the album at all.
Abraxas is one of the new independent productions for Columbia done at Wally Heider's studio, and bass player Dave Brown did much of the engineering. The album he has helped to come up with may lose Santana some of their younger audience, but is bound to win them respect from people interested in Latin jazz music. On Abraxas, Santana is a popularized Mono Santamaria and they might do for Latin music what Chuck Berry did for the blues.
The major Latin bands in this country gig for $100 a night, and when you see them, you can't sit still. If Santana can reach the pop audience with Abraxas, then perhaps there will be room for the old masters like La Lupe and Puente to work it on out at the ballrooms. But for now, Abraxas is a total boogie and the music is right from start to finish.
Who's trippin’ down the streets of the city / Smilin' at everybody she sees / Who's reachin' out to capture a moment? Everyone knows it’s Windy!
And most everyone knows Ruthann Friedman’s 1967 pop classic which not only hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart but was featured on The Association’s third album and first long-player for Warner Bros. Records, Insight Out. But everyone would be forgiven for thinking that the LP was entitled Windy, so prominent was the name of the single on the album cover. But there’s much more to Insight Out.
Helmed by producer Bones Howe, beginning a short but important relationship with the group, it also boasts P.F. Sloan’s shimmering “On a Quiet Night,” and two songs by the team of Dick and Don Addrisi. The first, the ebullient “Happiness Is,” could virtually be the calling card of the entire sunshine pop genre. The second, “Never My Love,” was an instant standard. It climbed its way to a No. 2 chart placement, and BMI actually ranked the song the second-most played hit on radio and television of the entire twentieth century. (For those wondering, it was sandwiched between “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” at No. 1 and “Yesterday” at No. 3. Not bad company, eh?) Mike Deasy, known more as a top session guitarist rather than a songwriter, brought in a strong song of his own, “Wantin’ Ain’t Gettin’,” which was outfitted with a timely sitar arrangement. Now, all of those songs and more are yours to savor on a deluxe, expanded mono edition of Insight Out from Now Sounds, following the label’s reissues of three other albums by the classic band of harmony purveyors.
The success of Insight Out was far from pre-ordained. The band had become accustomed to a revolving door of producers, with Curt Boettcher having helmed their debut And Then…Along Comes the Association and Jerry Yester in charge of its follow-up, Renaissance. Yester hoped to continue working with The Association, but his productions of “Never My Love” and the antiwar “Requiem for the Masses” hadn’t met with much favor by the Valiant Records brass. Jules Alexander had exited the group for a pilgrimage to India. And The Association's Valiant home was about to be purchased by Warner Bros. Records, along with the band's contract. After the lofty heights scaled by “Cherish” and “Along Comes Mary” from the first album, the two singles off Renaissance failed to make much of an impression. Enter Bones Howe, originally an engineer with a varied C.V. who had scored successes producing The Turtles on such songs as P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri’s “You Baby” and Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”
As Howe recalls in reissue producer Steve Stanley’s comprehensive liner notes for the new edition, ““I made a deal with their manager, Pat Colecchio. Initially he called me up and said, ‘The guys are going to write some songs and you can bring some songs to them.’ And I said, ‘Well look, are they going to turn me down on every song because they didn’t write it?’ And Pat said, ‘You bring songs to them and they’ll bring songs to you. If you both like them, you can record them.’ And I thought that was fair enough; I’m sure that we can find some common ground. And ‘Never My Love’ was one of those songs. That, in my estimation, was one of the best records I ever made.” Considering Howe also produced those Turtles hits, The 5th Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” The Monkees’ “Someday Man” and music for artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Tom Waits, that’s no small praise from the modest producer. (I won’t spoil any more of the interviews you’ll find excerpted in Insight Out’s 16-page booklet, including reminisces from Ruthann Friedman, Dick Addrisi, P.F. Sloan and Association members Russ Giguere, Jim Yester, Terry Kirkman and Larry Ramos!) Though the members of The Association were accomplished musicians, the studio veterans of Los Angeles’ Wrecking Crew were brought in for the sessions.
By April 1967 the Valiant deal with Warner was sealed, and hopes were high for the band’s debut on the Burbank-based label. Howe and The Association had, indeed, found common ground. The group had found a new member, as well. Larry Ramos had spent some four years as a member of The New Christy Minstrels, honing the vocals that would make him an integral part of The Association’s blend. He would also serve as lead guitarist.
That debut single would be Friedman’s “Windy” b/w “Sometime,” a Russ Giguere composition that would appear alongside “Windy” on the new album. “Windy” went to No. 1 that July, and by September, the LP Insight Out had climbed all the way to No. 8 on the LP chart, the group’s most successful studio album. The hits just kept on coming; “Never My Love” nearly matched the quick success of “Windy,” hitting No. 2 in November and No. 1 on the Cashbox chart.
In a marked change from the entirely self-written Renaissance, only five of the eleven songs on Insight Out were penned by band members, but each song was choice. Ted Bluechel’s lush, romantic “We Love Us” is as irresistible as Jim Yester’s “When Love Comes to Me” is buoyant. Russ Giguere’s “Sometime” is very much of its time, with an inward-looking lyric befitting the album’s title of Insight Out: “Is there heaven on Earth?/If there is what’s it worth?/Are we really living/Or are we a shadow/Of what life can be?/Is the answer inside of me?” Terry Kirkman supplied the nostalgic throwback “Wasn’t It a Bit Like Now?” (“Instead of groovy, it was keen/And jeepers, it’s wow!/It just doesn’t seem that different now”) as well as the stirring album closer “Requiem for the Masses.”
A generous eleven bonus tracks have been included on Insight Out, doubling the album's number of songs. They include “Autumn Afternoon,” the Addrisi Brothers song that was Howe’s first production for The Association. It’s been rescued from the Warner Bros. vaults to make its debut here. It’s joined by six instrumentals that offer a window into the rich, lush arrangements crafted by Howe, Clark Burroughs, Ray Pohlman, Bill Holman and the band members themselves. You’ll also find both sides of the two mono singles from the album, “Windy” b/w “Sometime” and “Never My Love” b/w “Requiem for the Masses.”
by Joe Marchese, November 1st, 2011
Tracks
1. Wasn't It a Bit Like Now? (Terry Kirkman) - 3:31
2. On A Quiet Night (P. F. Sloan) - 3:21
3. We Love Us (Ted Bluechel) - 2:25
4. When Love Comes To Me (Jim Yester) - 2:45
5. Windy (Ruthann Friedman) - 2:56
6. Reputation (Tim Hardin) - 2:39
7. Never My Love (Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi) - 3:10
8. Happiness Is (Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi) - 2:13
9. Sometime (Russ Giguere) - 2:38
10.Wantin' Ain't Gettin' (Mike Deasy) - 2:20
11.Requiem for the Masses (Terry Kirkman) - 4:08
12.Windy (Ruthann Friedman) - 2:59
13.Never My Love (Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi) - 2:55
Karthago were founded in Berlin by Joey Albrecht (guitar, vocals, originally from Hannover) and Gerald Luciano Hartwig (bass). Since 1968, they had performed together in clubs as the duo Blues Machine. In 1970, they engaged the Bolivian percussionist Thomas Goldschmitt (mainly hand percussion) and soon landed a recording contract with BASF. Just a month before the recordings of their first album began, two additional members were added to their line-up: Ingo Bischof (keyboards) and Wolfgang Brock (drums). "Karthago" was recorded in October 1971 at Audio Tonstudio, Berlin with Dieter Zimmermann producing and Stan Regal engineering. It was released in a spectacular, inventive and expensive six-part fold-out cover with several die cuts!
Certainly a lavish package, recalling the multi-coloured and psychedelic Santana album designs - but actually outdoing them! Karthago's sound was graced with excellent heavy guitar work and the funky, gutsy vocals of J. Albrecht, recalling the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the heavy progressive funk band Funkadelic. The best tracks in this style were "Why Don't You Stop Buggin' Me Babe" and "String Rambler". Others, like the catchy little instrumental "Nos Vamos", had a more distinct Latin character, very much like early Santana. This is a very underrated album! Few other German bands recorded music in this particular style.
More Santana-esque instrumental work was present on "Second Step", recorded at Windrose Dumont Time, Hamburg, May 1973, with C. & M. Hudalla producing. This was much more of a joint group effort, balanced between jazzy keyboards, heavy guitars and South American rhythms. Most of the material was great, but Ingo Bischof's compositions were a bit out of place - his songs were almost singer-songwriter type of ballads! Original drummer W. Brock had left for The Rattles in February 1973 and was replaced by Norbert 'Panzer' Lehmann on this album.
