Eddie Kendricks: "People...Hold On"

I can think of no better album title to reflect the state of the world today, even though this music was recorded at the dawn of the ‘70’s, in a completely different era of struggle and despair.  Yet the central message of this record remains applicable to these times we now find ourselves in, and honestly, we don’t have artists making records like this anymore.  If we want to hear the real revolutionary truth possible in music, it is practically a necessity to re-visit the voices and songwriting of the past, ‘cause we ain’t got no Gil Scott-Herons or Stevie Wonders runnin’ around making an impact in the current musical climate of nihilism and materialism…

…which leads us to Eddie Kendricks and this album.  Recorded in ’72, “People…Hold On” is an undeniable masterpiece, similar in some ways to the groundbreaking work of Motown label-mates Wonder, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye, yet retaining its own singular beauty.  When Kendricks left the Temptations following the superb hit of “Just My Imagination” in 1971, he seemed determined to distance himself from the sound that had made his former group so famous.  While fellow ex-Temptation David Ruffin more or less continued on in the vein of psychedelic soul that the Temps had pioneered, Kendricks opted for a different outlook altogether, one that predicted more accurately the trends of modern soul and neo-soul, which, with the passage of time, has proven Kendricks to be one of the most prescient figures in ‘70’s soul.  In fact, the percussion-driven title track sounds so contemporary that Erykah Badu sampled and “re-worked” it on her “New Amerykah Pt. 1” album, with the help of prolific underground producer Madlib.  Another song on this LP that sounds more modern that it would have in the ‘70’s is the lengthy “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind,” a favorite of DJ’s and heads alike that, while still showing vague traces of ‘70’s Motown, strolls along with a heavy dance groove that doesn’t let up for nearly eight minutes.  These two tracks exist as the centerpiece of “People…,” yet there are other wonderful grooves here as well, including the funky soul of “If You Let Me” and “I’m On The Sideline,” as well as the melancholy and beautiful “Date With The Rain.”  Throughout the proceedings, Kendricks revels in being the focal point of the music, no longer reduced to being “the guy with the falsetto voice” from the Temptations, and instead stepping out in fine form as a solo artist worth noticing.  I’m an unabashed fan of most everything Motown, but “People…Hold On” stands on its own, a career high point for Kendricks and an absolute gem in the famed label’s catalogue.

The Spirit Of Atlanta: "The Burning Of Atlanta"

I know very little about this record, other than the fact that it was produced by modern-day soul favorite Tommy Stewart, who experienced something of a career resurgence with the Luv’n’Haight label’s reissue of his self-titled debut from 1976.  This album is absolutely bizarre, from its title and concept right down to the music itself, which falls loosely into the blaxploitation genre of funk, yet betrays explicitly Southern-sounding origins that give it a harder edge than other music of its ilk.  The producers and musicians forego Shaft-style string arrangements for greasy harmonica and organ breaks, and the vocals reveal more of a small-group vibe than many of the larger sessions emanating from this particular time period.  The band even delivers an “answer song” to Curtis Mayfield’s landmark single “Freddie’s Dead,” appropriately titled “Freddie’s Alive And Well.”  Other cuts like “Messin’ Around” and “Vine Street” stretch out into dramatically extended improvisational territories, with the guitarist on the former coming straight outta the Grant Green school of soloing, all choked notes and funky, modal minimalism.  The album on the whole has a very effective, calculated flow, which makes sense considering this was designed as a soundtrack piece.  The interesting thing, however, is that I’m not sure the movie this music is supposedly based upon was ever made.  If you google “Burning of Atlanta film”, the only things that come up are a slew of “Gone With The Wind” references, and while all sources say that this LP was indeed intended as the soundtrack for a movie, the movie itself remains a mystery.  If anyone out there has additional information on the subject, please let me know, ‘cause I’m incredibly curious to see what crazy-ass film featured this amazing music as its backdrop.

The Rimshots: "Down To Earth"

So, besides having a great band name and sufficiently spaced-out ‘70’s cover art, the music here is firing on all cylinders as well.  While I would still label this a “funk” album in the loosest sense, it has a distinct tendency towards a more disco-oriented club groove, something I’m not always into.  Yet these cats put that unique East Coast spin on their songs (straight outta Jersey baby!), and cuts like “Now Is The Time” and “Walter’s Inspiration” are definitely FONK-AY, with pocket for days and aesthetic to spare.  The more uptempo numbers like “Super Disco” and “7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 (Blow Your Whistle)” are most certainly designed for the dancefloor circa 1976, but they retain their period charms well, and the production is just bare-bones enough to keep everything sounding nice and raw, without the sickly-sweet polish of later disco music.  Recorded at the legendary All Platinum studios in Englewood, N.J., this is absolutely an album worth digging for.  I stumbled upon it by accident, and grabbed it as a bit of a “blind find,” knowing little about the group.  When I got home, I put it on the turntable with relatively vague expectations, and within seconds I was groovin’ to this shit.  Happy hunting…

Geoffrey Stoner: "Watch Out"

Okay, let’s set aside for a moment that dude has the most awesome name in the world.  Let’s set aside the quasi-psychedelic headshot that adorns the front of the LP, which looks like a bargain-bin counterpart to the better-funded, more creative efforts of cover-art contemporaries like Roger Dean and Pedro Bell.  Let’s set aside the tiny, indie aspirations of the label this music was released on, where the quadraphonic sound pioneers of Ovation made then-audiophile recordings that would end up being heard by very few…sure it sounds good, but does anybody know exactly what the fuck it is?  Who in the world is Geoffrey…heh heh…Stoner?!?

Forget all that, and just listen to the music.  This album has the distinct quality of being a “Northern Soul” record with an extremely Southern sound.  Though it was recorded in Chicago with legendary studio heavyweights like Phil Upchurch, Louis Satterfield and Morris Jennings, you’d never know it by listening, and if you didn’t have the credits sitting right in front of you, you’d swear it was some amalgamation of Muscle Shoals swampers and Stax session aces, not the architects of the so-called “Windy City Soul” sound.  While there is a cover here of Curtis Mayfield’s “Check Out Your Mind,” a Chicago staple if ever there was one, it sounds more Memphis that midtown, with the only direct tribute to Curtis being in the wah-wah guitar stabs gliding just above the groove.  As for Stoner the vocalist, he has a warm, gospel-soul inflection that suits the material well, something that works to the great benefit of the LP’s continuity and emotional core.  Seemingly pedestrian standards like James Taylor’s “Fire And Rain,” top 40 fodder/filler when covered by most other early ‘70’s bands, become something else entirely in the hands of the gifted singer, who digs deep into the heartbreak implicit in the lyrics and pulls something out that JT himself missed.

The one anomaly and exception to these generally Southern-sounding proceedings is the spiritual, pre-hip-hop meditation of “Bend Your Head Down Low,” the album’s final cut, which sounds like a mix of Gil Scott-Heron-style ruminations and early Earth, Wind & Fire.  This is the only point on the entire record in which the Chicago lineage at play here begins to make sense, and my only hypothesis as to why the rest of the music sounds like it does is that the session cats musta been listening to a whole lotta Booker T. & The MG’s, Bar-Kays and Meters at the time.  That’s what makes it all so interesting, hearing musicians so often associated with “uptown soul” gettin’ down, dirty and gritty with some thick Southern grooves.  It’ll take some searching, but y’all need dis shit right here.

David Porter: "Victim Of The Joke?"

This is a very strange album.  On the cover it is subtitled as being an “opera,” and I suppose it is one of sorts, only this is an opera made with the Bar-Kays and the Memphis Horns playing the backing music.  David Porter, of course, was one half of the legendary Hayes-Porter songwriting duo at Stax records, responsible for such massive hits as Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man” and “I Thank You.”  Porter is definitely taking some cues from former co-writer Isaac Hayes here, creating long, drawn-out symphonic soundscapes that feature behind his half-sung, half-spoken vocals.  The “concept” of the LP is as follows:  Porter lusts after another man’s woman, has affair with woman, woman’s boyfriend beats the shit out of Porter, Porter separates himself from the situation, then finds himself regretting his decision and wanting woman back.  The storyline barely holds together; without the spoken interludes in between songs there would be nothing to latch onto in terms of plot.  Yet said plot is rendered completely insignificant by the tunes Porter recorded for this outing, with none standing out more blatantly than the break-heavy “I’m Afraid The Masquerade Is Over.”  The old standard is given quite the re-vamp in Porter’s hands, and the minute you hear the intro, stolen wholesale years later by the RZA for Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.,” you know you’ve got the vinyl goodness rotating on your turntable.  The interesting thing is, RZA used a lot of Stax breaks for his work with the Wu-Tang, and yet all his choices were the most desolate, vacant-sounding loops found in the label’s catalogue.  What he missed—albeit intentionally—were the joyous sounds of Southern soul in between the breaks.  The heavy horns, the Steve Cropper-esque guitar licks, the detailed yet sparse arrangements…these are the qualities that always made Stax so great, while simultaneously being the qualities that a generation of sample-happy beat-heads have let fall by the wayside.  I mean, it’s cool searching for breaks and everything, but what about the music y’all?!?

December Visions...

Man, sometimes the holidays can be a bitch!  They’re cool and everything, but they’re just STRESSful to the utmost, and they wear you out before you even know what’s happening.  Now I finally got a sec to kick it with a stack of vinyl, and damn—December has been a MONTH for some rare wax.  I don’t know why exactly, but I’ve been picking up some all-time want list items lately, LP’s that you just don’t see anywhere.  Needless to say, I’m more than happy to give these “recycled sounds” a home, then send the funky vibrations to the four corners…om mani padme hum onwards and upwards…

Rasputin's Stash: "Rasputin's Stash"

I must confess to knowing almost nothing about this band, other than that this debut LP by them is an underground funk classic, something whispered about in hushed tones and dark corners.  The cover tells you pretty much all you need to know, with eight afro’d soul brothers standing beneath Rasputin, against the backdrop of what looks to be a Russian Orthodox cathedral.  Yeah, these cats was on some shit!  However, they prove themselves to be musically versatile far beyond the stoner-funk trappings of the album art, sounding inspired by the grunginess of bands like early Funkadelic, yet treading territory all their own.  There’s plenty of weird, psych-driven freakiness here, and when mixed with the over-arching influence of early ‘70’s soul and the band’s formidable chops, a singular formula is produced, one that owes no allegiance to anything but itself.  From the radio-ready, slide guitar funk of “Your Love is Certified” to the break-filled “Mr. Cool”; through the bizarre headiness of “You Better Think” to the sublime ridiculousness of “Dookey Shoe”—this is one for the ages, a moment in time, a day in the life.  These guys went on to make one more album (“The Devil Made Me Do It,” on the Gemigo label), but this is the record that cemented their status in the consciousness of the hipper-than-hip cognoscenti, and this is the funky utterance that sent all the aspiring beat-makers to their samplers, itching with possibility and hazy madness.  Oh yeah…it’s deep, baby.

Reggie Lucas: "Survival Themes"

This is one I thought I might never find--as it has a reputation of being a very elusive LP--yet thanks to the cats at Dusty Groove, I procured it for an extremely reasonable price.  Damned if it isn’t every bit as tasty as I imagined.  The thing is, Reggie Lucas is a guy who generally fades into the background, his contributions to most albums being more subtle than overt.  His most famous recording stints were with Miles Davis and Madonna, and with Miles he was a rhythm guitarist, with Madonna he was a producer.  Neither of these are roles that occupy much foreground in terms of visibility and/or frontline presence, which is exactly why “Survival Themes” is so refreshing, in that it allows us a glimpse of Lucas doing his thang and doing it well, as opposed to seeing him through the lens of another artist’s vision.  The music itself is post-Miles ‘70’s fusion, and light years from the breezy pop he would engage in with Madonna in the early ‘80’s.  Reggie and his band (which includes Hubert Eaves, Michael Henderson, Anthony Jackson, Mtume, etc.) get down into some greasy, dirty funk on “Slewfoot” and “The Barefoot Song,” the latter of which showcases Lucas “goin’ all the way off” on lead guitar.  The masterpiece here, though, is the side-long title track, a blend of shifting changes and moods that implies Lucas and company may have had aspirations toward a more avant-garde dissonance, an exploration likely interrupted in subsequent years by the onslaught of the disco era’s innate commercialism (this album was recorded in ’75, quite literally on the verge of that particular sea change in rhythm music).  In the “Survival Themes” suite, we find everything from Lucas’ acidic, fuzz-and-phase-drenched guitar excursions to quieter passages more reminiscent of ethereal, Miles-esque tone poems, and yet the whole of the piece remains seamlessly cohesive.  Altogether, this is a major, intensely personal artistic statement from a musician whose restlessness would lead him in many directions, always with one foot in the funk and another in the future.  Right on Reggie!