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Love Children – Paper Chase

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Love Children on a Spanish picture sleeve (which I do not own…)

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Listen/Download – Love Children – Paper Chase

Greetings all.

I hope everyone had a chance to dig into Episode 6 of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

As always, if you haven’t downloaded, it will still be available in the archive (see the tab in the header).

The song I bring you today is something from the lighter side of the Deram popsike merry-go-round.

I first heard Love Children doing ’Paper Chase’ back in the old garage mod days when it appeared on one of the British Psychedelic Trip comps.

Though I don’t know much about the group, I can say with certainty that they recorded two 45s for Deram in 1969 and 1970.

‘Paper Chase’ was the second of their records and the late date of its release goes some distance in explaining why the popsike whimsy seems to be drifting into a slightly bubblegummy side street, or at least what was passing for bubblegum over in the UK.

That said, it is indeed a very groovy side with the electric sitar touches, electric piano and the strings and the harmony vocals.

What ‘Paper Chase’ manages to do is illustrate the rather prominent vein of pure pop running straight through from the beat era into the early 70s. The only differences along that particular timeline being certain, time-specific flourishes, whether it be phasing, pocket trumpet (a la the Beatles), backward tape or what have you.

Oddly enough, the flip side is a weird, slightly heavier novelty called ‘My Turkey Snuffed It’ which opens with a nice, tight drum break and features some cool guitar. It also features a variety of irritating sound effects and lame lyrics, which is probably why it languished on the b-side (and in obscurity).

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

October 23, 2011
Categories: 45s, Culture, Iron Leg, Music, pop, psychedelia . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #6!

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Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opening – Action Scene – Hawkshaw/Mansfield (KPM)

Intro – Alan Hawkshaw/Keith Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)
Tweeds – We Got Time (Coral)
Sandy Nelson – Boss Beat (World Pacific)
Royal Guardsmen – Leaving Me (Laurie)
Wool – Combination of the Two (ABC)
Walker Brothers – Orpheus (Philips)
Yardbirds – White Summer (Epic)
Wizards From Kansas – High Flying Bird (Mercury)
Bert Jansch – Poison (Transatlantic)
Left Banke Coke Spot

Free Design – Kites are Fun (45 Mix) (Project 3)
Free Design – Kijes Quija (Project 3)
Free Design – Bubbles (Project 3)
Free Design – 2002 (A Hit Song) (45 Mix) (Project 3)
Free Design – California Dreaming (Project 3)
Free Design – You Could Be Born Again (Project 3)
Free Design – I Found Love (Project 3)
Free Design – Windows of the World (Project 3)
Free Design – Butterflies are Free (Project 3)
Free Design – Jack In the Box commercial (Jack In the Box)

Bobby Vee – The Passing of a Friend (Liberty)
Bobby Vee – One (Liberty)
Bobby Vee – Lavender Kite (Liberty)
Poco – Hurry Up (Epic)
Poco – Anyway Bye Bye (Epic)
Topanga Canyon Orchestra – Crimson and Clover (Uni)
John Frangipani – Venus (Mainstream)
Electric Prunes – Luvin (Reprise)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 6 – 171MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to the sixth edition of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

As always we have a very nice stack of the platters that matter, with some fuzzed out garage punk, Now Sound action, a very healthy serving of the Sunshine Pop of Free Design, folk rock, country rock (the good kind) and some unexpectedly cool pop from someone you might not expect.

I hope you dig it all, and if you haven’t already heard them, head back into the archives for the first five episodes.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners

October 16, 2011
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 2 Comments

Manfred Mann – Watch Your Step

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Uh huh, It was the Manfreds….

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Listen/Download – Manfred Mann – Watch Your Step

Greetings all.

I hope everything is swinging light in your corner of the world.

The tune I bring you this week is something I was shocked to find in what one might term a ‘local’ dig.

I’ve been a Manfred Mann fan for a long time, since my man Mr Luther hit me up with an early ‘Best Of’ that pretty much blew my mind back in the garage/mod days.

Sure I was hip to all of the hits, but as soon as I heard stuff like ‘5-4-3-2-1’, ‘The One In the Middle’ and ‘Cock-a-Hoop’ I was all “Where has this groovy stuff been all my life?” b/w “Where can I get me some?”.

Naturally, I don’t think I ever need to hear ‘The Mighty Quinn’ again, under any circumstances, even if I should host a cocktail party and Mike Hugg and Bob Dylan both showed up, however, that early exposure to the Manfred’s made me a devotee, particularly where it comes to the voice of one Paul Jones.

Jones has since that day been one of my very favorite singers of the R&Beat era, and the Manfreds one of the great, underrated (not unpopular) bands of their time.

You can’t really expect a world exposed to ‘Pretty Flamingo’ to know that Manfred Mann had serious R&B and jazz chops (which never really got a lot of play over here), but you can’t sit by and leave the situation unremedied either, especially if you have yourself a blog, which I do, so here we go.

The aforementioned find was a UK OG of the Manfreds 1965 ‘Mann Made’ album which was a very solid display of their range (and on odd thing to turn up in a cardboard box in Asbury Park, NJ).

In addition to very groovy, very jazzy instros like ‘Abominable Snowmann’ and ‘Bare Hugg’, you get solid R&Beat like their ‘You Don’t Love Me’ re-write ‘LSD’, and today’s selection, their storming cover of Bobby Parker’s mighty ‘Watch Your Step’.

The OG is a big, big, BIG favorite of mine, but Jones and company acquit themselves very nicely indeed. You get that soulful, bluesy flavor of Jones’s voice running riot over a tasty backing, including some swinging organ by the Mann himself.

It is very solid indeed, and ought to warm things up until I return next week.

Until then.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

October 9, 2011
Categories: British Beat, cover versions, Culture, Iron Leg, Mod, R&Beat, Swinging London . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 3 Comments

Poco – Hurry Up

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Poco – Rusty, George, Tim, Richie and Jim

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Listen/Download – Poco – Hurry Up

Greetings all.

I hope the commencement of another groovy seven day cycle sees you all in a good place (physically, spiritually etc).
I’ve discussed the concept of the record collection – once it has achieved a certain ungainly size – becoming something of a living and breathing entity.

While I don’t get out to dig as much as I used to, I don’t really need to anymore since as I write this I find myself surrounded my records (large and small) that seem – in spite of impossibility – to be verily pulsating and closing the narrow gap that remains between us.

If I ever really want to listen to something ‘new’, all I need to do is dip down into the existing crates, where I will find records not-yet-listened-to, or unjustly neglected, whether it be an overlooked LP track or 45 b-side.

Today’s selection is one of those records I picked up on a whim from the dollar-bin a while back and for a variety of reasons never took the time to listen to.

A few weeks back I was putting some records away from a recent DJ gig and happened upon this particular LP and pulled it out so it would be neglected no more.

Good thing too, since I was pleasantly surprised with how good it was.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ll say it again; aside from Arthur Lee and Love, my all-time favorite US band from the 60s was the Buffalo Springfield.

I’ve been a huge fan since I first picked up a well-worn copy of the ‘Retrospective’ collection at the local flea market when I was in my teens, and have absorbed their music as deeply as just about any band, including the Beatles.

The given, at least as I saw it, was that the Springfield was really the stage for the eternal creative struggle between Stephen Stills and Neil Young, with Richie Furay – while very talented – inhabited a second tier of sorts.

I was well aware that Furay had founded Poco after the dissolution of the Buffalo Springfield, but – despite being a big fan of nascent LA country rock – never really explored their music.

So, when I sat down to record the group’s second album ‘Poco’ (from 1970) I am not overstating the case when I tell you that it caused me to drastically reconsider my assessment of the balance of power within the Springfield.

Formed in 1968, with Furay and Jim Messina from the Buffalo Springfield, and Randy Meisner, Rusty Young and George Grantham coming from two different Colorado bands (Meisner from the Poor, Young and Grantham from Boenzee Cryque), the group originally called themselves Pogo, until threatened with legal action by the creator of that cartoon character, Walt Kelly.

They changed their name to Poco, and recorded their first album in 1969.

There were a lot of different brands of ‘country’ bouncing around LA in the late 60s, with varying degrees of purist sentiment, pop content and rock drive, coming from artists as diverse as the Byrds, the Monkees and Rick Nelson (Meisner would join his band after departing Poco).

Poco managed to carry on a good deal of the Buffalo Springfield sound, instrumentally and vocally, mixing in a dash of Bakersfield as well.

The tune I bring you today, ‘Hurry Up’ is my favorite from the ‘Poco’ LP. Written by Furay, the song has enough Sunset Strip left in it to be mistaken for a Buffalo Springfield outtake. The harmonies sound as if lifted from any of the Springfield’s three LPs with Furay ably assisted by Timothy B. Schmidt (late of the New Breed, later of the Eagles) who had by this time replaced Meisner.

The Buffalo Springfield comparison is especially apt since on this track (and many of the others) Poco manages to take a basic, late 60s LA rock vibe and augment, but never obscure it with the addition of a certain amount of country flavor.

Like the Flying Burrito Brothers (who had Sneaky Pete Kleinow), Poco had the good luck to find a visionary pedal steel player in Rusty Young. Young had the ability to work in the ‘standard’ style of the instrument, as well as the imagination and skill to bend it into unusual new shapes (that organ sound in ‘Hurry Up’ is Young’s pedal steel).

The big question that comes up for me, is why Poco didn’t have the success of the Eagles. My best guess is that the Eagles had a certain pop accessibility that the majority of their competitors lacked. This is not to say that Poco couldn’t write great songs, but rather that they were more of a rock band – with all the good things that come with the name – than the Eagles were (until Joe Walsh popped into the mix), rendering them – like the Buffalo Springfield – sometimes too sophisticated for their own good. A song like ‘Anyway Bye Bye’ has more subtle twists and turns in it than any whole album by the Eagles.

That said, I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

October 2, 2011
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 2 Comments

Peter Law and the Pacific – Remains to Be Seen

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Peter Law and the Pacific

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Listen/Download – Peter Law and the Pacific – Remains to Be Seen

Greetings all.

I hope the new week finds you well, and that all of you have pulled down the ones and zeros for this month’s Iron Leg Radio Show.

I was lucky enough late last week to sneak in a little bit of unscheduled digging in one of my old, once great, vinyl repositories.

I say “once great”, because way back in the day, when I was but a sprite one would walk through the doors of this place and reel at the massive amount of records to paw through.

So large and wonderful a place that should you become bored looking through the rock and soul you could stoop down to floor level and start looking through the comedy, spoken word and international sections, all filled with interesting stuff.

Sadly, those days are gone, and with the influx of vinyl cut short, the outflux into the collections of my friends and I has also shrunken and the pickings, in the word of a great philosopher can only be described as slim.

That said, it’s still worth taking a ride out there every once in a while, if only to flex the digging muscles and get a taste (however slight) of the old ways.

Though most of the solid stuff is no more (the funk and soul section is probably 60% brand new reissues), there are still interesting things to be had if you put in enough effort.

So, dig I did, and I managed to pull out a handful of very cool things for the Iron Leg ‘to be blogged” folder, including today’s selection’.

I’d never heard of Peter Law and the Pacific before I laid hands on their album, but I could not very well leave a menagerie of mod haircuts and clothing sitting in the ‘New Arrivals’ bin, never having sampled its delights.

Said delights were not exactly abundant, but as is often the case, there, buried in a haystack of ordinariness and attempts at mass appeal, was a gem waiting to be discovered.

That gem was a tune called ‘Remains to Be Seen’.

Peter Law and the Pacific were a showband out of Northern Ireland that plied their wares through the 60s.

Showbands were (and still are) a kind of all-purpose entertainment machine, performing a wide variety of pop sounds in clubs, bars and theaters for an equally diverse audience. Most of the showbands included small horn sections, truncated from the days when the same kinds of entertainment were provided by full orchestras.

Peter Law and the Pacific played pop, rock and country, the latter bringing them a Canadian hit in 1968 with their cover the Mel Tillis song ‘Ruby’.

I did mention that they also recorded pop and rock, which is how they came to cover a fairly obscure but very groovy bit of Australian popsike (originally recorded in 1968) called ‘Remains to Be Seen’ which was originally recorded by the duo of Steve and Stevie.

Law and the Pacific recorded their version in 1969 and released in it Canada on the Capitol label.

What you get is a very nice approximation of Deram/Decca popsike with vocals by the band’s second singer Sean Fagan.

The original recording of ‘Remains to be Seen’ was released in the UK on the Toast label, which is where Law and the Pacific probably heard it.

It’s a very groovy, very obscure number, and I hope you dig it.

I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

September 25, 2011
Categories: cover versions, Culture, freakbeat, Irish Rock, Iron Leg, Music, pop, psychedelia . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #5

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Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opening – Action Scene – Hawkshaw/Mansfield (KPM)

Pink Floyd – Candy and a Currant Bun (Harvest)
Los Bravos – Going Nowhere (Press)
Sagittarius – Another Time (Columbia)
Phyllis Brown – Another Time (Barnaby)
Ronnie Aldrich – Ride My See Saw (London)
The Syn – Grounded (Deram)
Terry Reid – Superlungs (Epic)
Beatles Yellow Submarine Promo

The Peddlers
Roy Phillips (organ, vocals), Trevor Morais (drums) and Tab Martin (bass)
Peddlers – What’ll I Do (45 version) (Philips)
Peddlers – On A Clear Day (Epic) From Three In a Cell
Peddlers –Pentathlon (CBS) From Freewheelers written by Keith Mansfield
Peddlers – Walk On the Wild Side (Philips) From Live at the Pickwick
Peddlers – I’m Coming Home (Epic) From Three In A Cell
Peddlers – Ain’t No Big Thing (CBS) From Freewheelers

Wildweeds – Someday Morning (Chess)
Klowns – Yellow Sunglasses (RCA)
Lee Mallory – Many Are the Times (Valiant)
Holy Mackerel – Scorpio Red (Reprise)
The Hardy Boys – I Can Hear The Grass Singin’ (RCA)
The Robbs – Bittersweet (Mercury)
Archies – Melody Hill (Calendar)
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart – Smilin’ (Aquarius)
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart – I’ll Blow You a Kiss In the Wind (Aquarius)
Cowsills – Milk Promo Spot

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 5 – 140MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

I have some very groovy stuff lined up for you this month, including the usual psychedelic odds and sods, a nice set of sunshine pop and a set devoted to the sounds of one of my very favorite groups,  the Peddlers.

As always, I hope you dig the show, and I’ll be back next week with something else ear delicious.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners

September 18, 2011
Categories: 45s, Beatles-esque Sounds, British Beat, Easy, folk rock, freakbeat, Iron Leg, Iron Leg Radio Show, Kitsch, Music, Now Sound, pop, psychedelia, Rock, Sagittarius, Sunshine Pop . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

The Discotheque Au Go Go Sound of the Wild Ones

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The Wild Ones with Jordan Christopher (right) and Sybil Burton (aloft)

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Listen/Download – The Wild Ones – Wild Way of Living
Listen/Download – The Wild Ones – People Sure Act Funny

Greetings all.

It is the dawn of a new week – if not a new era (apologies to the Specials) and I for one am ready to meet the onrush of new things, even if it’s just being overrun by knuckle-dragging, neo-puritan Morlocks.

This month’s Iron Leg Radio Show will be hitting the page (episode #5) next Monday, so hang on tight on account of it’s a good one, if’n I say so myself.

The tune I bring you today is one of those deals where the story behind the music is almost as cool as the music itself (though in this case it’s a very close race indeed).

I’d heard of the Wild Ones long before I found a copy of their album last year, but had no idea how deeply they were woven into the fabric of that beast we know as the 60s.

What if I told you that they were the house band at one of the great in-crowd discotheques of the era (home to the pioneering platter splatterer Terry Noel) , led by a male starlet (Jordan Christopher), who happened to be married to the club’s proprietess (Sybil Burton), who herself was the ex-wife of a huge movie star (Richard Burton)?

The club in question was named Arthur, and the album in question, ‘The Arthur Sound’ by the Wild Ones is an interesting relic of that transitional era when the jet age twist boom, which lit the fuse of the discotheque explosion, was right on the verge of turning into something a little Mod-der.

The Wild Ones were the house band at Arthur, and despite the fact that they ( at least as evidenced on this record) weren’t the hottest band in the land, had a certain rough, post-frat, pre-garage edge to their sound, not unlike the au-go-go sound of early-era Sunset Strip.

The tunes I bring you today, interestingly enough both appeared (as did the band) in another fantastic era-specific artifact, a film called ‘The Fat Spy’ that starred Jack E. Leonard, Jayne Mansfield and Phyllis Diller. I mean, honest to god, if the pop-culft factor gets turned up one more notch my head may explode.

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‘Wild Way Of Living’ is the garage-ier of the two, due in large part to some very groovy combo organ by keyboardist Tom Graves. It’s not hard to imagine a packed room full of celebrity (and celebrity wannabe) swingers frug-ing to a tune like this.

The album is ostensibly “live” but I’d be very surprised if this was anything more than “live in studio”.

The second cut, a dark, almost weird version of Titus Turner’s ‘People Sure Act Funny’ wouldn’t be out of place on a comp of teen basement pounders. This probably has something to do with the fact that the Wild Ones weren’t some kind of pre-fab combo cranked out to augment the club. They were an existing band whose singer was an aspiring thespian who just happened to have hooked up with a discotheque mad celebutante (though she was creeping up on 40 at the time).

In fact, Jordan Christopher left the group not long after this album came out to concentrate on his acting career. The band remained together, eventually recording the original, pre-Troggs version of ‘Wild Thing’.

Jordan Christopher went on to star in one of the truly twisted psychotronic films of all time ‘Angel Angel Down We Go’ (aka Cult of the Damned).

I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back next week with the Iron Leg Radio Show.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

September 11, 2011
Categories: Au Go Go, cover versions, Culture, garage punk, Iron Leg, Music, pop, Rock . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

The Incredible String Band – No Sleep Blues

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The ISB – Mike Heron and Robin Williamson

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Listen/Download – Incredible String Band – No Sleep Blues

Greetings all.

Welcome back to the ongoing series of poptacular musical excursions otherwise known as Iron Leg.

While trolling through the archive of previously digimatized, yet not quite blogged music, I happened upon one of my favorite slices of UK freak folk.

The Incredible String Band was one of those groups that I knew of (pretty much just the name) for many years before I actually heard them, an event that occurred when I picked up an expensive (but wholly excellent), imported, multi-cd comp of psychedelic music during the early days of compact discs.

The track in question was their 1968 single ‘Painting Box’, by which I was seriously underwhelmed. Here, finally was the Incredible String Band, and I was perceiving strings, but a decided lack of incredibleness.

That said, years later, during the depths of my UK folk/folk rock mania, with Nick Drake, and Fairport Convention and Bert Jansch etcetera etcetera, I found a Rykodisc reissue of the album that included that track, ‘The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion and decided to explore further.

Released in July of 1967, it was their second album, and their first since the departure of Clive Palmer. Truth be told, by the time this album came out, the group with the grandiose name was basically the duo of Mike Heron and Robin Williamson, augmented by Williamson’s girlfriend Licorice (yes, Licorice) and bassist Danny Thompson.

When I first had the CD, I dug it heavily because despite the surface folksiness, the music was in fact the work of a couple of twisted hippies and the sounds they made owed as much to then contemporary England as it did to Morris Dancers and the like.

What I also noticed was that the music on the album had a slightly schizophrenic bent, with two distinct musical personalities fighting for prominence within. A look at the writing credits revealed that the stuff I was really digging was credited to Robin Williamson, and those I dug not so much to Mike Heron.

The tune I bring you today is my favorite Williamson-penned track, ‘No Sleep Blues’.

While there are certainly elements present of what might be termed ‘old time folk’, i.e. traditionalist hootenanny plucking, it was overpowered by a certain longhairs on caravan in Morocco vibe, otherwise known as a hashish haze,or at the very least the residual effects thereof.

I can well imagine the English equivalent of Pete Seeger tearing his (or her) hair our at the roots when hearing stuff like this, but I also see the more cosmopolitan contingent of the freak scene shying away from it as well (until they all morphed into hippies a few years on).

Heron and Williamson went on to a long career as the ISB, and individually as well.

I hope you dig the track, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

September 4, 2011
Categories: acoustic, Culture, folk, folk rock, Iron Leg, Music, pop, uk folk . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 2 Comments

RIP Jerry Leiber b/w Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is

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Miss Peggy Lee

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Listen/Download – Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is

Greetings all.

Last week was an especially sad one, considering that we lost both Nick Ashford (of Ashford and Simpson and co-composer of many soul classics) and one of my personal idols, Jerry Leiber of the team of Leiber and Stoller.

I’ll go ahead and assume that most Iron Leg readers are familiar with at least some part of the Leiber and Stoller oeuvre, from their work with the Coasters and the Drifters in the 50s and 60s, their time running the Red Bird/Blue Cat/Tiger labels or later stuff like their producing Stealers Wheel in the early 70s.

I consider the pair to be one of the greatest songwriting/record-crafting teams of the classic era, making music of extraordinary energy and excitement.

As soon as I heard that Jerry Leiber had passed, though there was certainly work to be done at Funky16Corners (If you get a sec drop on by the mothership at Funky16Corners and check out my tribute to the man from last week) it also occurred to me that tribute had to be paid here at Iron Leg as well.

Though the vast majority of the L&S legacy is rooted in R&B and soul, there is a lesser-known chapter in their later years that has held a certain fascination for me.

Allow me to head back many decades to my youth, when my old man brought a certain Peggy Lee 45 into the house.

Though I listened to a lot of my Pop’s records, most of them were jazz or classical.

There was very little contemporary pop in our house, aside from the odd Simon and Garfunkel or 5th Dimension album, or 45s like Joan Baez covering ‘The Night the Drove Old Dixie Down’.

My Pop had been a Peggy Lee fan since her days as a big band singer and had kept up with her career as a pop and jazz singer, often playing her early 60s collaborations with George Shearing.

However, by 1969, Miss Peggy Lee had been without a hit since 1963 and ‘I’m a Woman’, a tune written by none other than Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Lee, Leiber and Stoller came back together in the late 60s.

Pieced together from sessions recorded between mid-1967 and early 1969, the album ‘Is That All There Is’, and the single of the title song were both huge hits for Lee.

Now, I know the idea of a 7-year old kid becoming enamored of such an unusual song might seem odd, but that’s the kind of kid I was (and sometimes still am).

When I played my Dad’s 45 of the song over and over again in 1969, I had no idea who Leiber and Stoller were. I also had no inkling of Weimar cabaret and theater, nor of the music created by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

I mention Weill and Brecht (who’s music I would become fascinated with as an adult) because ‘Is That All There Is’ is a song created out of the zeitgeist of their catalog. One need only hear ‘The Threepenny Opera’, ‘The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoggany’, ‘Happy End’ or later Weill work like ‘Knickerbocker Holiday’ (source of ‘September Song’) to realize what Leiber, Stoller and the arranger of ‘Is That All There Is’, a young fellow by the name of Randy Newman, had in mind.

Though the song was initially performed by British singer Georgia Brown, it was first recorded by a New York City disk jockey named Dan Daniels in 1968 (I’d love to hear that!).

It was also recorded by Leslie Uggams prior to Peggy Lee’s version, but it was Lee who took it to the Pop Top 40, and to Number One on the Adult Contemporary charts.

It is a work of singular genius, unusual even for the late 60s, haunting, and especially apt coming from a survivor like Peggy Lee.

If you looked at the label and wondered about ‘International Wrestling Match’, it was the title of an off-Broadway play that Leiber and Stoller were planning on turning into a musical, in which they were planning to include ‘Is That All There Is’. It never came to fruition, making the label credit an obscure but interesting footnote.

She would go on to record another album with Leiber and Stoller, 1975’s ‘Mirrors’ which was written entirely by L&S and arranged by Johnny Mandel. Though none of it rises to the level of ‘Is That All There Is’, it’s still quite interesting and if today’s selection is up your alley (or in your wheelhouse) you ought to pick it up.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

August 28, 2011
Categories: cover versions, Culture, Iron Leg, Music, pop . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

Two Tastes of Moog from the Electronic Concept Orchestra

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Moog and his monster.

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Listen/Download – Electronic Concept Orchestra – Rock Me

Listen/Download – Electronic Concept Orchestra – Grazing In the Grass

Greetings all.

I hope all is well in your part of the world, and that you all had a chance to pull down the ones and zeros on last week’s edition of the Iron Leg Radio Show. It has – as the previous three episodes – been moved to the ILRS Archive (see tab in blog header…).

The tune I bring you today is something unusual and cool that I grabbed recently.

While I’m always on the lookout for easy/kitsch stuff, especially when it treads (warily or not) into what we record people might describe as ‘legitimate’ territory, i.e. rock, psyche or even soul and funk.

I’ve found Enoch Light and his various and sundry offshoots to be a rich source of extra groovy sounds, from unusual takes on 60s rock to serviceably funky versions of James Brown tracks.

One segment of the easy/kitsch/exploit world that I’ve never been a huge fan of is Moog records.

Though I dig the Moog when used as an accent on rock (or other) records, I’ve always thought that as a featured instrument it lacked a certain musicality. It’s novelty in the space age 60s made it a favorite addition to soundtracks, but with rare exception (like Dick Hyman’s epic take on James Brown’s ‘Give It Up or Turn It Loose’) was it ever used to create anything I’d want to listen to more than once in an irony-free environment.

That said, when I do find Moog albums in the field, I grab them because first and foremost I am an inveterate vinyl junkie, and on the off chance that they might turn out to be worth a couple of bucks and could be flipped.

When I ‘Moog Groove’ by the Electronic Concept Orchestra I recognized it right away as something I’d seen listed in crate diggers ‘finds’ posts on a soul/funk board I frequent, and since the price was right I grabbed it, tossed it on the keeper stack and took it home.

Good thing too, since once I dropped the needle on the record (and took a look at the back cover) I realized that this was no ordinary Moog set.

First off, ‘Moog Groove’ was pleasing to the ears in a way that a lot of Moog albums aren’t, i.e. it was clearly recorded by musicians with a modicum of taste and enough skill with the synthesizer to apply it fairly tastefully, i.e. it never ended up sounding like a 23rd century robot orgy.

Secondly, while perusing the back cover I was very pleased indeed to discover that the drummer on the session was one of my favorites, that being Morris Jennings Jr., a longtime member of Ramsey Lewis’s band and a fixture on Cadet Records sessions in the 60s and 70s. Why he was practically the only musician mentioned on the album is a mystery. He wasn’t particularly well known, nor – though it has a couple of nice breaks on it – is the album a drummers tour de force.

I have found a reference that seems to indicate that there were other Cadet sessioners involved in the sessions, including keyboardist Eddie Higgins (who plays the Moog on the ECO’s records) and guitarist Phil Upchurch. This may indicate that these albums were recorded in Chicago, but I can’t say for sure.

What it does have going for it is a nice amalgamation of late 60s pop with the synthesizer worked into the mix as organically as possible.

The selection of covers is both appropriate (i.e. no country Moogification) and interesting.

The two tracks I bring you today are my favorites from the album.

You get to hear a nice take on Hugh Masekela’s ‘Grazing in the Grass’, with the Moog applied with an organists touch, as well as a cool take on Steppenwolf’s ‘Rock Me’. Both tunes also give you a taste of Jennings’ talents as a percussionist.

The Electronic Concept Orchestra released at least two other albums between 1969 and 1973.

I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back next week.

Peace

Larry

 

Example


PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

August 21, 2011
Categories: cover versions, Culture, Easy, Easy Listening, Instrumental, Iron Leg, Kitsch, Music, Now Sound, pop . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 1 Comment

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