Monthly Archive

For Sale 

I like this one a lot, so much that I haven’t really decided if I want to sell it.  The Six O’Clock News were formed by Rockabilly hall-of-famer and Detroit native James Wayne Boyer.  He originally formed the band Jimmy Boyer and The Newports, who were a top local band in Detroit and Windsor in the early to mid 60s.  Around ‘68 or ‘69, he formed the Six O’Clock News, who recorded only one 45, Train Ride Down Jasper Way / Working On The Road, in 1969 on Novi based label Adell.  After the Six O’Clock News broke up following their brief time together, Boyer went on to play in a few more local bands before touring nationally with a Nashville based group called the Billy Swan Band. 

The A side to this promo copy, Train Ride, is a great song.  Jimmy’s rough and gruff voice give emotion to a hard working railroad love song, backed by a Dennis Coffee-esque funkabilly band.  It’s a fairly rare 45, but it’s unlike many small label Michigan garagers that we come across, the song writing is actually good (and original).  If CCR put this out, it could have been a national smash hit.  As it was with a relatively unheard-of Detroit band in 1969, they produced about 1,000 or so promo copies, sent them out to as many radio stations as they could, and probably received little if any airplay. The records then sat for years, with a few surfacing here and there.  This one came out of a collection we bought recently that was the remnants of a local radio station’s backstock, hundreds of discarded 45s, deemed not popular enough to be worth a damn, forgotten for almost 40 years, until they landed with us to revive them again. NOW FOR SALE

Listen to Train Ride Down Jasper Way:

Note: The B Side on this, the pop-pysch Working On The Road, was featured on the comp “Voyages Into Pop-Psych Vol. II”, and also on the internet radio station/website Technicolor Web of Sound.

UK’s Ace records will soon be releasing a comp of 60s Ann Arbor label A-Squared rarities.  I guess this has been 10 years in the making and Scott Morgan of The Rationals, who still lives in Ann Arbor, has been working with Ace.  This should be a very cool comp, although from what I read it is only available on CD.  We’ve come across some of these sides, but I’m sure some of these are ones that just don’t surface at all. 

From mlive.com:

“A-Square (Of Course): The Story Of Michigan’s Legendary A-Square Records,” which will be available only as an import CD from Ace Records, includes tracks from The Scot Richard Case, MC5 (the rare “Looking at You”), The Prime Movers (featuring a young Iggy Pop on drums and lead vocals, circa 1966), The Thyme, The Up and more.

The disc draws on the vaults of A-Square Records, founded by Hugh “Jeep” Holland, a University of Michigan student who was captivated by the mid-’60s rock music explosion. While running Discount Records on State Street, he threw himself into the local scene as an agent, manager, producer and supporter of area bands and musicians, including Discount stock boy Jim Osterberg, who later became Iggy Pop. The storied music lineups at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom were overseen by Holland, who died in 1998.

read the rest of the article

FOR SALE 

I just came across this, and put it up for sale.  There is no info on this record that I can find.  It’s Jupiters’ Children: 1970 weird spaced out garage psych on private label Triple O that I would guess came from Michigan but I’ll have to look into it more to find out for sure.  It’s very possible this came out of Ypsilanti, as this is where I found it.  Pretty interesting stuff and an exciting find, especially if this turns out to be an relatively unknown 45.

Listen to Check Yourself:

Listen to This Is All I Ask:

by Cousin Geoff

This record was an early, early find for me in my record hunting hobby that has now grown into our mighty Cousins empire.  I can remember it like it was yesterday.  I was out garage sailing, and it was getting late, almost 11:00 AM.  I had been at it since early in the morning, driving around, newspaper close by, digging and scouting and hunting.  In those days, going garage sailing was our main way of finding records.  This was before Cousin Justin and I were even partners. We would just sell under the same name and then get the money for our records. 

So I was out driving, way south of Ypsi, almost to Milan, about to go home and call it quits, but I decided to stop by one last sale and check it out, a total country bumpkin sale and I found this record somehow.  I almost sold it, because it goes for good money, but I liked it so much I had to keep it.  Turns out, it’s still one of my favorite records, especially because of the song I’ve Never Found a Girl.

There’s not much other vocals on the album besides this song, but it’s Marvin and his Uptights blowing feel-good 1969 San Francisco psych-funk until your toes curl.  It’s loud Saturday music, it’s getting ready to have a party at your house music, it’s happy Dragon-Monster Soul music.

Check out the liner notes from the back of the album:

I always said if I ever had the chance to write liner notes for an artist-I would have a ball doing it-I have read a lot of album backs and it seems there is always something interesting to say and use the most in descriptive words from?-funk-and I’d say yeah!  Well now it’s my turn and I do have someone I can testify for-Marv & The Uptights, able to raise a suave, sophisticated, mellow gathering to a high fever pitch-rocking with much Boss Soul-not being sacrilegious, but for those who missed church, this album will take you-giving you that head nodding, toe tappin’, hip shakin’, finger poppin’, soulful feeling-just let yourself go-Marv & The Uptights is mighty funky and how do you really decribe that.  It’s like when you, well you how it is when-uhhhhh-coming up on the-let’s see-I know what it is but I just can’t uhhh, how about funky as barrels of hot asphalt-I think you get the picture-check ‘em out-Marv & The Uptights-and you’ll dig much Infinity.

-Bob White KDIA Oakland, Calif.

Yeah, Bob!  Were you high by any chance when you wrote those notes? 

Check out the song, I’ve Never Found a Girl.  If you like it as much as I do, note that AL Green also does a great version on his Let’s Stay Together album.

by Cousin Geoff 

I wrote about this album about two years ago, but I didn’t include a picture or audio.  I forgot I wrote about it when I was thinking about what to post tonight, but I took the picture and recorded a sample of Gone With Yesterday.  Rather than write about it again, you can just read what I wrote before and listen to the cut.

By Cousin Geoff 

David Holt’s Rock and Reel album on Flying Fish has been a family favorite lately with little Ella, who will turn 6 months shortly.  I won’t bore you with details, but check out 15 seconds of David playin’ the old slap legs: 

 By Max Conroy

Hong Kong Blues by Hoagy (ne Hoagland) Carmichael was recorded for Decca in 1942; he penned it and recorded it in ‘39 originally.   It’s a unique side recorded by one of the most highly regarded song writers of the first part of the last century.  Two of his biggest hits were Georgia on My Mind and the A side of this single Stardust. 

The song is a cautionary drug tale about “a very unfortunate colored man who got arrested down in old Hong Kong…for kicking Buddha’s gong.”  Kicking Buddha’s gong is a dated term for smoking opium. It took me a second to realize what he was singing about when I first heard the song.  It’s fairly subtle till the end of it where he actually mentions opium.  He doesn’t mention any specifics about the drug or his habit, only that he cannot leave Hong Kong for his home, which he tells everyone is in San Francisco, but is actually in Tennessee.  The geographic centering of the song is kind of strange in that he’s not from San Francisco but later in the song where Carmichael switches from the narrator’s third person to the first person testimonial, he keeps mentioning San Fran as his home.  Also, how would an unfortunate brother end up in Hong Kong in the 1930s? 

All of this gives one the impression that Hong Kong is opium addiction itself.  The only specific moment where you can really put yourself in his shoes is where he sings:

“Won’t someone believe me/I have a yen to see that bay again/But when I try and leave/Sweet opium won’t let me fly away.“ 

He’s asking his fellow opium enthusiasts in the den to take his desire to quit drugs seriously, but he’s obviously ignored. Also, the use of the word ‘yen’ is a pun here as it comes from the Chinese words for ‘addiction’ and ’smoke’.  Carmichael once described his voice “…as the way a shaggy dog looks…I have Wabash fog and sycamore twigs in my throat.”  His inflection and the first person voice in the middle of the song made me assume that Carmichael was black, so I was surprised to see a picture of him, white as can be.  Another strange thing about this song is that it’s difficult to discern exactly when he’s singing this in relation to his incarceration.  He doesn’t lament getting arrested and still has hope that he’ll make it home, so I’m inclined to think that he’s speaking before he got arrested. 

In the chorus he sings that he needs someone to love him.  When I first heard this, I thought that it was such a 1930s view of drug addiction that finding a good woman could save you from yourself and drugs, but if you listen to the rest of it, he’s asking to find someone that loves him so they can take his body back home.  Pretty grim stuff.  There’s also a part where he begs for fifty dollars to get home with, but one is left with the impression that he’d blow it on dope.

This music is great for the depressant glow of a burgeoning alcohol buzz, alone.  The white jazz comes out a bit more on Stardust, but it’s still worth a listen eighty-one years after it was written.

Hong Kong Blues:

Stardust:

by Cousin Geoff

Alright, one more fantastically awesome 80s Detroit sports 45 and then I promise I’m done for a while and will go back to more, um, serious takes on good music.  Maybe.

What can I say about this 45?  It was done by Gino Danelli in 1981, the same guy who put out Ain’t No Stoppin’ us Now/Tigers in ‘84.  Cousin Justin tells me that Gino still sings around Detroit these days.  I think that Gino’s next song should be about Cousins Vinyl’s rec league basketball team that was so sweet two years ago - we led the league in techs, ejections, and illegal alley-oop dunks.  We were surely on the same level as these other Detroit sports legends that Gino chose to sing about. 

This one is about Thomas Hearns, one of the most legendary Detroit boxers ever.  Nicknamed The Hitman, or the Motor City Cobra, Hearns still lives in the Detroit area, and is always at the Pistons games these days flashing around. I shook his hand there once.  I said, “Howya doin’ champ!”, as he walked by and he stopped and shook my hand and smiled.  What a great boxer - even though he lost, who could forget his classic fight against Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the most electrifying fight in history?  Known for his tall, lanky build and his aggresive flicker jab, Hearns won world championships in three different weight classes, and is truly worthy of a Gino Danelli song. 

listen to The Hitman, on Trio Three records: 

by Cousin Geoff

The Sun Messengers are one of my favorite local bands.  I’ve written about them a couple times, and cheered them on at Pistons games, where they serve up the funk as the resident house band.

So, I was excited to not only find a 45 by The Sun Messengers that I had never seen, but lo and behold it was another Tigers song to add to the collection.

There’s good parts to this song, like the opening, and the chorus, but the singing is really pretty bad.  The front says it’s The Sun Messengers w/ Tyrone Hamilton and the Bleature Creature Choir.  This Tyrone Hamilton is, I assume, the one singing and it sort of sounds like someone wrote a song about the Tigers and then performed it at a family reunion and the family is too nice not to tell him he can’t sing worth a lick.  I’m guessing that Tyrone Hamilton was one of The Sun Messenger’s friends, and they didn’t have the heart to get someone else to do lead vocals on this track. 

That being said, I really don’t care too much.  In fact, I sort of like it better that it’s kind of bad.  It’s still an awesome song.  The label alone is worth adding to my collection.

What’s that you say, I said the Tigers won again today!

Listen to Tiger Dynasty:

by Max Conroy 

If you refer to my post about the jazz flute, you know that I’m just getting into soul/funk-jazz/fusion.  I’m crazy about the stuff.  It’s also allowed my formerly tepid interest in hip-hip to expand slightly.  It’s like punk rock for me; not the music of course but how I view it.  Some of my favorite music, proto-punk, is the music that led directly to the development of punk rock, but I really don’t like straight punk all that much.  I love the Dead Boys and the Sex Pistols, but both bands were badass rock and roll acts before they were punk.  I love all of this music that’s been sampled a ton or could be sampled if it hasn’t but can take or leave the hip-hop that’s made it famous, so far at least.  As my obsession has grown for the (I’ll call it fusion, to incorporate soul/funk-jazz) fusion over the past few weeks, I’ve purchased a shit ton of great records and thank God some of it can be found cheaply. 

I’d heard of the Ramsey Lewis Trio, but that was probably from hearing them mentioned by NPR DJs a split second, before I slammed the radio off in disgust before my appreciation of fusion.  I totally thought that they were venerated by jazzbos and that they were classic bop, but how wrong I was.  Justin hooked me up with a rough copy of the In Crowd, which is apparently an early soul-jazz classic.  After digging the album, I also noticed that reissues of it are advertized in Waxpoetics, and have noticed the record at numerous shops and online.  I thought that the record would be pricey, but since it obviously sold well for a jazz record and was on Chess’ Argo imprint, it’s insanely cheap.  Like you would pay three times what an OG copy would cost to get the reissue.  Dig the ‘In’ Crowd…

I also recently picked up Ramsey Lewis’ Sun Goddess for cheap.  The cover alone is worth the money, but the music could have been sold in a paper bag and it’d still be sweet.  It’s ten years after the In Crowd and the funk had dropped in the meantime, and it’s obvious on this record, that Lewis was hip to it.  Check out Sun Goddess, Livin’ For the City (the S. Wonder jam) and Jungle Strut…

On the Blue side of things; some Blue Note records from the periphery of their dark days can be got fairly cheaply too.  Some of these records sold very well, which makes them easy to find and cheap, but not bad at all.  For instance, Donald Byrd’s Black Byrd (the best selling record in the entire Blue Note catalogue) and Byrd’s Best are about $10 records; the cover of Black Byrd, depicting a black wedding or hoedown of some sort, ca. 1890 is worth it, and the music’s funky as can be, slightly dated, but that’s a large part of the appeal for me.  I recently acquired Grant Green’s Alive! album, which is a live gig recorded in a small club with Idris Muhammad tearing the place up on drums, for $10.  I’m not as much of a purist as the Cousins and will pick up a reissue or a comp here and there, and found a Grant Green record that was part of the Blue Note Breakbeats series for under $10.  Sometimes on these records, as with every record, there are bum tracks, but it seems more common for jazz records to me, so a comp with six of the most notable tracks by someone can be a good thing.  But I don’t necessarily think that’s true for Grant Green; I’m willing to bet that anything he did in ‘70 and ‘71 with Idris Muhammad on drums is good throughout.  Ronnie Laws‘ Pressure Sensitive must have also sold a shitload because it’s everywhere and it’s cheap.  One of my dad’s buddies gave me his record collection when I was about fifteen.  There were about fifty or so records, all early 70s stoner rock…and Pressure Sensitive.  It’s like the fusion Frampton Comes Alive, but way cooler.  Here are Grant Green’s Sookie Sookie (the Don Covay song) and Ronnie Laws’ Nothing to Lose…

by Cousin Geoff

Frikid Pink is one of those bands that is consistently overlooked and underrated among late 60s Detroit garage rock acts.  I posted before about the Soulbenders and thier version of House of The Rising Sun.  Frijid Pinks’s take on it shows why they were a national act and the Soulbenders were stuck in the West Michigan local dance scene.  And yeah, the Soulbenders recorded on Fenton, and they’re obscure, and that sort of makes them cooler now, but in terms of pure ability, there’s little comparison.

This record, which features their big hit - a guitar-heavy version of House of the Rising Sun, propelled their first, self titled album on Parrot.   This song is the pinnacle of what Frijid Pink was about.  They apparently were so popular in Detroit around 1969 that Led Zeppelin opened for them.  However, you hardly ever hear them mentioned in the same breath as The Rationals, SRC, The Stooges, early Bob Seger, The MC5 - first-team Detroit rock and roll bands from that era.  They seem to be on that second-team list, along with bands like Mitch Ryder, Brownsville Station, or The Frost.  Why is that? 

Listen to House of The Rising Sun:

by Cousin Geoff

Ann Arbor based rock and rollers Brownsville Station had a breakout hit in 1973, with Smokin’ In The Boys Room, rising as high as #3 on the U.S charts that year.  Smokin’ was one of the first teen-angst songs, about pissed off students taking relief by sneaking into the boys room for a smoke.  I like the B side even better, though, a great garage cover of Robert Parker’s classic jam Barefootin’, also done well by The Rationals off their album on Crewe. 

According to Wikipedia, the bass player, Mike Lutz, works at Oz’s music in Ann Arbor and teaches guitar and bass lessons.  That’s awesome!  Mike, if you read this, can you tell us a little more about the band?  Brownsville Station was led by crazy man Cub Coda, whose wild stage antics were well-respected and studied by many, including Alice Cooper.  Can’t you hear School’s Out as the perfect song to play next after Smokin’?

Check out Barefootin’:

And here’s Smokin’ in the Boys Room:

 by Max Conroy

I first heard about the Third Power on this site a long time ago when the Cousins did a write up about their bass player Jem Targal in response to finding a signed copy of his rare solo album Luckey Guy.  I downloaded Believe, the only album released by the Third Power and didn’t feel too bad about it because of the album’s obscurity; I believe that it isn’t too hard to track down on CD though.  The download that I got was ripped from a record and the guy recorded the second side first, which I didn’t realize till finding the vinyl a few weeks ago.  It doesn’t get much better than this if you’re looking for an aggressive, Grande-era Detroit power trio.  I’ve scoped this record every now and then for the past few years on EBay and it seems like every copy that I’ve seen was in Europe, which is odd since it only sold about 16,000 copies, mostly in the Detroit area.

Like the record itself, information regarding the band is pretty rare.  For the most part everything out there is very basic and states that the band formed in Detroit in the late 60s, were very loud, had a cult following, released one record, it flopped, they went their separate ways, the guitarist Drew Abbott went to play lead for Seger’s Silver Bullet Band, and Jem recorded Luckey Guy in the late 70s.  I did find an early biography of Jem Targal, their lead singer and bassist, on someone’s personal website.  The biography reads a bit strange, almost like it’s Targal speaking in the third person (pardon the pun).  According to the site, Targal was born in Ann Arbor, his father studied and taught at the University of Michigan, and when he was young his father accepted a position at the American University of Istanbul and moved his entire family there: ”There were seven families, all related, living in the house together.  Targal’s grandfather, a retired general, was there.  So, too, was Targal’s uncles.  One had been the head of NATO forces for seveal years; the other uncle was a professional wrestler.”  Sounds like a trip, man.  His family moved back to the Detroit area in 1951 and eventually many years later he met Abbott at Oakland Community College in a speed reading class.  Abbott taught Targal the bass and they formed several groups, met their drummer Jim Craig, a solid powerful drummer, and came up with the name the Third Power in the van on the way to their first show together at a club called the Fifth Dimension (a popular venue that had featured Hendrix and the Yardbirds).  Power trio…trio…third…third…power…like to the third power, man…get it?  The band moved into a farmhouse on Haggarty road, between 12 and 13 mile roads.  They were known for having massive parties at their place where rock icons like Rod Stewart and Badfinger would hang out.  The band kept playing around and became very popular in the Detroit area, playing shows with local acts like the Rationals, Seger, and the MC 5.  They signed with Vanguard, who also featured another Detroit act of the era the Frost, in 1969.  The album was produced by poet and blues scholar Sam Charters and came out in 1970.

I almost shit my pants when I saw it in the stack at Encore.  They pile up their new arrivals on the floor against the bins, in front of the register.  I was in there a few days prior to finding it and noticed that they had a massive pile of new arrivals and quickly paid for whatever I had gone in there to find, so as not to be tempted by whatever was in the new stacks.  A few days later I was walking in the neighborhood and decided to go back to see what was left in that pile, and there it was, perfect, in the shrink, bronze Vanguard label.  I bought that and Grant Green’s Alive! for $30 and the dude working there said bye to me using my name off of my credit card.  Respect, mon.  Irie!  I got it for $20; the price guide says $30 mint, but Popsike lists anywhere from $50 to $250 previously on EBay. 

  Read the rest of this entry »

by Cousin Geoff

Reissues are generally not my thing, I’d rather search for the original.  It kind of feels like cheating, and it’s nowhere near the thrill of playing the real deal.  That being said, there is no original album for Fugi’s Mary, Don’t Take Me On No Bad Trip.  Tough City reissued this unreleased acid-funk record in 1996 from Detroiter Ellington Jordan, AKA Fugi, originally meant to be put out by Chess’s Cadet label in 1968, but deemed too trippy for them.  When I came across this, not only was I put off by the fact that it was a reissue, but the cover was terrible.  It looked like a late 1990s Cash Money rap album.  But the writing on the cover was more than enough to convice me:

“From The Vaults of CHESS RECORDS…The legendary unreleased album by the blackballed acid-funkateer.”  OK - sold.

When I put it on, I was absolutely floored.  This is exactly the type of music I seek out.  And this was, dare I say, better than the Detroit funk I had been listening to - early 70s Funkadelic and Temptations, even Dennis Coffee.  The genre of funk that is uniquely Detroit - psychadelic, rootsy, Hendrix-like, but funk at it’s core.  The first Funkadelic record can’t be touched, but this, if it had come out as planned, might be better.  The thing is, I don’t understand why Cadet didn’t release this in 1968.  Fugi was not some ordinary stoned funk musician trying to peddle an album to a top label.  He was an extremely talented song writer who was good friends with Temptation Eddie Kendrix.  In 1968, in addition to messing around with his own stuff while being backed by the band Black Merda, he wrote songs for Chess.  Fugi rubbed shoulders on a daily with Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Donny Hathaway, Jimmy Hendrix and Etta James.  In fact, Fugi wrote the song “I’d Rather Go Blind” (his own version is on this album) for Etta James who turned it into a worldwide hit number one hit, selling 8 million copies.

Fugi did release a few 45s, but it is still puzzling why this album was never put out.  I’m fully convinced that he could have become a star, with more albums following this one, plus tours and the whole shot.  As for the excuse that I’ve heard that it was too trippy, Detroit psych-soul-funk was what was hot a few years later, around 1969-1970, with the pair of Westbound Funkadelic albums, and The Temptations Psychedelic Shack album, among others.  And even if that was the case (which it’s not - it’s perfectly put together and more soul-based funk than psych-rock funk), what about the Cadet Concept label?  This was created and put together by Marshall Chess, son of Chess records co-founder Leonard Chess, for the sole purpose of “concept” albums.  Rotary Connection is maybe the closest and best known example, and they were way more out-there and, in my opinion, not nearly as good as Fugi.  This would have been the perfect album to put on this label, and they flat out blew it.

It’s a crying shame that I had never even heard of Fugi until I stumbled upon this album, although I’m sure the crowd of more seasoned deep funk and soul seekers have known about him even before this was released in ’96.  You can pick this up for like 8 bucks at Tuff City, in fact here is their ebay link for this album.  Tuff City has lots more reissues, they’re based out of New York and are definitely worth checking out.

As for the record, it’s just amazingly good.  I would say it’s worth it to invest the $8 to see for yourself.  I’m just sort of pissed that I won’t be able to search for the original, but as long as I have the music, that’s the most important thing!

listen to “Mary, Don’t Take Me On No Bad Trip”:

listen to “I’d Rather Be a Blind Man”

by Cousin Geoff 

I’ve had this record for a while now and it’s easily one of my favorite dub albums.  If you’re just learning about dub, you could start with King Tubby or Lee Perry, or just prepare for a totally different listening experience - the deconstruction of reggae music. 

Jamaican born Jah Bunny was the drummer for Dennis Bovell, perhaps the UK’s most influencial reggae artist of the 70s and 80s as a band leader for his group Matumbi, as well as a producer and solo artist.  Although Mutumbi was at it’s core a roots band, Dennis Bovell was also very involved in the dub art form, and no doubt his influence rubbed off on Jah Bunny. 

This 1980 private label LP is an adventurous but laid back dub effort, and one I’d highly recommend as a hidden gem for reggae/dub collectors.  It flows pleasantly and coherently through guitar and bass manipulations to compliment Jah Bunny’s rhythmic creations, with no worries and no hurry.  If you want to listen to modern dub that you can just put on, walk away, and fully relax, then look for this one or something similar.  It’s as good a Sunday afternoon listen as it is a late Saturday night one.   

Jah Bunny currently plays drums and percussion, and sings backup vocals for the UK ska/punk band Freetown, a band I would definitely go see if they played in Ypsilanti!

Listen to the lead off track off the Dubs International album, although unless you can turn this way up or put on headphones for the bass, you might not fully appreciate it: