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by Cousin Geoff
Hamilton Bohannon moved to Detroit in the 60s after Stevie Wonder hired him to be his drummer. After splitting from Stevie, he capitalized on his bandleading abilites and signed onto Dakar. Bohannon then put out some incredibly funky dance records in the early to mid 70s, among them this LP titled “Insides Out”.
This was one of the leftovers that I snatched up after it didn’t sell at auction, mainly because it’s on a crazy Korean bootleg label, like the rest of them were (I also took home a Korean pressing of Maggot Brain, so ghetto that it was listed as Funk Adelic on the typewritten label, and filled with misspellings and botched song titles). But I’ll take this copy of Insides Out until I can upgrade, because it’s a fun, funky, groovy record. I put it on for the first time while hanging out with my 6 month old daughter, and she bounced and squealed in her Johnny Jump-Up as I played the djembe while the record blasted. My wife was out so we jammed on and on. And that is what Bohannon does on this record, he picks up a groove, lays it down and just keeps it going.
He’s joined by fellow Detroiters LeRoy Emmanuel and Mose Davis of The Counts. The first side is like one big all-nighter, while the b-side is much more mellow, mostly love songs. It’s worth it to seek out this album for the a-side though, and you’ll see easily see the inspiration for modern electronic music. When you’ve got the funk and you’re holding it down, why let go?
Check out Foot-Stompin’ Music (about half of the 7:00 min. + track):
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 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.
by Max Conroy:
The Go’s latest album Howl On the Haunted Beat You Ride is a fantastic record that doesn’t seem to get much credit, and I live in the land where it was made. Shamefully, until I moved to back to Michigan this past August I’d never heard of them and the way that I heard of them was from a magazine published in the UK, Mojo. Mojo gave the record a four star review and the write up was good; garage, overlooked band, Detroit, etc. There was also a picture of the record’s cover accompanying the review that pretty much guaranteed that I’d look for it. It’s perfectly psychedelic: two huge hipster faces with lifeless hipster expressions, flanking the jacket; the entire band arranged vertically in the center of it, all wearing black or stripes; their far out logo in the upper left; a brown and orange, early mid 60s to early 70s, color motif; all of this on a hazy blanket of stars. I know being interested in a record because of its packaging might be a bit careless, but this record is so cool looking and feeling that I’d be happy to own it even if the music sucked, which it most certainly doesn’t. It’s on Cass records (Cass is a street/area in Detroit for all you non-local readers), which I’ve never heard of, but they totally knocked the ball out of the park on this one. It’s a gatefold with super heavy boards, it feels like it’s a record made in the 50s, and has great graphics pasted inside along with the lyrics.
The Go formed in Detroit in 1998. Jack White was an early member of the band and is featured on their debut Whatcha Doin’, playing lead guitar and singing back up. I had read somewhere that they kicked Jack White out of the band, which would be one to tell the grandchildren: Yeah, I was in a band back in the day…and we kicked Jack White out of the group…We could have been rich! I’m pretty sure that he just left the band because he didn’t want to be a sideman. I have no idea if there is any bad blood as a result of the split, but the Go wasn’t on the White compiled fantastic comp. Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit. There is footage the Go out there playing live during the JW era on an obscure movie called the Detroit Rock Movie, which also has footage of JW jamming Stop Breakin’ Down in his tiny Detroit apartment. If any of you out there have a copy of this movie, I’d be happy to receive one; please respond to this post. Anyway, Whatcha Doin’ was released on Sub Pop and is a great debut record on the noisy side of the garage. They made a follow up for Sub Pop called Free Electricity that was never released because it was allegedly too heavy, which has to be bull shit…too heavy for Sub Pop? I found a copy of it on Soulseek and it’s definitely worth finding. I think there were other reasons Sub Pop shelved it though; one song starts with the lyric, “Big cock angel”. They were ultimately dropped from Sub Pop and put out a more focused rehashing of 60s garage and 70s glam on Lizard King, called The Go. The group then waited four years to put out another record, the brilliant Howl on the Haunted On the Haunted Beat You Ride, which AMG has listed as coming out in April of 2007, but I’m pretty sure it was more like late summer and they still haven’t reviewed it.
Howl On the Haunted Beat You Ride represents the Go fully coming into their own. The music is derivative of 60s psych and 70s glam to be sure, but they certainly make it theirs. The production on this record is simply amazing and it was produced by Bobby Harlow, their front man, in Detroit. The album utilizes clean tones, trippy imagery, and classic CSN-like harmonies with great effect (and I really dislike CSN). The bizarro-poetic title comes from the song Yer Stoned Italian Cowboy, a romp about an irresitible character that “shoots directly from the Id”. Fucking brilliant! In my opinion, there’s only one bum track on this record and that’s the lead off song called You Go Bangin’ On, which was released as a single, so I might be missing something. But don’t listen to the first thirty seconds of this record and file it away. I bought this record seven months ago and the Go haven’t played around here since to my knowledge, until this past Saturday where they played at Gold: a fund raiser for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
by Max Conroy:
![silver-flute-6[1].gif](http://cousinsvinyl.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/silver-flute-6[1].gif)
Until very recently I’ve not really paid much attention to jazz. As a matter of fact, jazz has almost bothered me for about the past decade. I used to listen to it back in the day, from about sixteen to nineteen. Man, reading the Beats and playing the Bird and Diz, that was it. Also, throwing on 102.1 FM to hear Bob Parlocha, after dropping off my last friend that needed a ride home, for the hazy drive back to the nest was also pretty great. But I got into rock and roll heavy. And my girl can’t stand jazz and I am ashamed to say that I kind of didn’t want to hear it if I were to get into it. NPR also ruined jazz for me for a little while there too. I know every NPR station is different and some have very well rounded programming, but not the ones that I’ve listened to in the past, 90.5 FM WKAR in East Lansing and 91.5 WBEZ in Chicago. Both of these stations when not playing classical or the typical syndicated shows like Car Talk, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered, play jazz exclusively. WBEZ would play like six hours of jazz on a Sunday afternoon, starting at 11 AM, right when I’d want to hear some talk radio or a comedy show. And they wouldn’t play any of the shit that I’ve been getting into lately at all.
Justin turned me onto Waxpoetics around Christmas time and I’ve devoured the last few issues. I’ve, as a result, come to the realization that there is more jazz out there than bebop and free jazz. Soul-jazz and funk-jazz are legitimate categories that I’ve been blind to as a result of my prejudice. That’s where all the badass samples came from in the heyday of hip-hop. I had no idea what Blue Note turned into in the late 60s: a jazz label that put out soul and funk records. I also had no idea that there were people like Eddie Harris out there: check out the article about him in the latest Waxpoetics and also check out Swiss Movement and Silver Cycles, two of his albums. I read about Blue Note’s Droppin’ Science record somewhere in Waxpoetics, a double record best of Blue Note’s records sampled by hip-hop artists, and ordered a copy. I’m obsessive when it comes to learning about music, so I’ve been taking some stabs in the dark based on the list of guys on Droppin’ Science in the time that it’s taken to get here. I found Grant Green’s Alive! at Encore and got a reissue of Lou Donaldson’s Alligator Boogaloo, which the Sugarman Three’s Sugar’s Boogaloo (one of the records that launched Daptone, the first one featuring Gabriel Roth) pays homage to. Both kick ass to be sure.
I’m not sure if any of you have seen the Anchorman with Will Farrell, but it illustrates what my thoughts are regarding the flute perfectly. I tense up whenever I hear a flute on a jazz, soul or funk record no matter how appropriate to the song it seems. One of the guys on Droppin’ Science that I looked for around town in the past week was Jeremy Steig. I found a couple of his records at Encore, pulled one up out of the bin and quickly dropped it and piled the records on it hoping no one had seen me even looking at it. First off, he’s a flautist (I feel strange typing that word); second he looks like a weasely, mustachioed, Yoga instructor. I’d have to wait to get the comp in the mail to hear this guy. When I got the record today, I was shocked to hear the hook from the Beastie Boys’ Get It Together and how raw and primal the actual song was, how rock and roll. Based on the intensity of his playing, he sounds like he could go ten rounds with Hemmingway.
Jeremy Steig’s Howling for Judy from Droppin’ Science, originally off of Wayfaring Stranger/Legwork
Eddie Harris’ I’m Gonna Leave You By Yourself off of Silver Cycle
by Max Conroy:
Today’s generation probably has a rough time of it when it comes to collecting some older rock records. I’m 28 and most of the people my age whose parents didn’t listen to oldies stations in the car don’t have the same reference point that I do with some classic and oft overlooked oldies and classic rock. Groups like the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Dave Clark Five, Manford Mann, the Turtles, Tokens, all that shit’s drifting further into obscurity. They’re part of the mortar-pocked no man’s land of 60’s pop acts that were popular then that haven’t been fortunate enough to have a significant cult following, like the Nuggets garage bands or a constant following like the Stones or the Dead. Some of these bands are truly great and don’t deserve the dustbin quite yet.
I was watching the Dead Boys Live at CBGBs DVD’s extras and Stiv Bators was asked what bands were his influences: uuuh, Iggy Pop, all of his bands, the early Stooges, ya know, the New York Dolls, I really like the New York Dolls, and Paul Revere & the Raiders, yeah Paul Revere & the Raiders, they’re for me. What? I can definitely see Iggy and the Dolls, but Paul Revere & the Raiders. I remembered that there was a bar where I went to college called Paul Revere’s and naturally they had a Paul Revere & the Raiders CD on the jukebox; their version of Stepping Stone was one that I’d play every time I went there. Stepping Stone rocked, but I assumed it was a fluke or something. I watched this interview a few years back and have had it in the back of my mind ever since to pick up one of their records and finally got around to it a month or so ago. I picked up their first album on Colombia Here They Come! from 1965 for $2. Frankly the record store didn’t have much else to offer, I was hung over and didn’t have attention span for proper digging and this record was in their new arrivals bin.
Half of the record is live and half is studio. It apparently took Colombia two years after signing them to release a full-length record; they released numerous singles that were regional hits in the Northwest. The Northwest was a shockingly good area for R & B influenced garage acts. It was home to the Wailers, the Sonics and the Kingsmen to name a few, and these bands were fiercely competitive, constantly playing against each other in battle of the bands competitions. So by the time this album was released, the band had been together for the better part of eight years, breaking up briefly after Revere was drafted, and had developed a powerful live act as the first side of this record testifies. Paul Revere was the keyboardist’s real name, he was usurped as the lead singer after Mark Lindsay joined the band, and was at the age where rock stars die, 27, when this record was released.
It’s about a three star album, certainly worth the $2. The live side swings with reckless abandon and the studio side has a protopunk/pop jangle to it, so it’s no wonder the latter-day Flamin’ Groovies chose to cover the track Sometimes. The Raiders’ version has a lot more character though.
Sometimes
You Can’t Sit Down
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*Cousin Geoff adds:
We get their records in quite a bit, but at the same time they sell fast too. We have the greatests hits album in the store, you can buy it here.
by Max Conroy:
I have a copy of Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock and Soul, which lists his top 1001 singles, in my bathroom. It’s great. It was written in 1989 and includes a lot of doo wop, soul and early rock greats like Nathaniel Mayer and Nolan Strong that don’t get a whole lot of mention outside of fanatical circles. I’ve always been a fan of the first Cramps EP, particularly the song The Way I Walk and never knew who did it originally. Low and behold, there it is on page 530, Jack Scott. Flush.
The other day I was divining through the book much like Romans would do with Virgil’s Aenead and came to Something in the Air by Thunderclap Newman. You know the song. Tom Petty covered it on his greatest hits album, it was in Almost Famous and a shit-ton of other movies and TV shows (check Wikipedia for a more comprehensive list). I’ve heard the name Thunderclap Newman before and have heard the song probably once a year that I’ve noticed since I got Petty’s Greatest Hits album in junior high but never put the two together. The story of the band it turns out is an interesting paragraph.
The band was formed allegedly by Pete Townshend to help out former crony/roadie John “Speedy” Keen, who had written the leadoff track on the Who Sell Out, to record some of his songs. Townshend recruited a postal worker/jazz pianist Andy “Thunderclap” Newman and a fifteen year-old Scottish guitarist Jimmy McCulloch. The single Something in the Air went to number one in England and to twenty-five in the US. The subsequently recorded album Hollywood Dream, which was produced by Townshend and contained the brilliant single, received absolutely no support (the band played live five times) and peaked at 163 on Billboard. The band members really didn’t have that much in common and ceased recording together, leaving a top notch album for posterity. Speedy Keen went on to record a few solo albums and to produce Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers LAMF and had a heart attack in his mid fifties and died, Thunderclap recorded one in ‘71 and McCulloch went on to play with numerous bands, including Wings, and eventually died of a heroin overdose at twenty-six.
The album is one that I’d probably glance over if I saw it in a stack and didn’t know anything about it. It is truly great and I highly recommend picking it up. You probably won’t have any luck at Encore though.
Here’s the hit
Here’s another jam for some flavor, Look Around
jsREVIEW:
Recorded in ‘79, this rune-titled album (see also: Led Zep) sounds less like the food co-op drum circle that the back cover photos might evoke and more like a shambolic Fela Kuti fusion groove-out.
The first strength is Robbel Kuyper’s polyrhythmic percussion, which overlays congas and surdo over Tom Kalep’s crisp and simple drumming. On top of that, David Reinstein busts out a surprisingly well-toned tenor and soprano sax bed for the melody (though given the four folks credited with multiple and overlapping melodic instruments, it’s hard to tell who did what when). Toss in some uplifting lyrics echoed beyond, and Prismatic at their heights sound like an accoustic Funkadelic circa ‘72, just gang-tackling you with the drugged out lurve, man.
And before evaluating whether this album is for you, lemme let you know my bias— I think the weakest parts sound like Stevie Wonder’s middling Innervisions ballads, which I hate. The smoove which occassionally posessed him does sieze Prismatic too, and those moments (like the intro to “S.m.i.l.e. [Dedicated to Timothy Leary]) bore the hell out of me. Maybe it’s because of that soprano sax, which has a hard time not sounding smoove. Anyway, a lot of people like Innervisions, so whatever.
Prismatic also have a bit of the ADD going on, which is mostly a blessing in their case, as it tends to keep the dreaded slick r&b from taking over things too much before they bust out a slap bass and freak out, and since they’re just so goddamned uplifting you can’t hold anything against ‘em.
Especially when they turn out tracks like “Nothinkg” (sic), which sounds like Material have quantum-lept into The Fixx in some sort of alternate funkverse, or “Huna” which is what Frank Zappa might have written if he could have ever gotten high and relaxed.
A solid jam album from a time before Phish, this one’s equally suited to chill-out rooms or as a gift to your hippy mama, and is flavored with enough funk to make anyone with toes to tap smile.
jsREVIEW:
The first thing to do: Turn up your bass.
Now turn it up again.
This is a sexy, funky, bassy, sticky, strutting, fucking album.
“They say I’m nasty, they say I’m wild… Say you will, say you will..” Davis sings on “If I’m In Luck You Might Pick Me Up,” the album’s opener. Davis was nasty, was wild, to the point where religious groups picketted her shows. While she’s rarely overtly raunchy, especially by today’s standards, the permeating sexuality that oozes from her Tina Turner growls and the sparse, punchy basslines would make Bill Clinton blush, and would still earn her brickbats if any of the Religious Right were listening.
By the time this self-titled debut came out, Davis had already had songs written about her (the “Mademoiselle Mabry” of then-husband Miles’ Filles De Kilimanjaro), and was credited with introducing Miles to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, leading to his dark funk rebirth.
Miles would divorce her because she was too wild and too sexy, and on “Anti-Love Songs,” the throbbing bass underscores this perception. Davis isn’t gonna love you because she’d fuck you so hard you’d break, and on “Your Man, My Man,” she’s more dangerous than Me’Shell NdegéOcello ever dreamed of being.
It’s not just Betty on this either, as she’s backed by the very best and funkiest musicians of the time: Larry Graham (bass) and Greg Errico (drums) of the Family Stone, The Pointer Sisters sing backup, Doug Rodrigues an Neal Shon of Santana’s band, classic sessioners like Merl Saunders and Hershall Kennedy make this the Avengers of funk and are the best band since Motown’s Funk Brothers.
This is the Just Sunshine Records first pressing, making this a bit rarer than the usual Vinyl Experience or MPC pressings, and if the rest of Cousins Vinyl would let me, this’d be mine. It’s almost a tearful parting, putting it up for sale, but goddamn… Just give it a good home, OK? Put it on any time you need to fill the floor or have the dirtiest sex of your life.
