Category Archive

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

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:

Justin has just posted a smallish but nice collection of what I dub the Happy Hippie LP Batch.  Condition looks to be excellent on them.  Mention “Happy Hippie” to Justin and get a discount on shipping.

The art of the drum break.  It’s purpose is to provide the musicians, in this example of the jazz-funk genre, a literal break from the theme that has been expressed repeatedly.  The theme then reaches it’s emotional peak, falls off a cliff - the drummer is then set free to create his/her own expression based on this theme without the hinderance of other instruments, and to get all the hippies in the crowd doing their crazy dance.  Usually the bass player is the first to pick back up and join the solo drummer, followed by the rest of the musicians.  When the rest finally join in, it is with great relief and triumph, where they restate their earlier repeated expression with great enthusiasm.  The result is the song gone full circle, with the repeated musical phrase now thrust back full force, the break well needed in order to give greater appreciation to the initial theme.

For two examples of how the drum break is utilized by a pair of Detroit jazz-funk bands, listen to the , and

Read my previous post for for more info on breaks and how to breakdance.

The elusive Max Conroy, Cousin Justin’s former roommate at MSU, has emerged from hiding somewhere in Chicago to contribute to the site.  Check his comments and reviews on the Heart Ache blog.  As the story goes, Max was a hobo in a past life.  He hopped trains and ate beans from a can by the campfire, and liked to settled down to watch the sunset with a bottle of cheap wine in his hand.  He once stabbed a man over the love of his life.  In his current life, he loves music and books and is a true Cousin in spirit.  We are trying to get Max to be a regular writer/contributer to the site.  We miss Max, and wish he would come back home to visit. 

I remember the time where I went to East Lansing to visit Justin and Max and we jammed in the basement.  We all sucked, but boy did we play our hearts out.  Max was on guitar, me and Justin were on drums and harmonica, and the rest of the people hanging out did whatever.  We played all night and God knows how we sounded at the peak of it all.  I swear we figured out the secrets of the universe that night.

I’m listening to the Grateful Dead’s self titled live album right now.  Me and Justin have been diggin’ the Dead recently.  Dispite the current hipster attitude towards hatin’ on hippies, I don’t see how you can hate on the Grateful Dead.  They were good for a reason.  Quit trying to deny the facts of the world.  The Grateful Dead are immortal.  And hippies shouldn’t be hated on.  That’s just jealously.   

Now excuse me while I go fix up a veggie burrito.

-Cousin Geoff

Let me start by saying these things:

1) All Music Guide gave this album 2 out of 5 stars, but didn’t describe it in a review. 

2) It sells on ebay for about $15-20, pretty decent but something of this genre could go a bit higher - closer to $40-50.

3) AudiophileUSA.com says this: “Beautiful 1972 Gatefold sleeve . A Hard To Find LP With An Excellent Blending Of Heavy African Rhythms And San Francisco Psych With A Good Measure Of Fuzz Lead Guitar.”

4) I like both African and funk music, so an unheard Afro-funk early 70s LP sounded pretty sweet to me.  So instead of selling it, I snatched it up, something Justin and I do as part of our “compensation” for owning Cousins and doing the job.

When I first listened to this album, I started out on side 2 by chance.  And this is why I didn’t get past much of the rest of the album.  The first song on side 2, titled Gone With Yesterday, is frickin’ awesome.  A definite future mix-tape centerpiece, a song blended of afro-beat, reggae, folk, and 70s soul.  Has a haunting guitar in the background which sounds Indian or Egyptian that just keeps improvising and then cuts to a solo after the first vocal verse.  And then keeps going until you’re totally feelin’ it.  The music is strangely happy and positive although the vocals say, “Yesterday, you gave me happiness, happiness, that’s all I need, to get me happy, but Today, my happiness is gone, with yesterday, with yesterday, ohhh everything, with yesterday.”  And then the next song continues this mood theme and goes off into a terrific all instrumental afro-funk jazzy jam (Hippies, you’d like this). 

And the rest of side two is just kick-ass.  I can’t go wrong if I’m deciding what to throw on and I choose this side.  I can listen to a fantastic single and then jam the rest of the way through the record, djembes and everything.  Psychedelic Afro-funk!  Which is so good and I go to flip the record, but, strangely, side 1 is dissapointing.  Because I expect it to be better than side 2, cuz it’s side 1 of this awesome record. 

But it’s more subdued, less exciting, and the first song completely stops the pulse of the record so far (if listened to from side 2 first).  It’s like an introduction to who they are, with a lame slow drum intro and then some music to kind of show us what we’re about to hear.  And then the songs sound choppy and mixed up.  They can’t decide if they want to make more songs like, Yesterday, or jam out like they do so well.  The first two songs with vocals suck, and then they start jamming for a song, which sounds sweet.  And then the next song goes to a half jam/half Yesterday, which sucks again.  And the last song of side 1 is a chant, and kinda sucks too.

So I think if this album was contructed better and the actual concept was re-evaluated the album would be a classic in 70s Afro-funk.  As it stands, side 2 is so good that the album is definitely still worth checking out.

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.

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