Category Archive

Nathaniel Mayer was a giant of Detroit’s almost forgotten Soul history.  He is best remembered for his scorching vocals on a hit he recorded for Fortune Records when he was just eighteen years-old, “Village of Love.”  The record was licensed to United Artists for national distribution and sold well, which makes it one of the easiest records to find on the Fortune Records label.  Sadly after recording a number of records that didn’t do nearly as well as “Village of Love,” partially due to the lack of major distribution, he faded into obscurity and hardship on Detroit’s east side.

There was a happy ending to Mayer’s story however.  He performed at a Detroit “Legends” concert in 2000 and eventually put out a new record on Fat Possum in 2004, “I Just Want to be Held.”  He had no access to the Internet and had no clue that he had a substantial following, including some members of the Midwestern Blues and Garage revival.  Members of the Black Keys and the Detroit Cobras played on his last two records; his last album was “Why Don’t You Give It to Me?” released in 2007 by Alive.  Both records are well worth searching out, but don’t expect to hear the bombastic tenor of “Village of Love”; his voice had turned into a unique rasp over the years and the overall sound on the records runs the gamut of the Blues and R & B spectrum.

Mayer suffered several strokes on April 13th and has struggled since in a nursing home in Detroit.  He passed away at age 64 on Saturday, but his music lives on here in the Village of Love.

Village of Love

Dancing Mood

By Max Conroy

Towards the end of the summer, I went home.  In this case, home is where the stuff is, as my mom sold the home where I grew up a few years ago and we moved everything to our house in northern Michigan, where my mom grew up.  So every time I go up north, I rummage through neatly labeled boxes in the basement, under the stairs, that contain all the crap I’ve left behind over time to see what I can bring back with me.  This strikes fear into my girlfriend’s heart because I have a tendency to accumulate books, movies, and records and she’s worked very hard to thwart my progress.  There were a few books and records that I was specifically looking for that I found right away, and I noticed a box that had my dad’s old 45s, and took it upstairs to look through while watching some of the Olympics.

I really didn’t have much hope for what I’d find in my dad’s records.  I’ve gone through them dozens of times and have taken everything that I thought might possibly be cool long ago.  But in the past year, I’ve gained an appreciation for the 45 and have learned a lot about what to look for.  Also, my dad didn’t like cool music.  I specifically remember asking him when I was a teenager what his favorite band was and he said the Eagles.  He liked stuff like the Oak Ridge Boys and the Pointer Sisters and the 1970s Elvis. 

Everything in the box from the 70s on was of no interest, but I started to notice some R & B records from the early to mid 60s; stuff on Chex, Tamla, Wand, Nasco, even Stax.  I also started to notice that there were duplicates of certain records, which I thought was odd.  This was like stepping into the Twilight Zone because I could have sworn these records weren’t there the several times that I’d looked through them before.  Could my dad have liked real Soul music at one time?

Eventually I came across a 45 where there were about a half dozen copies, which seemed very strange.  The band on the label, Lee Records out of Lansing, Michigan, was the Marauders; and the songs Lovin’ and Nightmare.  Garage Rock?  With a name like the Marauders and such moronic song titles, it had to be.  I was weirded out for a second, put a couple copies of the record in the pile to take home and forgot about it till I made it back home to my turntable.

My mind was blown when I put it on: rudimentary guitar, monotonous vocals, primitive drums, unbelievably simple lyrics.  This was quintessential Garage Rock, akin to the best stuff found on comps like Pebbles and Back from the Grave.  I attempted to do some research online, but couldn’t find anything on the Marauders of Michigan.  I found a bunch of references to bands throughout the Midwest called the Marauders, but none were from Michigan or mentioned this single.  One article even states that a group called the Marauders decided to change their name mid-tour because there were so many bands with the name in the area.  I tried searching for information on Lee Records from Lansing, Michigan and the songwriting geniuses responsible for this masterpiece, Remington and Anschuetz, but found nothing.  There are two listings of the record on Popsike, both from 2004, with no information about the band or the label.

Unfortunately my dad past away a few years back, so I’ll probably never know what in hell he was doing with at least six un-played copies of such an unusual record.  Maybe he knew the guys in the band?  He used to own an appliance store that sold some records, so maybe he bought someone’s collection, maybe one of the guys in the band?  I doubt very much that he would have thought the record collectable back in the day.  I asked my mom about it and she didn’t have any idea, but said that she remembered my aunt saying something about some of her records getting mixed in with my dad’s when he took them from my grandmother’s house.  Perhaps I’ll ask her about it; perhaps I’ll just assume that my dad was young once and bought some records that seem cool 40 plus years later…but six copies of one very, very rare 45? 

Lovin’

Nightmare

CLICK HERE TO BID ON THIS RECORD

posted by Max Conroy: 

For my birthday this year, I’m getting a subscription to Mojo from my girlfriend.  She’s in grad. school so she promised a modest gift.  A subscription to Mojo isn’t that modest at $9.50 per issue; this one may have been more expensive due to the CD pertaining to the Stones-theme of this month’s issue.  I’m about to illustrate why this magazine is the coolest gift ever to a person who will practically sniff the print to find out about a cool band they haven’t ever heard of.  I’m also about to illustrate obsessive-compulsive behavior.

I clutched the magazine in my greedy hands on the morning celebrating my twenty-eighth year on this earth and began flipping pages, doing some recon…Piper at the Gates of Dawn reissue, expensive…Keith Richards interview, sweet…Def Leppard, blah…Stevie Nicks, puke.  I stopped on a photo of a fleshy, bearded man with his face painted.  He looked like he could be King Diamond’s psychedelic uncle.  My girlfriend asked who the freak was.  After reading a bit, I learned that it was Roy Wood, founding member of The Move and ELO.  Never heard of him.  I liked ELO as a casual guilty pleasure and had heard of The Move mostly through reference to other groups like Hendrix and Pink Floyd, seeing them basically on old concert posters sharing the bill with these titans.  I read the single page interview with some interest, gathering that The Move’s albums are acclaimed, he was only in ELO briefly, formed a group named Wizzard after leaving the latter band, and is bitter about ELO continuing without him and The Move touring now under that name, also without him.  The impetus of the interview is the reissue of the first two Move albums and a solo album of his from ‘73 (recorded in ‘69).  I soon forgot about what I’d read and tried my hardest to erase it for good that night with plenty of free booze supplied by some gracious friends. 

The next day I found myself in the best local record shop, perhaps the best in the state, wandering aimlessly.  I’d found a record-size Goat’s Head Soup poster picturing a severed goat’s head floating in a bubbling cauldron for $3, which I knew my girlfriend would never ever allow my to hang anywhere.  The record store in my home town had this same picture hanging up near it’s cash register for years and it used to perplex me when I was much younger…I couldn’t understand the concept of Goat’s Head Soup.  I kept browsing to find something else to buy with the morbid picture so as not to seem weird and noticed that the record that they were playing was good.  I found a record to buy, but I wasn’t entirely sure about it.  The record they were playing kept getting better and better.  I wanted that record, but pride kept me from asking who it was.  Then it hit me, this could be The Move, obviously English, right era.  I walked by the counter and overheard one of the geeks explaining to a young co-worker that Roy Wood was the founding member and that they were really great, one of the other geeks was singing to the record while sorting new merchandise.  I made a bee line to the M’s and found a Move record, a cheap English compilation that would have to do.  Can you walk up to the counter and demand to buy what they’re playing?  I took the record home and was surprised by how good it sounded, but not surprised that I had to put the picture of the goat’s head in with the album and filed away, seldom to be seen.  I also attempted to find their first two albums online, which proved to be a pain in the ass: there were only a few people out there that had them and they had several hundred people in line waiting do download. 

Back at the record store a few days later, looking for something totally unrelated to Roy Wood, an ingenious thought occurred to me, maybe they restocked the record after spinning it.  Sure as shit.  Shazam!  $9. Ok.

Stay tuned for a review of this gem…for now, listen to Move: