In the early ‘70s, Seals & Crofts (Jim Seals and “Dash” Crofts) had a string of hit singles in the style of soft rock – now often called Yacht Rock. The hits included “Summer Breeze” (#6), “Hummingbird” (#20), and “Diamond Girl” (#6).
Those hits came from their 4th and 5th albums. The first few were much less popular, even though they contained some pretty good tunes.
The early album that always interested me was record #2 – Down Home (1970). The thing that initially interested me in Down Home was their backing band. John Hall of Orleans and No Nukes fame played guitar. John Simon played piano. He produced The Band’s first two albums and Janis Joplin’s Cheap Thrills with Big Brother and the Holding Company. Harvey Brooks played bass. You may recognize Brooks’ from his work with Bob Dylan (Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited) and as a member of Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield’s Electric Flag. And let’s not forget Paul Harris who played organ with Stephen Still’s Manassas and Joe Walsh’s Barnstorm. That’s quite a group!
My pick for the SotW is “Hollow Reed.”
In the oral history The Yacht Rock Book, by Greg Prato, Hall conveys his role in the recording:
Seals & Crofts wanted me to be the ‘coloration guy.’ So, I would not only take solos, but I would set up some weird sound effect stuff in the background, with feedback and slide guitars, through all kinds of effects – I’ve got an Echoplex and a compressor into a Leslie, and play the guitar with a slide through all that stuff. It wound up being… especially there is a song called ‘Hollow Reed’ on that record, that I did some of the most out there guitar playing that I recall doing.
Bloomsday was last Thursday, June 16th. Bloomsday you ask? Yes, Bloomsday celebrates the date that Leopold Bloom’s adventures take place in the renowned novel, Ulysses, by James Joyce. Joyce picked this date as the setting for his novel because it was also the day he had his first date with the woman that was to become his wife, Nora Barnacle.
So how does James Joyce or Ulysses connect with the SotW? Kate Bush recorded a great song titled “The Sensual World” that was inspired by the famous last chapter of Ulysses – Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. The soliloquy captures Molly’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts as she lies in bed next to her husband Leopold. It is written with little punctuation to illustrate the s-o-c technique, and for many years held the record as the longest sentence in published literature.
Bush’s original idea was to set the soliloquy to music but the Joyce estate nixed that idea. So she wrote her own lyrics to capture the essence of the soliloquy, allowing Molly to jump out of the pages and have a voice.
Stepping out of the page into the sensual world Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world
And then our arrows of desire rewrite the speech, mmh, yes And then he whispered would I, mmh, yes Be safe, mmh, yes, from mountain flowers? And at first with the charm around him, mmh, yes He loosened it so if it slipped between my breasts He’d rescue it, mmh, yes And his spark took life in my hand and, mmh, yes I said, mmh, yes But not yet, mmh, yes Mmh, yes Mmh, yes
In 2011, the Joyce estate granted her permission to use the actual text and she rerecorded “The Sensual World”, renamed “Flower of the Mountain”.
Molly Bloom’s soliloquy was also captured in popular culture by The Firesign Theatre, my favorite comedy group. Their routine “How Can You Be In Two Palces At Once, When You’re Not Anywhere At All” is the “odyssey” of the character Ralph Spoilsport. The bit ends with phrases lifted directly from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy (just like Ulysses ended). Brilliant!!!
In the late ‘60s, at the height of the “horn band” craze, musician/songwriters Aram Schefrin and Michael Zager hooked up with Genya Ravan to form Ten Wheel Drive. The name refers to the 10 person lineup in the band.
Ravan was a pioneer woman in rock with her all-female band Goldie and the Gingerbreads. Except for Ravan, the ability to read music was a requirement for joining the band. These were serious musicians.
In her 2004 autobiography, Lollipop Lounge: Memoirs of a Rock and Roll Refugee, Ravan tells of an early gig at the Fillmore East where she aroused her audience when she shed her see-through jacket and continued to perform with her painted breasts exposed.
I have the band’s first two albums in my collection and I’m partial to the second – Brief Replies (1970). It contains their version of “Stay With Me”, the original of which was released by Lorraine Ellison and was the subject of a SotW post on September 19, 2015.
Today’s choice for SotW is “Pulse.”
It features a driving beat and exploits the group’s great horn players.
Brief Replies has the sax player Dave Liebman in the horn section. Liebman went on to record and release several excellent jazz fusion albums that are worth checking out, including Lookout Farm (1974).
Ravan currently hosts a SiriusXM show, Goldie’s Garage, on Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel.
A few weeks ago I saw St Paul and the Broken Bones for the second time at the Fox Theater in Oakland. Paul and the band are at the top of their game. Paul is a terrific singer and entertainer and the band is tight!
St Paul (Janeway) got his nickname from his bass playing bandmate, Jesse Phillips, because he doesn’t have many vices. Janeway has said “I’ve never drank, or smoked, or anything like that. He thought that would be funny and, of course, with the preacher background, it’s kind of tongue-in-cheek. And the Broken Bones comes from the first song that me and Jesse ever wrote in his living room. It was called ‘Broken Bones and Pocket Change,‘ and the line goes ‘All she left me with was broken bones and pocket change. So all she left me with was hardly any money and this band.’ So it kind of worked out that way.”
Yes, it’s true that growing up in Alabama, St Paul was raised in the church with little exposure to the outside world. “The only secular music that I heard at all was a ‘70s group called the Stylistics, and Sam Cooke. That was about it. The rest of it was all gospel music. When I was about 10 years old, I was groomed to be a minister. My goal in life until I was about 18 years old was to be a preacher.”
He later spent time working as a mechanic and trained to be an accountant, all the while dabbling in music. When his first EP, recorded with Phillips, gained some notice, they decided to go all in.
Today’s SotW is “Call Me”, a concert favorite from his 2014 release Half the City.
The Music Musings and Such blog raves about “Call Me” writing:
From the first seconds, horns burst and pervade against a plinking guitar line. At first, it is quite tender and composed; delicate strings and emotive brass do their work, before the song is opened up and strikes. With its Motown-flavoured sounds, there is an energy whipped up that not only gets you to your feet, but puts you in mind of some of the late, greats- Otis Redding came to mind, initially. Janeway, however, is his own man, and with a powerful and crackling soul tone, he lays bare his emotions. Early words talk of realisations and emotional ground; with some ambiguity and mystery laid in, cards are being kept close to chests: “This ain’t the heartache/That I thought I knew/This ain’t the party/That I thought we do“. The band aptly and deftly support out hero, eliciting a smooth, sexy and powerful composition, that blends their components together. Percussion is steady but driving; guitar and bass is uplifting (and funky, somehow); in the midst of brass notes which swirl and sway. In the video for the song, our hero stands by the mic., side-stepping and arm-waving. Entranced by the rhythm (and perhaps his own voice) the band play around him- the boys never let the smile drop. Whether the song is surveying a broken relationship or is a calling card to a desired sweetheart, I am unsure, but you get some oblique- yet evocative- images and words summoned up; everything is pure but filthy; direct yet withdrawn. Sentiments such as “You got your limit/Baby I got mine/Six Eleven/Three Three Six Nine” perhaps have a lot more sweat than sweetness; our hero roars and powers through each line, ensuring that it fully hits home. It seems that there is some resistance around town; that some tongues are talking- causing ruction and anger in Janeway’s mind. Leonine of voice, evisceration and laceration are words that come to mind; truths are being laid down, and a weight is exorcised from his soul.
St Paul and the Broken Bones have appeared on all the late night TV shows and performed “A Change is Gonna Come” with Lizzo at SXSW in 2014.
