Mind Garage – Island Of Ely
Mind Garage – Emotions
Mind Garage – Recessional

So, I thought last week’s Dig Deep was going to be my last record for 2012, turns out the Christmas season was very kind to me and I was able to get a few more records to add to my haul for 2012 (on Melting Pot this Sunday I’ll be playing some of the best records I dug up over the year, in addition to short tributes to Marva Whitney and Fontella Bass). With that extra cash, THIS is what ended up being the final record I got this year. Mind Garage was a relatively short lived outfit out of West Virginia. They are notable for being one of the first bands to perform/record “Christian Rock” with their “Electric Liturgy.” That piece is featured on this album, their second (why it didn’t end up on their debut, when the band apparently had started performing it as early as 1968 and it led directly to their record deal is a mystery to me), and it stands up nicely against the other candidate for early Christian based rock music, David Axelrod’s Mass In F Minor, nominally credited to the Electric Prunes.

On Again!, the band features mostly hard psych’n’roll on the first side, unfortunately (at least for my tastes) with too many covers instead of original tracks. The originals that are there, including “Emotion” and “Isle of Ely” are pretty fantastic. As a major fan of Axelrod, it’s perhaps not surprising that I’m not nearly as fond of Mind Garage’s “Electric Liturgy,” but I do think it ends on a super high breaktastic note with the “Recessional.” Nice to also end 2012 on a high note too.

Cheers,

Michael

Nick Gravenites – It Takes Time
Taj Mahal – One More Mile To Go
Nick Gravenites – Blues On A Westside

As a lover of invented tradition, seems I’ve started another one, posting up the final reocrd that I dug up in 2012. I first ran into this album when I was very young and working at Album 88 in Atlanta. I’d started working on the blues show there “Crossroads,” and was always looking for music that I hadn’t heard before. At the time, and still, one of my favorite bands was the Butterfield Blues Band, which featured one of the first American guitar gods of the 1960s, Michael Bloomfield. Bloomfield was kind of a tragic figure. Immense talent, showcased on albums with Butterfield and sessions work with Al Kooper and Bob Dylan (it’s Bloomfield’s guitar that gives Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited so much of it’s legendary sound, especially on “Like A Rolling Stone”), but because of problems with insomnia and heroine addiction, it’s likely we were robbed of some of his best work.

This album was recorded in the midst of a pretty robust period of recording for Bloomfield and was more or less a loosely organized jam session with a whole bunch of folk, including Mark Naftlin, Bob Jones, John Kahn, Snooky Flowers plus vocalists Nick Gravenites and Taj Mahal. At Album 88 I’d found the album tucked away forgotten in stacks of vinyl that were haphazardly stored around the station. As a show that ran from 10-12midnight, the longer and slower tracks, “One More Mile To Go” and “Blues On A Westside” were particular favorites of mine and listeners. I remember once playing “Westside” and realizing about 3/4’s in that I was digging on the song so much I hadn’t taken the prior record off the turntable and cued up something next to play. I was so zoned out that I actually picked up the needle on “Westside” mid-solo, only to drop it back down, more or less in the same spot almost instantaneously. I might have been able to forget that lapse, but I seem to remember getting a couple of good-natured calls from listeners and friends chastizing me for wrecking the groove. The song remains one of my favorites from this period and one my favorite solos from Bloomfield.

For some reason I hadn’t really run into a copy of this record in years. Perhaps because it doesn’t actually list an artist. Though the more recent reissue is rightfully under Bloomfield’s name, the original release has not artist listed. It should be filed in the blues section, but this copy was in the various Rock section at Atomic in Burbank. Where you can find it is less important that making sure you do find it, which I’m very glad I did. In truth, all that really matters is the music and getting lost in that sound from Bloomfield and his friends.

Cheers,

Michael

Latin Blues Band – (I’ll Be A) Happy Man
Latin Blues Band – Take A Trip
Latin Blues Band – Rumbo Con Guaguanco

Been a while since I put up some records for sale via Rose Records, but there are currently 5 records up on Ebay right now, including releases from Ketty Lester (featuring master drummer Earl Palmer) and Harry Ray, plus a few that I’ve actually featured here before including Jun Mayuzumi’s “Black Room,” Horace Tapscott & the Pan-Afrikan People’s Arkestra and one of my deepest digs of all time, Yuzo Kayama. Another record that is currently up on Ebay (at least until this Wednesday, just enough time before my wife’s birthday to hopefully get her something extra nice! take a look and spread the word if you know people looking for some quality vinyl), is the Moon People’s album Land Of Love. As is the case with the Mayuzumi, Harry Ray and Yuzo Kayama, the only reason I’m able to sell these records is that I’ve essentially replaced them in my collection with a version that I appreciate more.

In the case of the Moon Men, I picked up this album from the Latin Blues Band around my birthday that features “I’ll Be A Happy Man” the vocal version of “Happy Soul” which was revisited as “Happy Soul With A Hook” and as “Hippy Dippy Moon Strut,” all apparently by the exact same backing band. Of those four versions, I enjoy this one featuring full on vocals most of all. I’d always felt that the instrumental “Happy Soul” just was missing something and gets to repetitive after a while, no matter how great of a break beat that instrumental is. As soon as I began listening to this album, I realized that several of the other tracks on the Moon Men album were instrumentals of tracks from this album, including ‘Take A Trip,” “Lay An Oz On Me” and “Pussycat.” In just about all of those cases I prefer the vocal versions and these would be the ones I’d be most apt to play if I spun out some place so it made good sense to hold on to this one and let the Moon People find their way into someone else’s collection. Additionally, the second side of this album is full of some really nice and really tight pre-Salsa latin tracks that simply hit the spot.

Cheers,

Michael

Jimi Hendrix – Happy Birthday
Jimi Hendrix – Hornet's Nest
Jimi Hendrix – Fool For You Baby

Today would have been Jimi Hendrix’s 70th birthday. Having been too busy to post anything up prior to today, it makes perfect sense to post another Hendrix record this year from my collection. Flashing is a fairly rare LP, released in 1968 after Jimi found great success with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In some ways it’s a very opportunistic record. Jimi played with Curtis Knight & the Squires before forming his own band (Jimmy James & the Blue Flames) and finding success initially in the UK, then the US and worldwide with the Experience. He’d recorded a few sides with Knight and his group around 1966, including what I believe might be recognized as his first penned track, the very “buzzy” surf inspired instrumental “Hornet’s Nest.”

In 1967, perhaps out of contractual obligations, perhaps out of loyalty to old friends, Jimi returned to the studio to jam with some of Knight’s crew. Some of those tracks ended up on a couple of Curtis Knight records on the Capitol record label (the Band of Gypsies album more or less completed his contractual obligations with Capitol). Flashing represents the best collection of these, with a mix of the tracks from 1966 and 1967. It’s an interesting document, hearing Jimi Hendrix before he was really Jimi Hendrix and also hearing Jimi after he WAS Jimi Hendrix all at the same time, without it techinically being a Jimi Hendrix album (if that makes any sense).

I can’t for the life of me remember where I got this record, I’m pretty sure it was in Atlanta, perhaps at Red, Beans & Rice, probably at the Atlanta Record Show. I’m just about 100% sure that when I bought it I had NO idea that “Happy Birthday” was sampled by the Beastie Boys of “Jimmy James” (in addition to a few other Jimi tracks):

“Happy Birthday” features some of Hendrix’s earliest use of the Wah-Wah pedal and is funky as all get out for 1967. The same basic beat turns up on this album as “Love, Love” and as far as I understand it, the basic track was laid down out of a jam session and Knight’s vocals were added much later along with a bit of snappy editing to make it seem like it was a specific track. On some other Hendrix release the instrumental version is featured that is probably worth tracking down. “Fool For You Baby” is a pretty straight ahead R&B number, with a really nice sound, along with the music he recorded with the Isley brothers it’s sort of a reminder of what kind of soul music Jimi might have made if he had not become the visionary, transcendent rock’n’roll guitar player he did become (though I always file Jimi’s music in the soul section, personally).

It took the Hendrix family a really long time in order to get all of Jimi’s contractual situations worked out, particularly getting the proper royalities from these recordings from Ed Chalpin, the producer who “signed” Jimi to this particular contract. Hopefully someday in the future, we’ll get a full account of the music that Jimi recorded during this period of time pre/post-Experience, but still so very early in his career.

Cheers,

Michael