TDATS 145: Come All Ye Faceless [Long Trips #2 - Hard Rock and Prog 1970 - 1977]

Download from [mf] or [mg]
Pass:  tdats

Firstly a couple of news updates; Blogspot removed its own 'subscribe by email' service some time ago so I have just added a substitute, a popular free email subscription service provided by "Follow.IT". You'll now see the subscription box in the right-hand panel of this blog, where you can get notifications of my new volumes and posts by email. You'll also see I've added a chatbox, where you can live-chat with myself or other followers within the blog, if that's useful to you.

The cover art used for this volume is borrowed from a new comic that has just started a first-run fundraiser (link 1, link 2).

Welcome to volume 145! We have 6 tracks from 5 new names to the blog, plus the well-deserved return of a band that first appeared on TDATS many years ago in the first Scottish volume. Joining them are a variety of aural cosmonauts from the UK, Germany and USA. This is a continuation of the idea I had for v122 (link), and later in v161 (link), where I would include long jams and the type of 10+ minute extended head-trips that require a little more time and investment to appreciate than the usual 2 - 4 minute rockers I usually elect to include, so this is another one for those late-night, dark room, headphone sessions...

NB. as with #122, this volume is guaranteed free of seven minute drum solos :D

TRACKS

01. Bodkin - Aunty Mary's Trashcan (1972)

            from album Bodkin

02. Terry Manning - Savoy Truffle (1970)

            from album Home Sweet Home

03. Zarathustra - Past Time (1972)

            from album Zarathustra

04. Bachdenkel - The Settlement Song (1973)

            from album Lemmings

05. Sweet Pain - Joy (1970)

            from album Sweet Pain

06. ID - Where Are We Going (Part 2) (1977)

            from album Where Are We Going

The Lineup

Bodkin - original 1972 cover

Bodkin - Aunty Mary's Trashcan (1972)
We start with a gargantuan cut from this Scottish group, Bodkin has appeared on the blog once before, way back in vol 25 (link). They are on the heaviest end of prog, sometimes reaching Sabbath or Night Sun (link) levels of blusey doom, and their sole album is excellent throughout.

The album remained in bootleg limbo for many years, with multiple unofficial releases with various made-up cover arts. As far as I can tell the original record was released in very small numbers on a private label with a very simple cover as shown on the left. The archival label Seelie Court has just released it on vinyl in 2021, maybe this is the most legitimate re-pressing so far?

Bodkin band

Here is a snippet of Discogs user black-shuck's comments on the record: "99 copies of bodkin were made. Six had original stenciled blue/white sleeves and 3 or 4 are known to survive. 38 unsold copies were advertised for sale in the NME or Melody Maker by the producer and bought by a German dealer, he made the new covers which are not original to the pressing, this backfired and devalued the LP at the time collectors became suspicious the LP was fake.

The Seelie Court vinyl edition is out now, mastered from the original studio tapes, using the original cover converted to gatefold with lyrics, and with the band's involvement. The Akarma edition is an illegal bootleg, copied from vinyl or the old bootleg CD, and uses totally wrong and inappropriate artwork without the band's consent." (link)

The band is Bill Anderson (bass). Dick Sneddon (drums), Mick Riddel (guitar), Doug Rome (Hammond C3) and Zeik Hume (vocals). 

Terry Manning - Home Sweet Home LP

Terry Manning - Savoy Truffle (1970)
Here's one of the few heavy covers to appear on the blog, one of the other notable ones being Pugh's Place's storming 'Ride My Car' on the Dutch vol 35 (link).

But as with Pugh's Place, it would be a disservice to call this a mere cover, it uses the original as a starting point, then becomes its own huge and brilliant 10 minute trip covering blues, psych, country and even a hint of electronica, impossible to fully describe, you'll just have to hear it!

Terry Manning, from Texas, was in a number of El Paso bands including The Outlaws before moving to Memphis and becoming an engineer / producer for Stax Records and Ardent Studios, eventually working with names like Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Molly Hatchet and Shania Twain to name a very few. 

He made this solo record 'Home Sweet Home' in 1970, which is a countrified psych delight. Terry has a website with a biography (link).

Zarathustra LP cover

Zarathustra - Past Time (1972)
Here's a hard rock groove-monster from a German band that released one self-titled LP in 1972. Like a lot of German heavy bands at the time, they seem to have been fans of the Deep Purple / Uriah Heep school of power-rock with heavy Hammond and wailing group vocals. The album is solid, standard fare among a host of similar German bands at the time, but if this style is your bag you'll dig it, and this track deserves TDATS' full attention. 

According to releases on Discogs, the member of Zarathustra that appears to have been most successful in music after the band's short existence was singer Ernst Herzner, who went on to Novalis, a reasonably successful band that made many albums up into the 1980s. Ernst even made a few solo singles in the mid '80s.

Bachdenkel - Lemmings LP

Bachdenkel - The Settlement Song (1973)

Recorded in 1970, released in '73 on an album called "Lemmings", a group from Birmingham, then re-located to France. I listened to them ages ago but just listened to this album again and it's got some fantastic tracks, this song for instance is an introspective, "quiet / loud" epic and could easily have been the centerpiece on a classic '90s alternative rock album from the likes of Jane's Addiction, Stone Roses, Tool or Smashing Pumpkins, seriously.

There's another song on this album called "Come All Ye Faceless" (link) which is equally cool and almost as long, and shares the same distinctively strident, marching riff style, in fact that is the one I almost included, hence the title of this volume. The band have an interesting history, being a non-conformist, art collective type, they played at venues with full psychedelic light shows (link) and relocated to France where they recorded a second album in 1977. 

Sweet Pain

Sweet Pain - Joy (1970)
This is another groove-monster with a dance-able beat throughout, and a nimble, almost flamenco feeling accompanying the lively pace at times. It's quite a distinctive track and the drummer (Marty Foltz) is excellent, holding the full 9 minutes of addictive jams together, along with the blistering psychedelic guitar leads coming in and out frequently.

California's Sweet Pain had a tough-guy cover photo on the LP that this track is taken from, but in truth the music only touches on hard rock occasionally and this record is mainly an attempt at chart-friendly pop rock. There was a second Sweet Pain album in 1973, but it seems the band lineup had changed so much by then they were basically a different band, and moved even further from hard rock.

ID - Where Are We Going LP

ID - Where Are We Going (Part 2) (1977)

And we end on this huge doomy space-rock jam. There were not a lot of extended jam-prog albums like this in the US in the '70s, I've covered a few on TDATS before like Cathedral on v44 (link) and most of them were on private labels, as this album was.

Out of this set, this is the most obscure band, with sketchy information on the net, some claiming them to be from Marland / Baltimore. Discogs lists the players as Kevin Orsie (bass, vox). Ralph Jenkins (Drums, vox). David Oickle (Guitar, lead vox, mellotron), Gary Oickle (lead guitar), Bob Halsal (mellotron) and James Albert (slide guitar), and many of those names also have engineer / production credits on this record too so it really was an all-hands-on-deck type affair. I think this song is going to go down great with all fans of endless guitar solo stoner Jams from the likes of Earthless, and the end has strong echoes of um, Echoes, by Pink Floyd, with the bassist playing a riff similar to Aerosmith's awesome "Round and Round", so all in all, a perfect mind-melter to end on!

[EDIT 2023: I have now conducted an interview with Kivin Orsie from ID! (read here)]

That's all for now folks, have a nice trip! 

Rich

Related listening:
The Day After The Sabbath 122: Sonata in Z [long tracks #1]
The Day After The Sabbath 87: Do I Look High? [first Space Rock special, feat. Mara Bunta]
The Day After The Sabbath 69: No Troubled Sky [instrumentals]

TDATS social links

Youtube | BuyMeAcoffee | Facebook | Instagram | Mixcloud | Twitter | RateYourMusic

Share via:

The Day After The Sabbath 71: Stormbird [female vocals 3]

Download from [mf] or [mg]
pass:  tdats

Volume 71 is a collection of tracks with female vox. It gets underway with two concise and heavy singles. There are now six volumes with this theme.

So far those six are: 17 (link), 49 (link), 71 (link), 97 (link), 129 (link) and 154 (link).

Track List

01. Parojoma - Crystallized Insanity (1971)
       single
02. Think - California (Is Getting So Heavy) (1969)
       single
03. C. K. Strong - Stormbird (1969)
       from album "c.k. strong"
04. Valeria Mongardini - Addio Città Vecchia [The Guess Who cover] (1970)
       single
05. Sun - Vendetta (1972)
       from album 'sun 1972'
06. 6 Feet Under - What Would You Do (1970)
       from retrospective "in retrospect 1969-'70"
07. Sharon Tandy - Hold On [with Les Fleur De Lys] (1967)
       single
08. John Bassman Group - His Name Was Tom (1970)
       from album 'filthy sky'
09. Earth & Fire - Lost Forever (1971)
       from repertoire re-issue of  'earth and fire'
10. Ruby Starr And Grey Ghost - Burnin' Whiskey (1975)
       from album 'ruby starr & grey ghost'
11. Pesky Gee - Where Is My Mind [Vanilla Fudge cover] (1969)
       from album 'exclamation mark'
12. Ivory - Silver Rains (1968)
       from album 'ivory'
13. She Trinity - Climb That Tree [with The Onyx] (1970)
       single
14. Sweet Pain - Sick And Tired (1969)
       from album 'sweet pain'
15. Smith - I Just Wanna Make Love To You (1969)
       from album 'a group called smith'

Parojoma's 'Crystallized Insanity' is a 1971 single a-side from Canada, and I thank my friend's excellent channel for bringing this catchy slice of groove to my attention just in time to give it pride of place. There is little information to go on, it was on the London label and writing credits go to M. & R. Bartolucci, with P. Cardone. Production is by Ben Kaye & Art Phillips. No mention of the players or songstress, though back in those days female session singers were often not credited.

Think's single is another for which I cannot find the singers name, but the music is some strong pop with a wicked, heavy low-ended chorus and brass embellishments. The main players here were Mike Ballew (gtr) and Danny Wilder (bs) who were previously in The Brothers and later in 'Red, Wilder, Blue'.

C.K. Strong

C. K. Strong's tag line goes :- "Only the strong survive. Out of the hundreds of west coast bands that were formed during the last few years, only a handful have gained national recognition. You can understand why. It takes a group that is both musically and personally strong to overcome the hustles and hassles involved. C. K. Strong has more than survived. Their début album exudes vibrant rock and blues. And a chick singer named Lynn Carey who effortlessly explores every note of her three-octave vocal range. C. K. Strong. Darwin scores again". The more observant of you will remember Lynn's vocal contributions on the Neil Meryweather Vol68, and I will be using another track from this album on the movie comp i'm doing, as one of the tracks was used on the classic Russ Meyer exploitation movie 'Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls'.

Valeria Mongardini was an Italian pop singer with a raw voice which she used to out-sleaze The Guess Who on this great cover of "American Woman". The backing arrangement is from Tony Mimms, a Glasgow-born producer and musician who emigrated to Italy with a band called The Primitives, which also included drummer Pick Withers, later of Dire Straits fame.

Sun is a special discovery to me, a guy called "Daru Blues" with a channel on youtube kindly sent me the album in mp3 after I spent an age searching for it, and I was not disappointed. They were originally from Wollongong, near Sydney, Australia. They made one enigmatic, ultra-collectable album; progressive blues and jazz wth great musicianship plus a secret weapon in the form of Renée Geyer with her unique vocal power and swagger, belying her tender age of 18. Renée (who was later replaced in Sun by Starlee Ford, a singer who appeared in the original Australian production of the rock musical Hair) went on to great solo acclaim but never bettered her performance here I think.

'6 Feet Under' started out as 'The Marc 5' in 1966 in Colonia, New Jersey. Later known as the Sonix, they never recorded an album proper and this track is taken from the 1998 Arf! Arf! Records retrospective. One-time drummer Hector "Tico" Torres was ejected in 1970 before the addition of the female singer on this track 'What Would You Do', though it may have been a good move for him financially as he went on to be a founding member of Bon Jovi. Growling fuzz, stabbing keys and wah grooves pervade through this awesome track.

Sharon Tandy was a sexy and soulful Johannesburg-born singer who teamed up with Brit freak-beaters Les Fleur de Lys (see their own original version of 'Hold On' in Vol70) on more than one occasion. Having had plenty of breaks, performing often on UK t.v. and even getting signed to Stax in 1966 to cut earthy Southern soul with Booker T & The MGs and Isaac Hayes, she never really made it and was back to a comparatively small career in South Africa by 1970. This version of Hold On features some totally scorching guitar and her trademark earthy vocals.

The John Bassman Group started life as a school band in Landgraaf, a municipality in south-eastern Limburg and also where one of Holland's biggest rock fests resides, Pinkpop. Their single album 'filthy sky' was a curious affair, a mix of country-tinged blues tracks, and west coast style psych tracks, these being the ones which frequently hit the mark with awesome fuzzy wah guitar and charismatic vox from Diana Leemhuis. John Theunissen and the 'bassman' Theo Wetzeis later joined Pussycat, who had a novelty hit with "Mississippi" in 1975. You've gotta love the fuzz-wah chops of "His Name Was Tom".

Earth & Fire (1970)

Earth & Fire were a Dutch progressive pop group, who made some interesting stuff in their early career which betrayed hard rock influences, unfortunately they became a more commercial pop/disco group of far less interest in the later 70's. Singer Jerney Kaagman later became president of the Dutch musician's union and was recently a judge on the Dutch "Idols" talent show. The track I've used here called Lost Forever was the 1971 'Storm and Thunder' single b-side and is definitely the most Sabbath-heavy thing they did. The best album to look for is the 1993 Repertoire re-issue of their 1971 eponymous debut, which includes the heavy b-sides like 'Memories' that I also used on the Roadburn comp Vol64.

Ruby Starr was discovered by Black Oak Arkansas frontman Jim Dandy, working in a bar in Evansville, Indiana. Over her career she performed with them, Blackfoot and Mountain, along with a number of backing bands and solo projects. One of them was called 'Ruby Starr And Grey Ghost' and included members of Target (see Vol65), the 'Grey Ghost' in question being a reference to confederate civil war hero General Mosby. "Burnin' Whiskey" is a good southern-rocker with a hint of Deep Purple grinding hammond. A youtube mini-documentary can be seen here (link).

Pesky Gee

Pesky Gee formed in Leicester, UK and the core of the band was basically Black Widow before they went occult. There's a great interview with Saxist/ Flautist Clive Jones here describing the transition. This heavy, grungy track 'Where Is My Mind?', a Vanilla Fudge cover, benefits greatly from Kay Garrett's husky tones. Californians Ivory made one album, and 'Silver Rains' is the excellent highlight, Christine Christman's voice swims in the lysergia of Mike McCauley's keys and Kenny Thomure's guitar. Unfortunately, McCauley's Vietnam draft cut their career prematurely short.

She Trinity

The She Trinity are something of a novelty, being one of the only all-girl bands I have ever used on any comp, they were started by a trio of Canadian musicians who found their way to England. There were brief name changes and shake-ups. The final combo was  Robyn Yorke (drums) ,  Eileen Woodman (keys),  Pauline Moran (bass), and Inger Jonnsson on guitar. Pauline Moran would go on to later acclaim as a stage/screen actress. They released a cover of 'Hair' in 1970, for which 'Climb That Tree' was the b-side, which itself was played by the UK band The Onyx, with vocals from She Trinity. Sweet Pain was an all-star blues session album. Singer Annette Brox recorded a 45 in 1965 and an album in 1974, Dick Heckstall-Smith had recorded a solo album. He also played with Graham Bond Organisation, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Colosseum. 'Sick and Tired' is a ripping slab of bluesrock!

And so this volume ends with L.A. pop-rockers 'Smith', who's strongest asset was their most frequent vocalist, Gayle McCormick, an accomplished female blue-eyed soul belter. Here is their version of old reliable 'I Just Wanna Make Love To You', a 1954 blues song written by Willie Dixon and first recorded by Muddy Waters. It appears for around the third time on this blog; maybe another theme idea is forming....

Thanks for listening! Rich

references:

Marmalade-Skies | Ready steady girls
Museum of Canadian Music | 70sheavyrockfan

TDATS social links

BuyMeAcoffee | Facebook | Instagram | Youtube | Mixcloud | Twitter | RateYourMusic

 

Share via: