The fourth and final batch of my Sounds Of The Seventies experiment are:
1971 Beaver & Krause – Gandharva
1970 Emitt Rhodes – Emitt Rhodes
1971 Eugene McDaniels – Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse
1970 Honeybus – Story
1970 Little Milton – If Walls Could Talk
To categorise these albums, again I know nothing about any of them. Only Emitt Rhodes have I even vaguely heard of.
And so the final verdict?
Beaver & Krause’s Gandharva is a crazy album, stylistically all over the place and interesting with it. Definitely one to listen to a few more times to get the benefit.
Emitt Rhodes is great pop music. Unbelievable really that he recorded this at home on his own in 1970. Equally unbelievable that he isn’t more widely known, compared to a lot of other people operating in similar areas at the time. You can hear its influence on people like Ben Folds and definitely Zumpano
Eugene McDaniels is another slab of craziness. Not at all what I expected, it is in fact heavily funky and immediately apparent that I’ve heard at least one of these songs before sampled in hip-hop tracks (Beastie Boys “Get It Together” for one..). The lyrics are brilliant too.
Honeybus are even poppier than Emitt Rhodes. To the point where they just sound too much like The Beatles (or more specifically McCartney) for me to believe that this is really a classic album and not just a bright and pleasant but ultimately formulaic pop album.
The Little Milton album is also a stormer, like a deeper, more rough and ready Otis Redding, this has already been added to my list of great soul albums. Some of the brass arrangements are sublime.
All in all a much more satisfying batch than the previous lot with all the albums giving me pleasure, and Honeybus’ crime was simply being too “nice”. Here is a selection of tunes from within
Eugene McDaniels – Headless Heroes
Little Milton – Kansas City
Emitt Rhodes – Live Til You Die
And so I move onto the 1960’s. My initial investigations lead me to believe that there will be a LOT of rare and obscure psychedelia in there, and most of it will be post 1965...
1 comment:
Ghandarva was amongst a lucky set of buys I made in the early 70's (Faust , Commander Cody the others)when I often bought discs on spec - though perhpas Peel had played them? The second, jazz, side I still like but the track I loved at the time was the echoey accapella which just seemed so spooky - though I guess I'd have said trippy at the time. Lots of my discs from that time were, like the others in your selection, frankly dross - but then people will say the same about now in 40 years time
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