Kathleen Loves Music

Friends > Marc Cohen, John Abercrombie, Clint Houston, Jeff Williams

Produced by Marc Cohen & Fred Seibert

[Note: Marc Cohen now performs on piano as Marc Copeland]

Original LP. Click the titles to play.
1. 5/8 Tune †
2. Black Vibrations *
3. Nursery Rhyme
4. Loose Tune ††
…:::UPDATE, Feb 08: These MP3s are CD quality, 320kpbs:::…

Marc Cohen: electric alto sax, ††add tenor sax
Jeff Williams: drums
Clint Houston: fretted bass, †acoustic bass
John Abercrombie: 6 string guitar, *12 string guitar, ††no guitar

Click here for covers, photographs, and other printed ephemera.
…..
Friends
Oblivion Records
OD-3 (1973)

Click here for covers, photographs, and other printed ephemera.

CREDITS, from the original LP cover:

Recorded December 1972, by successful exploitation of Columbia University’s WKCR. To everyone who has ever been there, thanks folks.

Produced by Marc Cohen and Fred Seibert
Engineering: Fred Seibert
Brains behind the engineering: Don Zimmerman
Microphones behind the brains: Marc Seiden
Pal: David Reitman
Graphics: the Oblivionettes co-starring Sue DeLaney
Photography: Trebor Trepla, Fred Seibert, and Robert Alpert (Mark Focus Jr.)
Advice: Don [Read more…]

Hank Jones > Bloomdido

I’ve posted about
Hank Jones a couple of times before and it isn’t just because I’ve produced some records, on him, but because when I think of the list of pianists I listen to he is consistently the first three or four on the list.

When I first started producing records they were labors of love, passion projects with avant-gardists I admired and wanted to share with the world. Then I got a couple of paying gigs with organists and beboppers. For about 10 minutes into the first session with Willis Jackson I put up with it (the music was so old school) until I found myself happier than I’d ever been in a recording studio. By the time Hank came out of 25 years at the CBS in-house orchestra I was ready for the best session of my life. After than it was downhill, and I left recording for more happiness in TV.

Hank Jones > [Read more…]

Happy Birthday > The Beau Hunks & The Metropole Orchestra

When I searched my library and Flickr for “birthday” this track and this photo were the most interesting things that came up.

(On the musical tip, these are the Beau Hunks, easily my favorite musical discovery of the last 20 years. And if you want to talk about “world music” they get my highest vote, though, of course, not in any way that any other human being would recognize.
[Read more…]

From the Kathleen this blog was named for:

“… in response to something you posted on the music site (to quote):
‘And what about his crazy, unique name? Google it and you’ll see there are no others. Just like his music…’

“So (of course), I took up the challenge and found some other soul named Ornette and felt the need to let you know about it. I love a challenge. A friend and I have a joke that (for all of us) our most irritating qualities are also our most endearing ones. So…. consider my need to find another Ornette somewhere in the world the result of one my irritating (and therefore endearing) qualities.”

[No, this is not about the group who did “Spinning Wheel.”]

Unless you’re a 50-something muso there’s no way, or no reason really, to explain how much a difference Al Kooper made to us. He’s dined out way too long on the story about being an songwriter/amateur organist/hustler who convinced Dylan to let him play on Like A Rolling Stone, but something about his hustle, his fandom, and the limited talent he had made a generation of musicians believe they had a chance to go all the way. The fact he started to believe he was the prime talent on his records, rather than the catalyst, tanked his career and ambitions. (It wasn’t until he got back to producing the first three Lynyrd Skynyrd records that he made it clear what he was good at.)

With his original Blood, Sweat & Tears Kooper was the sparkplug for the marriage of jazz sensibility with post-rock pop. These [Read more…]

I guess I’m in a 50s frame of mind. Life is But A Dream by The Harptones is one of those that I was too young to hear when it came out in 1956 (thank goodness I’m finally too young for something). But in 1969, as I was trying to listen to absolutely everything in my college radio library, I stumbled upon in an Old Town Records compilation, and it’s melody and harmonies (led by an incomparable Willie Winfield) have reverberated in my skull ever since. Unfairly, I never paid attention to too much else by them, but if I never heard another song ever I’d still be satisfied.

A bit of record biz trivia: Old Town Records was founded by an MF-ing New York distributor named Hy Weiss who, legend had it, was quite a ball-breaker; he even claimed to be the inventor of payola’s $50 handshake. Though my friend Richard Foos, Rhino Records founder and producer of [Read more…]

Dion is truly one of the greatest singers of the last 50 years. (Anyone care to disagree?) The great songs prove it, but a wonderful trifle like might give some better manifest evidence.

(I posted the cooler album cover, but to be fair my pristinely mastered version comes from my friend Richard Foos’ incredible Doo-Wop Box.)

Geez, I hated this record.

We were 18 and living in a broken down residence hotel in New York, having played in rock bands since we were freshmen in high school, trying very hard to be hip, when Rodney brought it in from his father’s record collection. We’d heard of Coltrane, had no idea who Cherry was, and every time we put on this track we waited about two minutes and *shuddered* before we scratched it off the turntable. It took me years to figure out that it was an anomoly in Coltrane’s discography.

And it was a few years before I got the session was Coltrane’s way of examining the new music being ushered into being in the early 60s by Ornette Coleman (who’s band was playing with Trane and who composed most of the tracks).

I came to love . A lot. The composition, the playing, the players. Yeah, out there. But, yeah, cool.

The radio was on an NPR story and I wasn’t really listening that closely. It seemed strange to me that I’d never heard the song, and why was Sam Cooke signing with James Brown’s Famous Flames? But when James Hunter started speaking with a thick English accent it snapped into focus.

From what I can tell James toured with Van Morrison in the 90s and he has that same reverance and soul for 50s and 60s R&B. Which is just fine with me. The band lopes and rocks, his voice and guitar groove along, the songs do a nice job. The figures are a little sloppy, the singing a bit ragged, but it all fits together really nicely. And it’s fun for someone to commit so completely to this kind of music in today’s harder, edgier world.

Leave it to the English. They love our American music, more than we do sometimes.

–Fred

Silly record but I love it anyway. A totally unpretentious privately pressed local record with 12 tunes about the joys of living in an RV and the benefits of owning a mobile home. Written by Sacramento area RV dealer Ron Schmeck who does a good job pointing out the drawbacks of maintaining a traditional home. Mowing the lawn always was a pain in the ass, and yeah, I DO hate dealing with annoying neighbors — and the co-op board now! I wonder sometimes if I’d be better off with a Good Sam Club membership and an Airstream.

Music is standard late ’70s c&w fare with fiddles and twangy guitar, and vocals that are fairly nondescript, but the lyrics and concept are free of irony and one of a kind. The highlight being the classic “outsider” anthem “I’m Proud to own a Mobile Home”.

–Matthew