Peter Bardens - Heart To Heart (1979 uk, magnificent prog jazz fusion rock, Japan remaster)

Keyboardist Peter Bardens’ legacy with renowned prog band Camel included seven albums in six years before he decided to abandon the ship of the desert in 1978. Camel’s symphonic influences can be traced through numerous neo-prog bands that would follow in their wake but in the meantime Bardens was looking for an alternative method of musical expression that would showcase his writing abilities as much as it did his keyboard talents. His first port of call however was to play on the 1978 album Wavelength by Van Morrison who Bardens had previously performed with in the 60’s as a member of Them.

Bardens was no stranger to solo albums having released The Answer and Peter Bardens in 1970 and 1971 respectively, shortly before teaming up with Andy Latimer, Doug Ferguson and Andy Ward to form Camel in 1972. Both of those albums however had been very much in the R&B style whereas Heart To Heart draws upon his experiences within Camel with more melodic pop-rock tunes (an area that Camel themselves were gravitating towards in the late 70’s) and prog-fusion instrumentals.

To realise his ambitions Bardens brought on-board a fine supporting cast with diverse musical pedigrees that saw legendary session players Mel Collins (saxophone, flute) and Peter Van Hooke (drums) rubbing shoulders with relatively newcomers Stan Scrivener (bass) and teenager Gus Isadore (guitars, vocals). Bardens wrote and (along with Norman Mighell) produced all the material on Heart To Heart and in addition to keys provides the lead vocals as he had done on the earlier solo outings.

The delightful Julia opens the album in surprisingly restrained fashion with Bardens’ dulcet vocal tones having a certain charm, sounding not unlike his old band-mate Andy Latimer. It’s an agreeable ballad with engaging harmonies and lilting electric piano. In a similar vein but altogether better still is Raining All Over The World which in its own unassuming way contains one of the most attractive melodies ever penned by Bardens. A rich and fluid piano and sax arrangement elevates the song into Bruce Hornsby territory. 

Doing The Crab is vintage swing jazz with scat vocals and although its skilfully and smoothly executed is not really my cup of jazz tea. More on the money is the fusion instrumentals Jinxed and Slipstream, both centred around lively synth noodling. The former brings the Canterbury scene and Hatfield And The North in particular to mind whilst the latter has perhaps a more Transatlantic feel about (Harold Faltermeyer anyone?). The mood continues in a more relaxed tempo with the appropriately titled After Dark which showcases Isadore’s jazz guitar sensibilities as well as a superb organ solo from Bardens to close.

With its catchy repetitive chorus, Slow Motion is the nearest the album gets to a potential single although its smooth delivery was perhaps too subtle to set either the charts or airwaves alight. The short Tune For Des sees Bardens’ chiming keys effects tumbling like falling water leaving the superb title track and instrumental Heart To Heart to end on a proggy Camel flavoured high.

Heart To Heart was pretty well dismissed on its initial release which is a shame because it demonstrates Peter Bardens forging a strong musical identity so soon after his departure from Camel. Thankfully this re-mastered reissue allows the albums many subtle delicacies to shine through. Bardens would continue to pursue his solo career as well as appearing with several other acts which included the occasional guest showing with Camel before his life was tragically and prematurely cut short in January 2002. 

by Geoff Feakes

Tracks
1. Julia - 3:54
2. Doing The Crab - 3:05
3. Slipstream - 6:10
4. Raining All Over The World - 4:27
5. Jinxed - 4:22
6. After Dark - 4:31
7. Slow Motion - 3:56
8. Tune For Des - 1:52
9. Heart To Heart - 4:51
All compostiotions by Pete Bardens

Musicians
*Pete Bardens - Keyboards, Vocals
*Mel Collins - Saxophone, Flute
*Pete Van Hooke - Drums
*Stan Scrivener - Bass
*Gus Isidore - Guitar, Vocals
*Pete Shade – Vibraphone

1970  The Answer (2010 esoteric remaster with extra tracks)
1971  Write My Name In The Dust (Japan remaster)
1973  Camel - Camel

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Crabby Appleton - Rotten To The Core (1971 us, exceptional classic rock)

Crabby Appleton's first album, Crabby Appleton, had established them as one of the more promising new American bands at the dawn of the 1970s. It had yielded a Top Forty single, "Go Back," and unveiled a diverse group that combined both pop-rock smarts and artier inclinations.

Lester Bangs gave the album an enthusiastic thumbs-up in Rolling Stone, and (with Andrea di Guglielmo) co-authored a lengthy profile of the band in Creem. When they opened for the Doors at the San Diego International Sports Arena Center on August 22, 1970, according to the band's principal singer-songwriter Michael Fennelly, "Go Back" stood at #3 on the local charts -- one of several on which the single soared higher than its comparatively modest #36 peak in Billboard.

Crabby Appleton would not rise any higher, commercially speaking, between the summer of 1970 and its dissolution shortly afterward. The follow-up non-LP single "Grab On," remembered by Fennelly as "probably the best thing we ever put down on tape, one of the few hard rock things that Crabby Appleton did that I can listen to and not cringe," had flopped.

There would be an opportunity, at least, to do a second album, Rotten to the Core. If Crabby Appleton had initially, as Bangs and di Guglielmo wrote in Creem, sounded "like a cross between the Everly Brothers and the Rascals, with tasty hints of off-shoots like the Troggs, and occasional interludes of soft, wistful bossa nova for balance," Rotten to the Core took the band into a decidedly harder-rocking direction, with far stronger rootsy blues and country influences.

"Most of the material for the second record was written within Crabby Appleton, whereas for the first, most of the material was crafted before that band," explains Fennelly. "I was writing for Crabby Appleton, rather than taking songs, introducing them already written, and trying to craft them to something that would work with the band. 'Smokin' in the Mornin',' the reason for that song is that the band said, 'We need a shuffle. Write a shuffle.'"

Boogie and bluesy hard rock came to the fore on both that track and others such as "You Make Me Hot" and "Lucy," sometimes garnished by accomplished blues slide guitar. Such outings were a reflection of the band's live sound. "We were playing a lot of outdoor gigs, a lot of arena gigs, and had developed into a band that could play 40 minutes of big crowd-pleasing stuff," elaborates Fennelly. "We wanted to be able to do that in a studio, or at least capture some of the impact and power of that. One of my regrets is that there were times where we really were a kick-ass band, but we never kicked ass in the studio."

With that in mind, the band, after parting ways with the producer of their debut LP (Don Gallucci), had hoped to hook up with a rock'n'roll producer who could capture that energy. In fact Michael thinks they approached Glyn Johns, "and I think he said something insulting about our music, and that was the end of that." Instead they ended up with Bob Zachary, who was more grounded in the folk-based sound for which Elektra was known, producing Paul Siebel's Jack-Knife Gypsy album around the same time. "Bob was sort of the opposite direction in which we needed to go at the time, production-wise," feels Fennelly. "He really didn't have much experience with any sort of loud or distorted sounds."

But, Michael adds, "where the country or folk stuff surfaced on the second album, I think it was realized pretty well." Byron Berline was brought in to play fiddle on "One More Time," a country-tonk hoe-down with slide guitar; David Grisman contributed mandolin to the uncharacteristic light Gram Parsons-like country-rock of "Paper to Write On." "One More Time," oddly, was covered for a small country hit by Jo Anna Neel, better known for "Daddy Was a Preacher, But Mama Was a Go-Go Girl."

The tastiest detour from Crabby Appleton's prior sound was "Make No Difference," with its effective combination of organ, slide blues guitar, and superb gospel-soul backup vocals from a trio of session singers, including Clydie King (best known for her work with Bob Dylan in the early 1980s). "We probably felt a little bit freer to stretch out in the second album," acknowledges Fennelly. "I really was determined to not be pigeonholed, as far as what sort of constraints we put on what kind of music we could make."

For all its eclecticism, some of the album's strongest tracks were "Tomorrow's a New Day" and "Love Can Change Everything," the ones most reminiscent of the buoyant pop optimism that had colored much of the group's debut album. As it turns out those were the oldest Fennelly compositions on Rotten to the Core, "Love Can Change Everything" having been written back in the late 1960s when he was with the Millennium, and "Tomorrow's a New Day" shortly after his stint with that group.

"Those were a couple that were sort of waiting in the wings, and that we pulled out to include on album two," says Michael. "I like the ballads today, because I think they stand the test of time a little bit better than the hard stuff. We were a little disappointed that the harder material on our albums didn't come across as effectively recording as they would live. The ballads [and] country, folkier stuff really is less affected by the passage of time, and the softer stuff on the second Crabby Appleton record is much more pleasing for me to listen to now."

Even in relation to the relatively modest performance of Crabby Appleton, Rotten to the Core's sales were disappointing. (Incidentally, a couple of mock one-liner joke songs in the country style of "Paper to Write On" that would have served as link tracks were excised at the last minute, though they somehow managed to sneak onto the eight-track version.) "I'm not sure there was an awful lot on that record that was marketable," Fennelly admits. "It was a little self-indulgent, and didn't have a 'Go Back' that leaped right off the tracks."

Drummer Phil Jones left the band in the middle of a tour shortly after the second album, and though a replacement drummer enabled them to finish it, Crabby Appleton disbanded soon afterward. Michael Fennelly would continue to make music as a solo act, flying to London with Crabby Appleton organist Casey Foutz to record his debut album, produced by ex-Zombie Chris White.

by Richie Unterberger

Tracks
1. Smokin' In The Mornin' - 2:52
2. Tomorrow's A New Day - 2:40
3. It's So Hard - 2:22
4. Makes No Difference - 3:41
5. You Make Me Hot - 2:44
6. One More Time - 3:01
7. Lucy - 3:22
8. Paper To Write On - 2:21
9. Lookin' For Love - 2:41
10.Love Can Change Everything - 2:42
11.Gonna Save You (From That) - 6:03
Words and Music by Michael Fennelly

Crabby Appleton
*Michael Fennelly - Guitar, Vocals
*Felix "Flaco" Falcon - Conga, Timbale
*Casey Foutz - Keyboards
*Hank Harvey - Bass
*Phil Jones - Drums
Additional Musicians
*David Grisman - Mandolin
*Byron Berline - Fiddle
*The Blackberries (Clyde King, Oma Drake, Jesse Smith) - Vocals

1970  Crabby Appleton
1967-73  Michael Fennelly - Love Can Change Everything (2013 release)

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Crabby Appleton - Crabby Appleton (1970 us, fantastic classic rock)

Crabby Appleton will always be most known for their infectious single "Go Back," a brooding slice of power pop that made the Top Forty in the summer of 1970. Less celebrated was their self-titled Elektra debut album, though it found a champion in critic Lester Bangs, who called it "as satisfying a definition of the mainstream rock band as we've had this year" in his Rolling Stone review. Its material boasted the same solid pop hooks and high, winsome vocals of singer-songwriter Michael Fennelly that had graced "Go Back." But there was more to Crabby Appleton than the average AM radio pop group, and the album was a fairly diverse mix of delicate romantic tunes and harder rock statements of tolerance and brotherhood. Touches of psychedelic jamming and classical grandeur could be heard as well, though Fennelly's pop-rock instincts were never far from the foreground.

Fennelly had already gained some experience as a singer and songwriter as part of the Millennium, the Curt Boettcher-helmed sunshine pop project whose sole late-1960s album has since garnered enormous cult recognition, though it sold little at the time. After the Millennium ended, Fennelly was living off a stipend from his publishing company, and did a guitar-voice demo of about ten of his compositions. A copy of those fell into the hands of Elektra around the same time Michael met members of the band Stonehenge and heard them play at a Hollywood club. "At the same time I was meeting the band and talking to them about possibilities, Elektra, unbeknownst to us, was also listening to both our things and speculating about a merger of the two," he remembers. When Fennelly hooked up with some guys from Stonehenge (who had for a time included ex-Animal John Weider, who had left Stonehenge and returned to England to replace Ric Grech in Family), Crabby Appleton were born.

Fennelly wrote all of the material for Crabby Appleton, though he's keen to emphasize that the band was very much a collaborative endeavor. Stonehenge had played a far harder and bluesier style of rock than the likes of Millennium, and the Crabby Appleton records would be far gutsier than what Fennelly had cut, on material by himself and others, with his former band. But the shift wasn't solely influenced by his new cohorts.

 "What material saw the light of day with the Millennium by necessity had to fit into that heavily produced light pop genre," Michael explains. "But I was evolving as a writer, and stretching out into other things that were appealing to me." And the compositions on Crabby Appleton "reflect more my overall musical tastes than what I did with the Millennium," incorporating influences by more forceful faves of Fennelly's such as Steve Stills and Neil Young. Most of the songs had been written before the band were formed, however, and "particularly for the first Crabby Appleton record, I was just writing for myself," Fennelly adds. "So maybe that's where all that pop seeped into that rock band."

Nowhere were they more pop than on "Go Back." "We were insistent that was our hit single," says Fennelly. "It was lighter pop stuff. And Don Gallucci" -- the same fellow who produced the Stooges' Fun House around the same time -- "felt otherwise. We were absolutely very sure of ourselves that that was our shot at getting a Top Forty record." They were vindicated by the single's performance on the Billboard, where it reached #36. But the album as a whole was more sophisticated than what "Go Back" might have led some to expect. Though Fennelly, bassist Hank Harvey, and drummer Phil Jones all contributed to the energetic, tight ensemble arrangements, the classical-influenced organ of Casey Foutz was particularly sparkling. The timbales and conga of Felix "Flaco" Falcon gave the percussion uncommon depth for a straightahead rock band, at a time when the presence of more than one percussionist in the same group was just starting to become more common in rock, via bands like Santana and the Allman Brothers.

On multi-sectioned cuts like "Try" and "Hunger for Love," the band showcased their adroit interplay on semi-improvised-sounding passages that never got so lengthy and grandstanding that they crossed the line into indulgence. "We did a lot of three-to-four-minute songs with somewhat restrictive arrangements," Michael notes. "We knew that our greatest musical strengths were the accomplished keyboard work of Casey, and also the percussion of Felix. We wanted to have some songs that would be a platform for Casey or Flaco to stretch out and be able to just play, as opposed to have to stick to their parts. They had to make an adjustment as far as working with a singer-songwriter, because they hadn't done that before."

Yet it was the more concise and poppy tunes that stood out, Fennelly's relentlessly upbeat, romantic outlook shining like a beacon on both ballads and harder-charging rockers. "The Other Side" recalled the baroque-pop of late-1960s Zombies or the Left Banke in its delicacy, influenced by both the classical guitar lessons Fennelly had as a child, and a tapestry of a schooner in a stormy sea that provided some of the visual inspiration for the lyrics. "Catherine," "Some Madness," and "How Long Will It Take" were indicative of some folk-rock leanings, the latter two sounding not unlike some of the Youngbloods' sparser work.

Fennelly usually wrote about love, but on a couple of songs he extended his scope to project love toward his community rather than just one woman in particular. The dynamic "Peace By Peace," Michael elaborates, "was about going toe-to-toe with the police, which was a political sport back then. It was urging moderation in sacrificing your life for political causes of the day. Don't get so fired up that you end up being carried away on a stretcher; it may not be the most effective way to achieve change." By contrast "To All My Friends," decorated by a lilting harpsichord, was (unlike most of the album's songs) written after Crabby Appleton had formed: "That was to the band, about what great support and sustenance we gave each other. When you're in a rock and roll band and you're young, oftentimes that is your immediate family. It was celebrating that family."

It was a vibe Lester Bangs picked up on in his Rolling Stone review, enthusing that the LP was "nearly faultless and communicates the vitality of American youth and American music." Despite that and other good reviews, "our commercial success was really sporadic and schizophrenic," admits Fennelly. "We'd drive into one town where we had the #2 record on two or three radio stations. Then we'd go 60 miles in one direction to a place where they'd never heard of us. We were either playing at an arena that had 20,000 people and all knew 'Go Back,' or we'd be playing at a place called Mr. JD's on the side of the highway with five drunken, impatient people trying to figure out who the hell we were and what was coming next." There was enough of a buzz, though, to merit a second album on Elektra with greater blues, country, and hard rock influences, Rotten to the Core, also reissued by Collectors' Choice Music, where this story continues.

by Richie Unterberger

Tracks
1. Go Back - 3:06
2. The Other Side - 3:12
3. Catherine - 2:38
4. Peace By Peace - 5:29
5. To All My Friends - 3:08
6. Try - 3:44
7. Can't Live My Life - 2:58
8. Some Madness - 7:07
9. Hunger For Love - 3:17
10.How Long Will It Take - 2:52
All songs by Michael Fennelly

Crabby Appleton
*Michael Fennelly - Guitars, Vocals
*Casey Foutz - Keyboards
*Hank Harvey - Bass
*Felix "Flaco" Falcon - Percussion
*Phil Jones - Drums

1967-73  Michael Fennelly - Love Can Change Everything (2013 release)

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Jade Stone And Luv ‎– Mosaics Pieces Of Stone (1977 us, awesome rough fuzzy psych with country drops, 2008 issue)

Although Ronnie Patton cut his first single in Nashville at the tender age of 17 with, no less, Elvis Presley’s guitarist Scotty Moore and the Jordanaires on backing vocals, it wasn’t until 14 years and one name change later that the singer from Austin, Texas, finally recorded his first and, as it happened, only album. 

The sole album from male-female duo Jade Stone & Luv is a lost gem from the heart of the psychedelic 1970s. Composed and self-produced in Nashville, “Mosaics; Pieces Of Stone” went unnoticed by the music industry upon release. Fortunately for us, it didn’t disappear forever, but simply went into retreat, biding its time. 

While almost unknown outside specialist circles, “Mosaics” has been an underground cult favorite for many years. The combination of top-level songwriting, skillful guitar/keyboard arrangements and soaring vocals is just too impressive to ignore. And beyond these obvious qualities, the album has something subtle and unique, a magnetic power that keeps drawing the listener back. One of Jade Stone & Luv’s earliest advocates was the legendary New York City musicologist Paul Major. Here’s a typical Major impression of the music on “Mosaics”:

Groovy love vibes thru a prism of jade statues in swinging singles apartment complex action... Cadillac with fuzzy dice, feather boa, lotsa cigarette burns, stale perfumed ashen air. This album in the 8-track player at 5 AM with someone you don't even know passed out in the backseat, as you head to the diner to meet up with an early-bird Lava Lite salesman who deals pills on the side. Bubbly champagne molecules become the plastic vinyl booths in dim-lit dive bars; it's crackerbox post-war suburban low-rent psychedelic…"

The album’s cinematic qualities were also highlighted in a review in the recent Acid Archives book, which deals with vintage underground music:

“…The music is notoriously hard to describe, but projects scenes of all-night cruising through Edge City... a hip which is not metropolitan hip, but dreams of stardom and glamour from the American underbelly, two renegade souls zooming down the highway between Austin and Nashville...”

Subliminal-sounds

Tracks
1. Waiting For The Rain - 3:09
2. Come Home With Me - 4:11
3. Working At The Business Of Living - 2:50
4. Backroads Of My Mind - 3:10
5. Man - 2:22
6. Grab Hold - 2:43
7. Take A Look - 2:18
8. So Close - 2:48
9. Cool Breeze - 2:47
10.Reality - 3:19
11.Waiting - 2:11
12.Wonder Why - 2:52
13.Little Teaser - 3:08
14.Ride Little Renee Ride - 3:13
15.You Can't Run Away - 4:36
16.You Can't Take Me Alive - 2:29
17.You Are My Life - 5:51
18.Man (Live) - 4:18
19.What's Done Is Done - 2:57
20.Take Me Down - 3:00
All songs written by Jade Stone

Personnel
*Jad Stone - Vocals, Guitar
*Luv - Vocals
*Dennis Burnside - Keyboards
*Paul Worley - Lead Guitar
*Eddie Bayers - Drums, Congas

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Cargoe - Live In Memphis! (1972 us, exceptional southern rock with psych shades)

The year was 1972, and Cargoe were flying high. They had migrated from Oklahoma to JL the musical confines of Memphis, and had landed a recording contract with the newly invigorated Ardent Records. Their first album was recorded, and ready for release to the waiting throngs of music fans out there in the hinterland. Their first single, Feel Alright, started gathering tremendous radio play, and instant, positive feedback wherever it was aired. 

Within weeks, it had arrived on the Top 100 national music charts. The band flew to Los Angeles, where they introduced their single on KHJ-TV, and played a sold out show at The Whiskey-A-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard. A music video (one of the first ever!) was filmed, edited, and mailed out to TV stations across America (of course there was no MTV yet!) But a funny thing happened on the way to the Grammys. As many artists found out before them, many have discovered since, and many more will know in future, there are no guarantees in the music business. In fact, the industry is rife with "I Could'a Been a Contender" stories. And the stated reasons for lack of stardom, while as varied as the stars in the heavens, all come down to several basic principles.

Ardent, the label on which Cargoe's music lived, was small, and new, and, although distributed by the then-already-world-famous Stax Records, was not prepared to play in the big leagues dominated by the Brothers Warner, Columbia, RCA, and like others. In fact Stax, while certainly playing at a very high level in R&B music, was not prepared itself to play in the "Pop" world. Records weren't available in stores when people came to buy them.

Large city pop or rock radio stations were much more inclined to add songs by the major labels' artists to their play lists. And touring on a national scale was just too expensive to pull off. Was Cargoe's music good enough to "make it", had it been on a major label? Probably so. 

History may now make that judgement. But in 1972, on a small, independent label, distributed by another independent label best known for a very different style of music than that which Cargoe played and recorded, the odds just weren't good. The same exact fate was to befall the second group released on Ardent Records, that being Big Star. And the third, The Hot Dogs, and so on down the line.

Yet, while this "disappearing act" was pretty common with small label rock groups, there seems to have been something special in Ihe Memphis night air that the Ardent groups were breathing back then. Because another funny thing happened on the way to musical obscurity. This music just wouldn't go away. 

The people hanging around John Fry's door, we now sec in hindsight, weren't your average garage band folks. While the biggest contemporary record on the Ardent label was certainly Cargoe's "Feel Alright", the torch wound up being carried, at first single-handedly, by Big Star. Year after year, the myth, admiration, and yes, let's say it, cult of Big Star has grown. Band after band have traced their inspiration back to Big Star, and musical historians and writers have embraced them as being, in many cases, second only to The Beatles in pop music importance. And in recent years, this interest in Big Star has trickled down to the other Ardent groups. More and more, fans and critics have "discovered" Cargoe or the others. Re-issues, especially in Japan and Europe, of Cargoe and The Hot Dogs, have followed the Big Star re-issues. And Feel Alright is beginning to re-assume its place as a power pop anthem.

In the middle of all this 1972 hullabaloo with Cargoe and Big Star, the Cargoe guys, well known for their live playing prowess, performed a very special concert. The Memphis rock station of the day, WMC FM-100, had instituted a series of live concerts by many well known artists, to be broadcast over the airwaves directly from Ardent Recording Studios. These were engineered usually by Terry Manning, and sometimes by Richard Rosebrough.The artists included The Groundhogs, The Charlie Daniels Band, Stories, Martin Mull (soon to be released as Lucky Seven CD 9215) and others, including none other than Cargoe! In each case, a live audience of invited guests was brought into the studio. 

This CD is the actual recording of that concert back hi 1972! Since the original broadcast, this Cargoe concert has gone "unheard" for these last 31 years! Cargoe were made up of Bill Phillips on keyboards and rhythm guitar, Max Wisley on bass, Tommy Richard on lead and rhythm guitar, and Tim Bent on drums. Bui the magic was that all members were excellent vocalists, as well as songwriters. Good vocal harmony has certainly become a trademark of the "Power Pop" genre, and Cargoe was not to disappoint on that score! So sit back, let your mind drift to 1972, turn on your I'M radio, and enjoy this live broadcast.

by Terry Manning, 2003

Track
1. Come Down (With Radio Intro) (Bill Phillips) - 4:28
2. Things We Dream Today (Bill Phillips) - 2:46
3. Feel Alright (Tommy Richard) - 2:36
4. Horses And Silver Things (Tommy Richard, Max Wisley) - 3:34
5. Scenes (Max Wisley) - 4:30
6. Heal Me (Bill Phillips, Max Wisley) - 3:16
7. Intro/This Is Real (Max Wisley) - 1:54
8. Feelin Mighty Poorly (Tim Benton) - 3:16
9. Thousand Peoples Song (Tommy Richard) - 4:13
10.Leave Today (Bill Phillips) - 4:46
11.Time (Bill Phillips, Max Wisley) - 4:21
12.I Love You Anyway (Tommy Richard) - 3:45
13.Tokyo Love (Bill Phillips, Jim Peters) - 4:53

Cargoe
*Bill Phillips - Keyboards, Vocals
*Tommy Richard - Guitar, Vocals
*Max Wisley - Bass, Vocals
*Tim Benton - Drums, Vocals

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Paul Revere And The Raiders - Something Happening (1968 us, fantastic beat psychedelia, Repertoire digipack remaster and expanded)

Paul Revere and The Raiders became the pride of America when The Beatles took the States by storm during the 'British Invasion'. The Raiders were the first rock band signed to Columbia and they enjoyed a mass of hit albums and singles. 

Changing tastes in the late 1960s rendered the group unfashionable. On January 6, 1968, just four months after the cancellation of Where The Action Is, Revere and Lindsay returned to the air as hosts of a new Dick Clark-produced show in which the Raiders made several appearances, Happening '68 (later shortened to Happening). 

This weekly series was joined from July to September that year by a Clark-produced daily series It's Happening, also hosted by Revere and Lindsay. In August 1968, bassist Coe left the group again and was replaced by former Action heartthrob Keith Allison.

Mark Lindsay took more control of the band during this time. He produced all records beginning with Too Much Talk in 1968, and the psychedelic album Something Happening which yielded a Top Thirty hit with "Don't Take It So Hard" and bonus track "To Much Talk" was yet another U.S. smash. The B-side "Happening 68" was the name of a TV show which Paul Revere hosted.

60's-official

Tracks
1. Happening Intro / Too Much Talk - 3:50
2. Happens Every Day - 2:48
3. Burn Like A Candle - 4:40
4. Observation From Flight 285 - 3:23
5. Get Out Of My Mind -  4:59
6. Don't Take It So Hard - 2:24
7. Communication (Part 1, 2) - 5:12
8. Love Makes The World Go Round (Don't You Let It Stop) - 2:35
9. Free - 2:27
10.The Good Times - 4:01
11.Happening '68 - 2:26
12.Too Much Talk (Mono) - 2:13
13.Happening 68 (Single Mix) - 1:46
14.Don't Take It So Hard (Single Mix) - 2:24
15.Observation From Flight 285 (In 3/4 Time) - 3:23
16.Theme From It's Happening - 2:45
17.Happening 68 (TV Version) - 1:34
All songs written by Mark Lindsay

The Raiders
*Mark Lindsay - Vocals
*Charlie Coe - Bass
*Paul Revere - Keyboards
*Joe Correro - Drums
*Freddy Weller - Guitar

Paul Revere And The Raiders
1963-65  Mojo Work Out (Sundazed issue)
1965-67  Evolution to Revolution: 5 Classic Albums (2013 double disc remaster)
1967  A Christmas Present... And Past
1968  Goin' To Memphis (Sundazed remaster)
1969  Alias Pink Puzz (Sundazed remaster)
1969  Hard 'N' Heavy With Marshmallow (Sundazed issue)
Related Act
1970  Mark Lindsay - Arizona / Silverbird

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Bull - This Is Bull (1970 us, strong funky psych, 2012 Relics issue)

In late summer of 1967, my friend Earl Hooker in San Francisco introduced me to Barry at a club. At the time Earl was teaching Barry how to play guitar, and fie was amazingly competent for playing for such a short period.

In the years to follow, Barry and I would run into each other at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco and the Apollo 11 in Chicago. Then on January 2, 1970 our paths crossed again; he was using the name 'Bull' at the time. Bull came backstage and we rapped about guitar playing and how he had been playing for 3l/2 years.

He impressed me with his intense feeling for the guitar and his quick fingering. He had 'soul', and I thought his talent should be given a chance. I introduced him to my manager, Sid Seidenberg, who then listened to him. He heard not only this intense driving guitar player, but a fantastic voice to go along with it. Live performances were set up and a great overall showman was seen by us all.

I have seen many, many performers over the years and I have to say that Bull shows the potential to be one of America's greatest. As we now share the talents of my good friend and great manager, Sid Seidenberg.

by B.B. King, October 1970

Tracks
1. Don't Cry My Lady (Jerry Friedman) - 2:51
2. Let It Shine (Jerry Friedman) - 3:00
3. Freedom (Jerry Friedman, Theresa Lindsay) - 2:35
4. Feelin' Pretty Good (Barry Gordon) - 5:09
5. Lovin Man (Andy Muson, Paul Sylvan, Jerry Friedman) - 2:55
6. Groovin (Jerry Friedman, Barry Gordon) - 3:47
7. How Do Losers Say Goodbye (Jerry Friedman, Theresa Lindsay) - 3:48
8. (Do You Have) Something To Say (Joe Lala, Micheal Pinera) - 2:19
9. Everybody Wanna Do (Barry Gordon, Buddy Sklar) - 3:49

Personnel
*Barry "Bull" Gordon - Vocals, Lead Guitar, Bass
*Jerry Friedman - Guitar, Piano, Organ
*Andy Muson - Bass
*Paul Griffin - Organ, Piano
*Herb Lovelle - Drums
*Carl H. Carldwell, Hilda Harris, Eileen Gilbert, Tasha Thomas - Vocals

Free Text