Greetings folks,
Hope you're all doing good. We're busy bees here in Amsterdam, as we get ready for another marathon Kings Day DJ session. After last years warm reception from the neighbourhood I'm hoping it goes as well again, although the weather is looking a bit chilly, at least it's forecast to stay dry. Also we have a couple of roaming guests, as @emmaprice is due any day, and, a few years later than originally planned (thanks, covid), @eastvanhalen is finally on tour in the continent... hoorah! All that and it's my birthday too, well, it was yesterday, thanks to all for the greetings and messages.
Reminder: Next Sunday is the last of the month, so we're looking for #vortex themes as usual!
Last Sunday we had
@iamwahl in the chair, diving into his aide memoire of bargain-bins-he-has-known-and-loved to bring us
Maggie Bell's debut album "
Queen Of The Night" from 1974, which got the assembled grooving in their bell bottoms quite successfully. Thanks extended for the pick, and for sailing the frisb across to... nope, I've no idea where he is this week, but he's got internet, so here's
@zensolo with tonight's intro...
"Big emotional factor around making a selection this time was the fact my late brother would have turned 67 on April 15th-- tax day, USA!-- In some numerical palindrome more maths-minded members might explain, it's been 56 years since 1967, my brother having been born in 1956.
The upshot is that I've identified at the very least three albums among my current, digitised and available musical holdings released late in that year, in the wake-- hangover?-- of the Summer of Love-- and the landmark Sgt. Pepper's album by the Beatles, released on the Spring threshold of that Summer.
One, I've had ready to share, if memory serves, since the second time I caught that glowing frisbaton. I notice all my selections have had a strong New York connection-- even the Gran Combo album, in which they took a musical leap from their usual more traditional Cuban Guaracha/Puertorrican Plena y Bomba-inflected Salsa to dive into the Latin Soul style. This album is, on the contrary, very much an LA product. Maybe that's why I keep postponing it as a choice?
The other two...well, there's interesting contrasts as well as connections between them, which, again, members with a deeper knowledge of the era-- and, especially, the music business in the UK, where they both originate-- might parse out for us. The runners-up sit or loiter in the appropriate folder waiting for the right occasion for another ride on the wayback machine...
All to say, I'm flipping a coin to choose the third studio recording by this band, their first effort at a conceptual album. As I have an expanded 2009 edition at hand, I did a bit of editing to add only a number of the bonus tracks. Maybe I should have just shared the hour and a half?
Both acts were favourites of my late brother's, although the one whose record remains waiting in the wings was one he was a rabid fan of. I believe he may have had a live bootleg or two of the artist in his possession, it's a longstanding thorn in my side that I wasn't more determined in visiting his apartment in the wake of his passing to claim and take possession of a number of mementoes...
No more! Hope you enjoy, or if not, can share your misgivings in the usual inimitable Listening Club manner!"
Well then, download's here, stream's below:
See you 20:00 BST (GMT+1)
