sexta-feira, 25 de novembro de 2011

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - East-West


The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Paul Butterfield (17 December 1942 – 4 May 1987) was an American blues vocalist and harmonica player, who founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s and performed at the original Woodstock Festival. He died of drug-related heart failure.

Butterfield Blues Band


The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was signed to Elektra Records after adding Bloomfield as lead guitarist.[2] Their original debut sessions were scrapped, to appear in 1995 as The Original Lost Elektra Sessions. A second attempt was recorded live at the Cafe Au Go Go, but these too were rejected by producer Paul Rothchild. Some of the discarded tracks appeared on the What's Shakin LP shared with the Lovin' Spoonful.

At the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, Bob Dylan went electric in a move considered controversial at the time by much of the folk music establishment, backed by members of Butterfield's band — Bloomfield, Arnold, and Lay — but not Butterfield himself. In October, the self-titled debut recorded a third time after the addition of organist Mark Naftalin on some tracks, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, containing Nick Gravenites' "Born in Chicago," was released. Shortly thereafter, Lay became ill with pneumonia and pleurisy and Billy Davenport took over on drums. The Butterfield Band's second album was East-West, released in 1966, after which Bloomfield, Arnold, and Davenport left the band.

Bloomfield formed The Electric Flag with Nick Gravenites, and Bishop began playing lead guitar on The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw (1967). The band now included saxophonists David Sanborn and Gene Dinwiddie, bassist Bugsy Maugh, and drummer Phillip Wilson. In 1967, The Butterfield Blues Band played the seminal Monterey International Pop Festival along with the Electric Flag, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, The Who, Otis Redding, the counterculture bands of San Francisco, and many others.

After the release of In My Own Dream, both Bishop and Naftalin left by the end of 1968. Nineteen-year-old guitarist Buzzy Feiten, joined the band for its 1969 release, Keep On Moving, produced by Jerry Ragavoy, and Rod Hicks replaced Maugh on bass. The Butterfield band played at the Woodstock Festival, although their performance wasn't included in the resulting Woodstock film. In 1969, Butterfield also took part in a concert at Chicago's Auditorium Theater and a subsequent recording session organized by record producer Norman Dayron, featuring Muddy Waters and backed by pianist Otis Spann, Michael Bloomfield, Sam Lay, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Buddy Miles, which was recorded and portions released on Fathers And Sons on Chess Records.

terça-feira, 15 de novembro de 2011

Yardbirds - Happenings Ten Years Time Ago

Yardbirds

The Yardbirds are an English rock band that had a string of hits in the mid 1960s, including "For Your Love", "Over Under Sideways Down" and "Heart Full of Soul". The group is notable for having started the careers of three of rock's most famous guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, all of whom were in the top fifteen of Rolling Stone's 100 Top Guitarists list (Clapton as #4, Page as #9, and Beck as #14). A blues-based band that broadened its range into pop and rock, The Yardbirds were pioneers in guitar innovations of the '60s: fuzz tone, feedback, distortion, backwards echo, improved amplification, etc. Pat Pemberton, writing for Spinner, holds that the Yardbirds were "the most impressive guitar band in rock music". After the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, their current lead guitarist Jimmy Page founded what became Led Zeppelin.

The bulk of the band's most successful self-written songs came from bassist/producer Paul Samwell-Smith who, with singer/harmonica player Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty and rhythm guitarist/bassist Chris Dreja, constituted the core of the group. The band reformed in the 1990s, featuring McCarty, Dreja and new members. The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

quarta-feira, 9 de novembro de 2011

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

FUNKADELIC

Funkadelic was an American band most prominent during the 1970s. The band and its sister act Parliament, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.
The group that would become Funkadelic was originally formed by George Clinton in 1964, as the unnamed musical backing for his doo wop group The Parliaments while on tour. The band originally consisted of musicians Frankie Boyce, Richard Boyce, and Langston Booth plus the five members of the Parliaments on vocals. Boyce, Boyce, and Booth enlisted in the Army in 1966, and Clinton recruited bassist Billy Bass Nelson and guitarist Eddie Hazel in 1967, then also added guitarist Tawl Ross and drummer Tiki Fulwood. The band name "Funkadelic" was coined by Nelson after the band relocated to Detroit. By 1968, because of a dispute with Revilot, the record company that owned the name "The Parliaments", the ensemble began playing under the name Funkadelic.
As Funkadelic, the group signed to Westbound in 1968. Around this time, the group's music evolved from soul and doo wop into a harder guitar-driven mix of psychedelic rock, soul and funk, much influenced by the popular musical (and political) movements of the time. Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone were major inspirations. This style later evolved into a tighter guitar-based funk (circa 1971-75), which subsequently, during the height of Parliament-Funkadelic success (circa 1976-81), added elements of R&B and electronic music, with less psychedelic rock elements.
The group's self-titled debut album, Funkadelic, was released in 1970. The credits listed organist Mickey Atkins plus Clinton, Fulwood, Hazel, Nelson, and Ross. The recording also included the rest of the Parliaments singers (still uncredited due to contractual concerns), several uncredited session musicians then employed by Motown, as well as Ray Monette (of Rare Earth) and future P-Funk mainstay Bernie Worrell.
Bernie Worrell was officially credited starting with Funkadelic's second album, 1970s Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow, thus beginning a long working relationship between Worrell and Clinton. The album Maggot Brain followed in 1971. The first three Funkadelic albums displayed strong psychedelic influences (not least in terms of production) and limited commercial potential, despite containing many songs that stayed in the band's setlist for several years and would influence many future funk, rock, and hip hop artists.
After the release of Maggot Brain, the Funkadelic lineup was expanded greatly. Tawl Ross was unavailable after experiencing either a bad LSD trip or a speed overdose, while Billy Bass Nelson and Eddie Hazel quit due to financial concerns. From this point, many more musicians and singers would be added during Funkadelic's (and Parliament's) history, including the recruitment of several members of the famous James Brown backing band The JB's in 1972 - most notably Bootsy Collins and the Horny Horns. Bootsy and his brother Catfish Collins were recruited by Clinton to replace the departed Nelson and Hazel. Bootsy in particular become a major contributor to the P-Funk sound. In 1972, this new line-up released the politically-charged double album America Eats Its Young. The lineup stabilized a bit with the album Cosmic Slop in 1973, featuring major contributions from recently added singer-guitarist Garry Shider. After first leaving the band, Eddie Hazel spent a year in jail for drug possession and assault, then returned to make major contributions to the 1974 album Standing on the Verge of Getting It On. Hazel only contributed to P-Funk sporadically thereafter.
George Clinton revived Parliament in 1974 and signed that act to Casablanca Records. Parliament and Funkadelic featured mostly the same stable of personnel but operated concurrently under two names. At first, Parliament was designated as a more mainstream funk ensemble dominated by soulful vocals and horn arrangements, while Funkadelic was designated as a more experimental and freestyle guitar-based funk band. The ensemble usually toured under the combined name Parliament-Funkadelic or simply P-Funk (which also became the catch-all term for George Clinton's rapidly growing stable of funk artists).
In 1975 Michael Hampton, a teen guitar prodigy, replaced Hazel as the premier lead guitarist in Parliament-Funkadelic, and was a major contributor to the next several Funkadelic albums. Funkadelic left Westbound in 1976 and moved to Warner Brothers. Their first album for Warner was Hardcore Jollies in 1976. Just before leaving Westbound, Clinton provided that label with a collection of recently recorded outtakes, which Westbound released as the album Tales of Kidd Funkadelic. That album did significantly better commercially than Hardcore Jollies and included "Undisco Kidd", an R&B Top 30 single. In 1977, Westbound capitalized further by releasing the anthology The Best of the Early Years.
As Parliament began achieving significant mainstream success in the 1975-1978 period, Funkadelic recorded and released its most successful and influential album, One Nation Under a Groove in 1978, adding former Ohio Players keyboardist Walter "Junie" Morrison and reflecting a more melodic dance-based sound. The title track spent six weeks at #1 on the R&B charts, around the time that Parliament was enjoying the #1 R&B singles "Flash Light" and "Aqua Boogie". Uncle Jam Wants You in 1979 continued Funkadelic's new more electronic sound production. The album contains the fifteen-minute "(Not Just) Knee Deep" featuring former Spinners lead singer Philippé Wynne, an edited version of which topped the R&B charts. The final official Funkadelic album, The Electric Spanking of War Babies, was released in 1981. The release was originally a double-album project, but it was reduced to a single disc under pressure from Warner Brothers. Some of the deleted tracks would appear on future P-Funk releases, most notably the 1982 hit single "Atomic Dog" which appeared on the first George Clinton solo album.
Meanwhile, the album Connections & Disconnections (re-issued on CD as Who's a Funkadelic) was released under the name Funkadelic in 1981. The album was recorded by former Funkadelic members and original Parliaments Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, and Grady Thomas, who had left P-Funk in 1977 after disagreements with George Clinton's management practices. This LP, notable for its heavy use of Thomas "Pae-dog" McEvoy's jazz horn, contains the track called "You'll Like It Too", which came a very popular breakbeat source for the Hip hop community in the 80s. Another rebellious former band member, drummer Jerome Brailey, released the album Mutiny on the Mamaship, by his new band Mutiny. Even Clinton himself found this to be a good album despite containing lyrics that mocked him and his management of the P-Funk enterprise.
In the early 1980s, with legal difficulties arising from the multiple names used by multiple groups, as well as a shakeup at Parliament's record label, George Clinton dissolved Parliament and Funkadelic as recording and touring entities. However, many of the musicians in later versions of the two groups remained employed by Clinton. Clinton continued to release new albums regularly, sometimes under his own name and sometimes under the name George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars. In the mid-1980s, the last Funkadelic album By Way Of The Drum was recorded by Clinton with P-Funk personnel and many electronic devices. The album was rejected by its record label and did not see official release in America until it appeared as a reissue in 2007. It features a cover of "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream. The album did not receive any publicity, but still received favorable reviews.
Clinton continued his P-Funk collective in the 1990s and 2000s, with a revolving stable of musicians, some of whom remain from the classic lineups of Funkadelic and Parliament. The rock-oriented sound of Funkadelic has diminished, as Clinton has moved towards more of an R&B and hip hop sound. In 1997 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Filmmaker Yvonne Smith of New York City-based Brazen Hussy productions produced Parliament-Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove, a full-length documentary about the groundbreaking group, which aired on PBS in 2005. As of 2008, Clinton was at work on a new Funkadelic album for his new record label. In November 2008, Westbound Records released Toys, a collection of Funkadelic outtakes and demos from the Free Your Mind and America Eats Its Young era. Critical reception of the album has generally been positive.

sábado, 5 de novembro de 2011

Eric Burdon & The Animals - Sky Pilot

The Animals

The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their number one signature song "The House of the Rising Sun" as well as by hits such as "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", "It's My Life", and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood". The band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm and blues-oriented album material. They were known in the U.S. as part of the British Invasion.
The Animals underwent numerous personnel changes in the mid-1960s and suffered from poor business management. Under the name Eric Burdon and the Animals, they moved to California and achieved commercial success as a psychedelic rock band, before disbanding at the end of the decade. Altogether, the group had ten Top Twenty hits in both the UK Singles Chart and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
The original lineup had a brief comeback in 1977 and 1983. There have been several partial regroupings of the original era members since then under various names. The Animals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

quarta-feira, 2 de novembro de 2011

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Dino's Song


Quicksilver Messenger Service

I don't ever want to see you crying,
And I don't ever want to see you blue,
oh no, all I ever wanted to do was know you
And maybe hope you could know me too.
Well I don't ever want to make you sorry
For anything you've ever said or done,
Oh no, all I ever wanted to do was love you,
And maybe hope you could love me too.
And it's all right baby, I'm in love with you,
And it's all right, I would never make you blue or try to play with you,
Well I don't ever want to spoil your party, babe,
Or tell you where to go or what to do,
Oh no, all I ever wanted to do was know you,
There may be hope you could know me too.
And it's all right baby, I'm in love with you,
And it's all right, I would never make you blue or try to play with you,
Well I don't ever want to spoil your party, babe,
Or tell you where to go or what to do,
Oh no, all I ever wanted to do was love you,
There may be hope you could love me too. 

P.S. 3 (L