TWO TYPES OF 70s FUSION…Arthur Lee & Love: Black Beauty, Gene Clark: Two Sides to Every Story

Back in the 1970s, musical boundaries were quite porous, with genres crossing over for pollination to create some wonderful new sounds. Jazz mixed with rock, rock mixed with country, and soul mixed with everything. High Moon Records has issued two albums from the seventies that capture the fertile times.

Quick-name me a black hard rock band besides the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Exactly. Arthur Lee and Love was one of the few guys who mixed hard rocking guitars and rhythms with enough soul to please both sides of the musical fence. This album of previously unreleased material  finds the band of Lee with Melvan Whittington/g, Robert Rozelle/b and  Joe Blocker/dr in the studio in 1973, and with the addition of John Sterling/g, in a series of concerts in 1974. The songs have an almost garage rock feel on “Young & Able” and “Midnight Sun” and Lee does a hip take of the folkie “Walk Right In.” The concert material from Scotland which includes “Keep On Shining” is exciting and raw, while the interview with Steven Rosen sounds like Lee could have used a cup of coffee or two before the tape started rolling. Classic vintage sounds and feel

Gene Clark was the soul of the folk/rock band The Birds, and one of the progenitors of the sound that eventually became “country rock” which eventually descended into the music produced by today’s posers who only sing about trucks, beer and tight pantsed chicks. This understated 1977 album is a quite classic, mixing tunes as delicate as a lullabye in “Sister Moon” or as honky taonking as the Stratocaster beer gut swampy “Marylou.” The topics are heartfelt and thought provoking, ranging from the life of a coal miner on “ Give My Love To Marie” to long lost love on “Lonely Saturday.” A clever country joy during “Home Run King” is a wonder of lyrics, while “Silent Crusade” and “Hear The Wind” will make you stop and think about life. Isn’t this what a good song is supposed to do? How far have we fallen!

High Moon Records

www.highmoonrecords.com

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