September, 2009
Indiana wants me
“Blues Helping” Love Sculpture Rare Earth Records (1967) Love Sculpture was a British band that formed in Cardiff in 1966 out of the remnants of another local band called The Human Beans. The band, featuring lead guitarist Dave Edmunds (Right), John Williams on bass, and drummer Bob “Congo†Jones disbanded in 1970 after two LPs, this is their first. (Edmunds then went on to success with the number one song “I Hear You Knocking” and “I Knew the Bride (When She Used To Rock and Roll)” and then with Nick Lowe formed the band Rockpile.)
“Blues Helping” is pretty straight forward British blues rock with covers of “Summertime,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” and “Shake Your Hips”
Below is Robert Indiana’s “Love Sculpture” located on the corner of 6th Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan, NY.
Below is the album cover for “Renegade” by Rage Against The Machine which parodies the “Love” sculpture. (Neither Robert Indiana nor Rage have any other connection with the “Blues Healing” LP that started this ramble. None that I know of that is.)
Season of Lights
“Season of Lights” Laura Nyro in Concert. Columbia Records (1976) Cover art by Rokuro Taniuchi. Originally conceived as a double live album, the full set is finally now available as a Japanese CD release. The band included jazz players John Tropea, Richard Davis, and Mike Mainieri that had performed on Nyro’s then-current studio album ‘Smile’. I saw her at Tanglewood in Massachusettes on June 26, 1976 (Section 4, Row D, Seat 21) on this “comeback” tour and some of the songs from that night’s show are included on this album.
Hooker with a heart of gold
John Lee Hooker Plays and Sings the Blues Chess LP 1454. Early fifties recordings (When Hook was a younger stud) compiled and released by Chess in 1961. Personnel: John Lee Hooker vocals; guitar. (Eddie Kirkland guitar on “Just Me and My Telephone”.) Studs Terkel writes the liner notes. Another cool cover photo by Chess house photog Don Bronstein. This is back porch music from the heart of the Delta. “Although he often reworked themes by earlier bluesmen during this period, it was rare that Hooker outright covered another artist’s material. So his riveting interpretations of Muddy Waters’s ‘Please Don’t Go’ and Big Maceo Merriweather’s ‘Worried Life Blues’ peak this collection”