Issac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul (Stax/Enterprise, 1969)

Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul
(Stax / Enterprise 1969)

Four songs in forty-five minutes. Wiki has some interesting stuff to say about the album,

"The album almost never came to be. Hayes' solo debut, Presenting Isaac Hayes, had been a poor seller for Stax Records, and Hayes was about to return to his behind-the-scenes role as a producer and songwriter at the venerable soul label when it suddenly lost its complete back catalog after splitting with Atlantic Records in May 1968. Stax executive Al Bell decided to release a new, almost instant, back catalog of 27 albums and 30 singles at once, ordered all of Stax's artists to record new material, and encouraged some of Stax's prominent creative staff, including Hayes and Steve Cropper, to record solo albums.Burned by the retail flop of Presenting Isaac Hayes, Hayes told Bell that he would not cut a follow-up unless he was granted complete creative control. Since Bell had encouraged Hayes to record Presenting... in the first place, he readily agreed."

"By the Time I Get to Phoenix" takes some patience, the whole album does really...but it's worth it. Get your groove on, baby.

01. Walk on By
02. Hyperbolicsyllablicsesquedalymistic
03. One Woman
04. By the Time I Get to Phoenix

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Jackie Mittoo

Studio One (the "Motown of Jamaica") music director, pianist, organist, and songwriter. Mittoo was a founding member of The Skatalites and has been backed by the likes of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, the Heptones, Delroy Wilson, Alton Ellis, and others. Sit back, relax, and listen in.


Preview (Click to hear.): Gold Mine

"Can I Change My Mind" Coxsone 7" 1969
"Dark Of The Moon" Bamboo 7" 1969
"Gold Dust" Bamboo 7" 1969
"Gold Mine Coxsone" 7" 1970
"Moon Walk" Bamboo 7" 1969
"Our Thing" Bamboo 7" 1969
"Real Gone Loser" (2:22) Bamboo 7" 1969
"Sure Shot" Coxsone 7" 1968
"West Of The Sun" Coxsone 7" 1969

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Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline (Columbia, 1969)

Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline
(Columbia, 1969)

Yeah, it's this guy called Bob Dylan. You might have heard of him before.
I was driving on a lonely stretch of highway one afternoon nearly ten years ago, listening to the radio (gasp! radio?! what's that?!) when this then unfamiliar song came on and caught my ears' attention. It was "Lay, Lady, Lay" and I had no idea who it was but I knew I was in love with the man. Who could resist an invitation to lay across a "big brass bed" and see all the "colors you have in your mind?" Imagine my surprise when I looked the song up later and found out it was Bob Dylan. "Well, yeah...duh." you say? Well, this was a different Bob Dylan, a twangy, horny (though this may just be projection on my part), crooning, Bob Dylan. Apparently, back in the late 60s, Dylan grew tired of the "voice of a generation" persona he'd been labeled with and decided to turn his sound around and show another side, a side that said "Shut the hell up. There's more to me than that." Dylan was tired of the fans who expected more of him than just the music. He'd had enough of fanatics sneaking on to his property and disturbing him while he was trying to lead his private life, with his family. So, he recorded this album in Nashville, devoting one day of the sessions to duets with Johnny Cash. It's only 29 minutes long, which is a delight because you can enjoy it from front to back even when you've not got a lot of time to spare, it's a quickie. Apparently, there are better versions of most of these tunes on bootlegs but I've never really noticed that these studio tracks were lacking, myself. Now, I've got to give those alternate versions a shot. I wonder a bit whether hearing those is something like when you're young and you've been dry humping guys/girls for a while and finding it a thrill, only to eventually get down to actual sex and think, "Wow. That dry humping just won't feel the same now, will it?" Well, here's the dry humping, maybe I'll post the sex for you another day. ;)

01. "Girl from the North Country" (with Johnny Cash)
02. "Nashville Skyline Rag"
03. "To Be Alone with You"
04. "I Threw It All Away"
05. "Peggy Day"
06. "Lay Lady Lay"
07. "One More Night"
08. "Tell Me That It Isn't True"
0 9. "Country Pie"
10. "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You"

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The Deviants - The Deviants 3 (Sire, 1969)

The Deviants - Deviants 3
(Sire, 1969)

This 1969 release was The Deviants' third album. Sometimes it's referred to as "The Deviants 3," or "#3," or simply "The Deviants." Three of the four Deviants ditched the lead vocalist to become the "Pink Fairies" shortly after this album. You can read up on The Deviants more here. Some sites say this is inferior to the albums which came before. I don't know about all of that, I just know that there are some thoroughly enjoyable tracks on this one and I think that is some of the damned sweetest cover art I've seen in a long time. I will say that I am left a bit unsatisfied by "Death of a Dream Machine." It's such a solid tune, rolling right along and then it ends in one of those hugely anticlimactic fade-outs. Snag this thing, give it a listen, and make up your own mind about it, friends. 'Til next week, enjoy!

Note: The tags are kind of whacked out on this. I forgot to fix them before I uploaded. If you don't know what I'm talking about then you won't notice or care anyway and if you do know what I'm talking about, then it'll only take you a few seconds to fix them. Feel free to berate me in the comments section. ;)

Preview Tracks (click to play): The People Suite, Broken Biscuits

01. Billy the Monster
02. Broken Biscuits
03. First Line (Seven The Row)
04. The People Suite
05. Rambling B(l)ack Transit Blues
06. Death of a Dream Machine
07. Playtime
08. Black George Does It With His Tongue
09. The Junior Narco Rangers
10. Lets Drink To the People
11. Metamorphis Explosion

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