Vagaries of Lil Mike's Vinyl Vortex

I was going through some old records today and thought I'd post a few...

It's a bit of a pain to get these babies converted from flat licorice pizzas into fancy bundles of 1's & 0's so I hope ya can appreciate some of them...

Prince has a new disc out, but I ain't got it yet...

I do have this one he produced back in 1985 though...

Andre Cymone was Prince's childhood pal, and both their fathers were musicians, so naturally they started a band together in high school. Andre continued to play with Prince in the late 70's and very early 80's...before splitting off on his own circa 1981.

He didn't get far, at least not sound wise as this track shows...I myself can barely tell their voices apart...

Go figger...

Here's Andre's biggest chart attack, before he mysteriously disappeared into the audio ether. Anyhow, this was the edit version written & produced by the purple one off the Columbia Records 12" single from his circa 1985 album Andre Cymone ( aka AC ).

It's my understanding that all of Andre's solo recordings are out of print, so here's a small head start if you wanna seek some out...

Andre Cymone - The Dance Electric



This next song is a classic example of 70's soul with a message music. It was actually the B-Side to a 1974 single from a bigger hit the Chi-Lites were having at the time, but it still managed to get recognized and hit #63 on the US Charts. It follows in the tradition of their other big protest song "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People".

The Ch-Lites were from Chicago, ( Get IT?) and were basically lead by Eugene Record, and the version that recorded this track in their 70's peak included Robert Lester, Clarence Johnson Marshall Thompson, and Willie Kensey. It was one of 11 top 10 R&B hist they had between 71-75.

I know you can pick up a much less muddy sounding version on several of their greatest hits CD collections, it's even in the I-Tunes store...

But this is the black vinyl 45 rpm slab from the UK pressing I have, and it's what you get, in all it's funkily EQ'd, ripped & crackled glory...

Fans of Jay Z may recognize the intro which is sampled at the beginning of Jay Z's so called farewell album a couple anos back where his mother talks about the little Sean Carter...

The Chi-Lites - "There Will Never Be Any Peace (Until God Is Seated At The Conference Table)"

And one last bit of rubbish...

Here are two cuts from the late great Steve Marriott, a bloke who starred as Oliver on the english stage as a child, and grew up to be a big bad boogie woogie rock n roll star. Humble Pie started when Marriott quit the Small Faces after he tried to add Peter Frampton to the group in late 1968.


By 1969, Marriott had woodshedded his new project at his country cottage, and they were developing a bluesy hippie folk blend replete with caftans & lotsa then fashionable hashy sounding hookless hookah inspired jams. Marriott settled on a lineup featuring Frampton whom he'd plucked out of The Herd, Greg Ridley from Spooky Tooth, and young lad named Jerry Shirley from some less lucky combos called Valkryie and Apostolic Intervention.

Within a few years Frampton would have quit, but the band had taken off in America on the concert circuit, and were literally flying high via their own private jet plane filled with black female back up singers & piles of expensive South American powders. They'd have a good run, for a few years...and become one of the early seventies top stateside concert draws. Their live albums were generally better received than their studio works, and the band began known for really stretching out, and doing lotsa crowd pleasing elongated covers of their personal faves rather than waste time churning out their own crap...


Humble Pie weren't too precious to kick out versions of Graham Gouldman's "For Your Love", The Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women", Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over", Ray Charles "Hallelujah I Love Her So" or how about a 1969 setlist staple, their 21 minute Night Trippin' version of Dr. John's "I Walk on Gilded Splinters".

That's not to say they didn't have hits of their own ( check out "Thirt days In The Hole", "I Don't Need No Doctor", or "Stone Cold Fever" for a taste of their own awesome barrelhouse bang ups).

But what you'll hear next is the formative stages, with their tender English roots still dangling before they'd truly gotten Humble Pie off the ground, and prior to the hard living Marriott ending up burnt out with Humble Pie basically disbanded by 1975.

This is from their hopeful, somewhat less assured & vaguely obscured 1969 debut single for Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate label...

 

Enjoy the snappin, cracklin & poppin from a crusty 38 year old dutch pressing that I scored in a likely now defunct Savannah Georgia clothing/record shop called Cha Cha Chiffon's a few years back...

We'll start with the naughty themed B-side called Wrist Job, a song that was never originally part of any official Humble Pie albums until later on after it was compiled into Greatest Hits type collections when Immediate went bankrupt...

Humble Pie - Wrist Job

Here's the "hit"

Small Faces - Natural Born Bugie

Anyhow... if ya like the Humble Pie stuff, lemme know in da comments and I'll do a bit more in depth look back and include some rare Small Faces, Humble Pie and even some later stuff from Marriott before his untimely 1991 death by housefire in the same cottage where Humble Pie had first started.

But these will have to suffice for now...

Gotta Go...

I'll have more music & tall tales in the coming daze of course...

but, check the archives if yer bored, there's over 400 some entries in here...