Archive for the ‘Barry Reynolds’ Category

Wally Badarou

Sunday, October 14th, 2012

Listen: Theme From Countryman / Wally Badarou
Theme

This single sits front of the 7″ soundtrack section in a wall shelf that I pass everyday of my life, when I’m in town that is. Suddenly it occurred to me, I had no idea what it sounded like. Well that’s all changed. If ‘Theme From Countryman’ had lyrics, I could sing you every last one at this point, that’s how many times it’s been on repeat. One of many lessons learned: never dump a record, you just can not predict know when it may become a cornerstone in your collection.

As an unofficial member of Level 42, Wally Badarou held little interest to me, and his endless studio involvements somehow the same. Boy, was I stupid.

Firstly, his accomplishments are an eye opener: a member of The Compass Point All Stars with Sly & Robbie, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung and Sticky Thompson, the in-house recording team of Compass Point Studios responsible for a long series of albums by Grace Jones, Joe Cocker, Black Uhuru, Gwen Guthrie, Jimmy Cliff, Gregory Isaacs, Robert Palmer, Marianne Faithfull, Herbie Hancock, M, Talking Heads, Melissa Etheridge, Manu Dibango and Miriam Makeba. Yeah, gasp.

Secondly, a gifted composer of incidental film music, possibly even harder to do well than calculating a Top 40 hit.

The single lead me to pull out the full length COUNTRYMAN double album soundtrack, thereby discovering, upon a typical credit scour, that Kwaku Baah played a big part in the musician lineup. Currently obsessed with his annoyingly under appreciated and extremely scarce TRANCE album from ’77, credited to Kwaku Baah & Ganoua, I rabidly advise finding a copy. And while you’re at it, both the COUNTRYMAN soundtrack and it’s accompanying 7″.

Pacific Drift

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Listen: Tomorrow Morning Brings / Pacific Drift
Tomorrow

When we were introduced, Barry Reynolds seemed genuinely surprised by my interest in him being a member of Pacific Drift, or even knowledge of it. As with a handful of UK centric 60′s labels that I collected, Deram was one. Given his band were on the roster meant I had investigated all associated history. In an era of tuneless progressive rock, which was incidentally as equally addictive as Northern Soul with book values to prove it, Pacific Drift additionally had hooks. Turns out these were Barry’s formative writing days.

So upon meeting in the late 80′s, when I inherited Marianne Faithfull’s A&R duties after joining Island, he being her life long writer, band member, mentor and heart strong companion, we finally met. Humble and shy about Pacific Drift would be an understatement. Having gone on to write so many more songs of greater strength, clearly this stuff was too early, too underdeveloped for him to care about years later. Doesn’t mean I didn’t.

Besides, some records maintain their biggest strength in the ability to turn back time. So is the case with Pacific Drift. Being the young record fanatic that I was, I’d befriended an evening jock at the local Top 40 during summer ’70, intentionally hoping all roads could lead back to getting his promo cast offs. Initially this worked fine, until realizing his intentions leaned in other directions. The arrangement ended abruptly but not before a few trunk sized vinyl scores, one of which included Pacific Drift’s FEELIN’ FREE album and the accompanying ‘Yes You Do’ / ‘Tomorrow Morning Brings’ 7″.

Pacific Drift’s pressings went top of the pile, primarily due to Deram but also producer Wayne Bickerton’s involvment. I loved his recordings with The World Of Oz and given his Decca/Deram house producer status, this stuff I needed to hear. Lyrically, I’ve never worked out if ‘Tomorrow morning brings the afternoon’ is genius or embarrassing. But it was prog, all things made profound sense via the hash pipe.

Marianne Faithfull

Sunday, September 4th, 2011

Listen: Times Square (Live) / Marianne Faithfull
Times

Over several nights, Marianne Faithfull recorded a live album at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn with an all star cast put together by Hal Winner. I was in charge of A&Ring it, and Marianne graciously gave me an Executive Producer credit on the album. I was beyond flattered and touched. She has a good heart.

A lot of the performances needed some serious weeding and occasionally required confrontation between myself and Hal. At the time, I was under appreciative of his input. But now I realize what an absolutely tremendous contributor and producer he was and is. Thanks Hal.

Playing the final mix of the terrific composition by Barry Reynolds, ‘Times Square’, for Chris Blackwell gave both he and I chills up the spine on that first listen. I will never forget the two of us simultaneously having involuntary spasms at exactly 2:19. Yes, Marianne Faithfull could be a higher form of life without even knowing it. Her performance on this occasion unanimously proved that.

Thankfully, Island Germany chose to release ‘Times Square’ as a picture sleeved 7″ single. I was thrilled and am forever grateful.