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Lowell Levinger - Down to the Roots - 2014 (re-post)

Lowell Levinger - Down to the Roots - 2014 

from BostonBlues.com

You may not recognize the name, Lowell Levinger, but most of you may well have heard him performing as  Banana, seminal member of the ‘60s group, The Youngbloods. Today, adopting the name of a fruit would not raise an eyebrow, but in the 1962 Boston metro scene it was definitely bizarre. His raison d’être was  imarily to draw attention to the musical group he nominally led, Banana and the Bunch, Old Timey Music with a peel. Another member of that group Rick Turner, (some of you may remember him as sideman for Canadian folksters, Ian & Sylvia) recently commented “We wound up being sort of the mascots of the previous generation of Boston/Cambridge folkies… definitely a bit more psychedelic… the next generation of folk weirdoes.”

Today, his passion for vintage stringed instruments keeps him in the material necessities of life, but making music is still the balm of his spirit of which this all acoustic blues-driven album is ample proof.

Levinger has a clear and distinct voice with just enough gnarliness to flavor each and every phrase with the proper touch of passion. The sidemen vary from cut to cut indicating this compilation was assembled, I presume, from recordings made over a period and perhaps in different locations.

The program lifts off with “Married To The Blues “and with Ry Cooder on slide guitar lending delicate nuances to the vocal performance. Barry Melton does the same a bit later on “Love Is A Five Letter Word” and Dave Grisman provides an exquisite touch to “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave To Me,” a bit of an homage I thought to Jim Kweskin’s version of the same, and to the classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out,” restrained and passionate all at once.

There are 15 cuts, classics, some obscure, some originals, but not a throwaway among them, covering a wide range of blues stylings, country, funk, jazz and pop, and Neapolitan(?) (“L’Italiano” a bonus track) lovingly produced and with Levinger’s instrumental technique leading on most of them, each re-listening reveals further subtleties that charm this writer’s ears. This CD may be hard to find, but well worth your effort.

01. Married To The Blues
02. Love Is a Five Letter Word
03. Blue Morning - Good Day For The Blues
04. Like a Road
05. Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me
06. I'll Do Anything But Work
07. Blue Monday
08. Just Can't Quit The Blues e
09. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
10. Blue Driver
11. If You Got To Make a Fool of Someday
12. Corrina Corrina
13. Precious Gold
14. Riding With The Kings
15. L'italiano



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Brinsley Schwarz - It's All Over Now (recorded 1974)

Brinsley Schwarz - It's All Over Now (recorded 1974) - 2017

FROM PennyBlackMusic
Missing in action to one degree or another for over forty years, 70's country-rockers Brinsley Schwarz’s final album will properly see the light of day on Mega Dodo on April 28th. The aptly named 'It’s All Over Now' was recorded at Rockfield Studios with producer Steve Verocca, who was brought in to steer the project toward an American audience.

Despite Brinsley Schwarz’s management’s legendarily disastrous attempt to break America the first time, with a badly planned press junket and publicity event surrounding their Fillmore East debut, they were determined to give it one last try with this album. It may well have done so, too, with a pub rock by way of Nashville sound and the first recording of singer Nick Lowe and guitarist Ian Gomm’s song 'Cruel to Be Kind'. The problem was that the band was also in the process of breaking up.

The album was shelved for the first time and languished on a shelf at Rockfield Studios. Meanwhile Brinsley Schwarz had launched the successful careers of its members: Nick Lowe and Ian Gomm as solo artists, guitarist Brinsley Schwarz and Bob Andrews as the nucleus of The Rumour, and Billy Rankin as a member of Big Jim Sullivan’s Tiger.

In a rescue effort that should earn Ian Gomm a service award for the arts, he prevented the album’s master tapes from being destroyed in the 80s. “When I came to Wales to work at this recording studio, and help build it, Royal Studios it’s called, we had a sixteen-track recorded there that took two-inch tape,” Gomm says. “We’d wired the studio up and wanted to test it, and I thought two-inch tape, that’s what that Brinsleys album was recorded on. So I phoned up Kingsley Ward at Rockfield Studio and said ‘Do you remember that Brinsleys album that never got finished?’ And Kingsley said: ‘Funny you should mention that we’re clearing out the tape library this week and that’s going in the dumper.’ So I got in my car and I drove that afternoon to Rockfield and rescued it. Then I mixed it down because I had the studio time.”

'It’s All Over Now' was again scheduled to be released in the 80s but was then withdrawn – for a second time. Undaunted, Gomm sold CD-Rs of the album for years on his website.

The album sounds like a bar band on the verge of a massive breakthrough, but the choice of material designed to achieve that breakthrough in America is somewhat odd. There is the expected country-tinged rock, but there’s also a strange glut of AM radio sweetness emphasizing sugary harmonies and nods to early soul. The band’s interpretation of white soul works best on their brilliant version of Garnet Mimms’ 1966 hit 'I’ll Take Good Care of You' but is baffling on 'God Bless (Whoever Made You)', recorded by Jona Lewie a few years later.

Nick Lowe’s voice is rich and unabashedly sentimental, somehow cutting through the heavy orchestral backing on 'As Lovers Do' (written by Dave Edmunds) and 'Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song)' that seem taken from early 60's American pop vocal groups. Lowe uses his effective and now well-established narrative voice of a wayward lover, who is well aware that he is a bit of a bastard, swanning back into someone’s life on 'We Can Mess Around' and 'Private Number', either of which could have been an early Rumours song.

The lovely early version of 'Cruel to Be Kind' here is much mellower and less choppy than the well-known hit from Nick Lowe’s solo album 'Labour of Lust'. A similar version was recorded for the B-side to Lowe’s 'Little Hitler'. It’s by far the strongest original track and undoubtedly would have been the first single off 'It’s All Over Now'. Glimpses of Rockpile to come, 'Everybody' and 'Give Me Back My Love' are the hardest rocking and least treacly moments on the record. There is a pointless instrumental, 'Do The Cod', and a silly reggae version of Bobby Womack’s 'It’s All Over Now' that was hopefully recorded when they were all very high indeed.

01. We Can Mess Around
02. Cruel To Be Kind
03. As Lovers Do
04. I’ll Take Good Care Of You
05. Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song)
06. Do The Cod
07. God Bless (Whoever Made You)
08. Everybody
09. Private Number
10. Give Me Back My Love
11. It’s All Over Now

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Ian Gomm - Rock 'N' Roll Heart

Ian Gomm - Rock 'N' Roll Heart - 2001

Ian Robert Gomm (born 28 March 1947 in Chiswick, West London) is a British singer-songwriter, who was the rhythm guitarist for Brinsley Schwarz from 1970 to 1974. He was named "Best Rhythm Guitarist" by NME in 1971.

Gomm had started in around 1962/1963 in Unit 4. This group evolved out of an outfit formed by Ian Gomm on rhythm and lead guitar and vocals, Martin Davis on bass, and Simon Behar on drums, all of whom were pupils at Ealing County School for Boys. Soon after this formation, Frank Kennington, who was older than the others, joined as lead vocalist, and they became Unit 4. Mick Lieber, who had previously played with Frankie Reid & The Casuals and Clay Alison and the Searchers, joined Unit 4 around July 1964 but the new line-up was short-lived. Around October 1964, Kennington left and moved to Sydney, Australia, precipitating Unit 4's eventual break-up.

In 1974, following his time in Brinsley Schwarz, Gomm built a recording studio in Wales, where he worked with musicians such as the Stranglers and Alexis Korner. He also toured with Dire Straits on their Sultans of Swing tour. Gomm's first solo album, Summer Holiday, came out in 1978. The album was re-titled and re-sequenced (with two extra tracks) as Gomm with the Wind. A single from the album, "Hold On" reached #18 in the United States and #44 in Canada in 1979. "Hold On" has since been featured as bumper music on the radio show "Coast to Coast AM". He also re-released his best-known song from his tenure in Brinsley Schwarz, "Hooked on Love", with "Chicken Run" as the B-side on Stiff in 1979.

In addition, he co-wrote the song "Cruel to Be Kind" with his former Brinsley Schwarz bandmate, Nick Lowe, and Lowe's 1979 recording of the tune reached #12 on both the UK Singles Chart and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 (becoming Lowe's most successful U.S. solo hit to date) that year. Gomm went on to release the solo albums What a Blow, The Village Voice and Images in the 1980s. He continued to write songs and built a new studio.

The album Crazy for You was released in 1997, and his latest solo album, Rock 'N' Roll Heart, featuring Jeff "Stick" Davis and Pat McInerney, was released in 2002

01. Gone Fishin'
02. Rock 'N' Roll Heart
03. Little Lost Now
04. The Devil I Know
05. Don't Cry
06. You've Broken Every Heart
07. Ten Commandments
08. Hold On To A Dream Tonight
09. All The Other Girls
10. Everybody Wants To Get It
11. You Treat Me Like A King
12. Strange Feeling



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