More side project than supergroup, Arcadia was the band formed by the members of Duran Duran that didn’t run off with Robert Palmer and the Chic rhythm section to briefly become The Power Station. It’s Duran Duran enough, though – enough to warrant inclusion in EMI’s ongoing series of 2-CD/DVD deluxe edition reissues of the Fab 5’s heyday catalogue. Rightly so. Though it only yielded one bona-fide hit in the form of the glammed out synth-funk single “Election Day”, Arcadia’s only album So Red the Rose is a surprisingly enduring collection of slightly over-ambitious pop. The core group of singer Simon LeBon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, and drummer Roger Taylor were joined on the record by a flock of session players, along with numerous high profile guest stars, most famously Grace Jones doing that psycho monologue in “Election Day”. On the epic (and epically underappreciated) ballad “The Promise”, the trio is joined by none other than jazz-great Herbie Hancock on keyboards and (wh-wh-what?) Sting doing back-up vocals on the chorus. In 1986, the video was striking (in 2010 strikingly cheesy) – a black-and-white interplay of forebodingly grainy stock footage and the band performing on what looks like a regurgitation of the set of their previous video “Is There Something I Should Know?” Yeah, I suppose it jumps the shark a bit when Simon whips out those pan-pipes, but the song stands up, regardless.
Tag: Herbie Hancock
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From the WTF Files: A Secret Stash of “Soviet Funk”
For most of us, the most daring unauthorized use of company property we’ll ever commit is to print off our March Madness brackets for the department pool. Which is amazing given the relatively tame punitive consequences of committing greater corporate sins. I mean, yeah, I’d probably get fired (and deeply embarrassed) if I got caught doing something indecent – say, distributing internet porn, or watching highlights from Glenn Beck – on my work computer. But that’d probably be it. Maybe a misdemeanor charge here or there, a fine, some probation, a bad reference. Whatevs. I’m confident I wouldn’t get dragged out of my home and shot in a city square, or tossed in a jail cell for indefinitely. Maybe it’s the predictable leniency of the punishment that keeps most of us from doing anything brilliant or consequential (and therefore risky) with our acts of petty corporate theft. If we were going to stake our lives on it, it would have to be brilliant, right?
Meet Pavel Sysoyev, Cold War-era Soviet government employee, and probably the closest thing to Herbie Hancock to ever emerge from the obscure Russian outpost of Abakan, a city of about 160,000 located just north of Mongolia in the Republic of Khakassia in extreme southeastern Siberia. Although to say he “emerged” from Abakan is a bit of a mis-statement. Mr. Sysoyev (who now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota) may, in fact, be more famous now in the American Midwest than he ever was anywhere in Khakassia where the fact that his recordings of his original, American-influenced funk and jazz compositions (and those of a burgeoning local underground he mentored and produced) were made after-hours on top-of-the-line government-owned equipment – and this at a time when American popular musical forms were as freshly and ambiguously legal in the U.S.S.R. as medicinal marijuana is now in the U.S., and far less respectable – made widespread release of his music in his home country a laughable impossibility.
It’s only more than 35 years after the fact that the underground jazz/fusion/funk scene Sysoyev grew under cover of night in his little Soviet-financed musical petrie dish is seeing the light of release, thanks to Minneapolis-based Secret Stash Records, who, just a couple months ago, released an LP called Soviet Funk – Volume 1 (on red vinyl, of course) with a second volume slated for release next week! Soviet Funk – Volume 1 compiles ten instrumental gems (Look, Ma! No language barrier!) from Pavel Sysoyev’s vaults (attic? closet? little cubby hole under the floorboards?), from sessions dating to the early ’70s, a few credited to Sysoyev himself, but also including bands Sysoyev produced like Pomogite and Da/N’et. As startling as the mere existence of these recordings is (not to mention their sudden ready availability to schmos like me), it’s even more startling just how fricking great they are.
The songs themselves are smart and sophisticated, full of jaunty, stylish melodies, unexpected rhythmic twists, and harmonies that occasionally wink-nudge at the Russian classical music tradition the players came from, but the playing is incredible – and incredibly joyful – and the recordings sound as sharp as anything Creed Taylor set to tape in the same time period. For all the musical sophistication behind it though, it’s an immediately groovable record with no shortage of catchy, accessible tunes like the opener “Gostiny Dvor” whose bubbly, flute-driven melody sounds like a forgotten hit single. This is a record that compels you to keep flipping it over (and to keep doing that dorky little dance that you do when you’re fairly certain you’re alone with your record player) instead of browsing your shelves for what to listen to next. [Note: by “record”, I mean “not a CD”: Secret Stash is a vinyl-only label, but their records do come with .mp3 download cards for those of us who love our iPods as much as our turntables.]
In advance of the release of Soviet Funk – Volume 2, Secret Stash is now offering a free .mp3 download of a track by Pomogite, the seven-minute “Ubijcy v Belyx Xalatax” (did I mention it’s instrumental?) – an explosive saxophone-driven jam full of firework syncopations and out-of-nowhere time changes, bookended by a couple of elegant solo electric piano meditations. Proof that Volume 1 was no fluke – in fact, it’s a strong suggestion that Volume 2 is even better. I can’t wait.
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Tell Me Why You’re Crying My Son
Peter Paul and Mary play NY in 2006. Image via Wikipedia Mary Travers, the Mary who blended her voice with Peter and Paul, has died at 72 according to published reports at CNN.com.
Watching a world pass them by but sticking to the idealism that made them 60s favorites, PP&M were the VH1 band of their day that wanted to break on MTV but not lose their loyal listeners. Puff (The Magic Dragon) wasn’t about anything but a child’s imaginary playmate they insisted, much like The Beatles insisted that many of their well known drug songs were simple odes about fun places.
Back to back Grammy Awards in 1962-1963 for Best Pop Performance for If I Had A Hammer and Leaving On A Jet Plane established the trio in music’s mainstream. They were no longer the torch bearers of Seeger’s legacy, but a musical force (much like early Kanye) that could keep a foot on each side of the road and walk straight down the center.
The artists they influenced are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as are the artists that influenced them. They gave voice to Bobby Zimmerman’s Blowin’ in the Wind. They did the same thing for John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane in that awkward period the Far Out guy experienced between the Chad Mitchell days and his stint as a Rocky Mountain troubadour.
Peter Paul & Mary covered Dylan especially well. In The Wind, the band’s third album in 1963, featured three Dylan penned tracks. They would constantly return to Dylan covers, including I Shall Be Released and Too Much of Nothing. Tim Hardin was another favorite songwriter to cover, as was influence Pete Seeger.
Perhaps no better measure of the respect PP&M generated is found in the musicians credits on their albums. Artists like Herbie Hancock grace the credits of the band’s discography. And if Paul Stookey wanted to write songs and Peter Yarrow wanted to produce them, Mary Travers was the soaring voice cementing the two and firmly establishing the trio in pop music history.
RIP Mary. Day is done.
*For those who didn’t delve too deep into the discography, the headline is the first line of Day is Done, one of Peter, Paul and Mary’s last hits.
