Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 142

Record label: Uni

Produced: Joseph Burnett

Recorded: Sound City Studios, Fort Worth, Texas and United Audio Studio, Santa Ana, California

Released: September 1968

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: David Bullock; Scott Fraser; John Carrick; Phil White; Eddie Lively; T-Bone Burnett; George J Fernandez (m, special effects)

Track listing: The Viper (What John Rance Had To Tell); Day Of Childhood; Upon Waking From The Nap; Live ’Til I Die; Street In Paris; As Pure As The Freshly Driven Snow; Tribute To Sundance; House Of Collection; Just Me And Her; One Lusty Gentlemen; Ready To Move

Running time: 28.12

Current CD: Code7 FOCD2007

Further listening: J Henry Burnett – The B-52 Band And The Fabulous Skylarks (1972); Space Opera (1973)

Download: Not currently legally available

Anyone picking up this nondescript 1968 Uni Records album expecting to glean any information about the performers within were confronted with period liner notes reading: ‘I predict Benjamin Whistler, Geoffrey Chaucer, Nathan Detroit and Phillip Greenhill will be the next big thing, and I’m sure after you dig this album you’ll agree they have what it takes to be just that.’

Anyone reading the songwriting credits, though, would note that producer Joseph Burnett – soon known as T-Bone – penned four of the album’s 11 tracks, and that the real names of the mysterious ‘next big thing’ were nowhere to be seen. In fact, WCD&G were not a band, but a loosely based, non-performing group of musicians ‘just learning to use the studio, really,’ says T-Bone Burnett today. With Houston’s John Carrick the only non-Ft Worth homeboy, Burnett, David Bullock, Scott Fraser, Phil White and Eddie Lively were just making it up as they went along.

‘We were hanging out recording stuff down in the basement of this radio station in Ft Worth. We did the Legendary Stardust Cowboy at that time, then we recorded a bunch of tunes – mostly staying up all night taking a lot of speed or something, staying up for five days at a time making music. And that group of tunes somehow ended up being a record. And I don’t know how that name came about.’

The music from those non-stop recording sessions is surprisingly coherent rock’n’roll that comes from all directions and provided this ‘group’ with the same sort of varied sound that made bands like Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape so worthy. With notably different singing and writing styles, the lingering impression was of vast untapped talent waiting to come to further fruition on follow-up or solo albums yet unmade. Much of this crew would end up recording a memorable, Byrdsy classic for Epic as Space Opera in 1973, then disappear.

‘I was by far the least talented of all these people,’ says Burnett, ‘and – this just shows you that life is tricky – I think it’s funny that I’ve managed to stay doing it all these years.’