1998 Barry Finnerty - Space Age Blues {Hot Wire} [CD]

SPACE AGE BLUES
When Bert Gerecht of Hot Wire and Ulrich Vormehr of EFA Distribution came to me with the idea of doing a retrospective album, I was happy that some of these tunes would again see the light of day, but also a bit worried that the tapes would not be in good enough condition after up to 18 years in storage. Luckily, with the help of my ace engineer Joe Berger we were able to salvage good quality digital mixes and masters from even the oldest analog 24-track tapes. And more importantly, we found that the music itself has, in our humble opinion, stood the test of time rather well.
The first tune presented here, YOU GOT IT, I had written as my idea of a hip Tower of Power type groove. Being from the San Francisco Bay Area myself and having jammed with the Tower on many occasions, I have always considered myself a disciple of the Oakland brand of funk. Here Anthony Jackson handles the Francis Rocco Prestia style bass part while the incredible Vinnie Colaiuta (now with Sting) plays the drums. I still can't figure out his 8-bar drum solo, even though it comes out perfectly. See if you can. Also, this version differs from the original release in that Joe Berger takes the first guitar solo. As well as being a great engineer, he is quite an amazing guitar player in his own right, and I thought he deserved a little playing space. So…he got it! Mike Brecker and I play after that.
The second track, FUNK IN A, was so titled because it is, in fact, a funky tune in the key of A. Will Lee replaced Anthony Jackson on this one, and it pretty much features the guitar, first with a clean Stratocaster sound, then on a more distorted Les Paul.
DAWN OF A NEW DAY is from the earlier 1979 recording that was released on JVC in Japan. I handled all the keyboards on this and Tim Landers played some very sweet fretless bass.
HUNTING FOR BARGAINS is from my 1996 release in Germany, "The Bargain Hunters". It's kind of an L.A. funk type of feel, and as I said in my liner notes for that CD, I wrote it at 3:00 AM the night before the session!
SPACE AGE BLUES finds us back at the 1985 recording session with Will Lee and Vinnie Colaiuta. Mark Gray plays some nice piano fills and you can also hear the organ of my old partner Jon Hammond. I think it was his first commercially released record. I always thought of this song as a slightly Frank Zappa-ish black comedy, as evidenced by the lyrics (viewable in the CD notes). The guitar solo I sang along with my guitar through an old original Vox wah-wah pedal and I don't mind telling you I still like it a lot!
STONESCAPE is from the 1979 album. I recorded all the other material from the "New York City" album at Planet Sound in NY, but this one was cut in L.A. with Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Neil Stubenhaus on bass, while I was out there on tour with the Crusaders. I believe we did quite a bit of editing on the original released track, so this can be considered the long version. Also, we discovered while remixing that there were several guitar solos to choose from, so the final section is a bit different from the earlier one as well. See if you can tell where we switched tracks!
JUST MY LUCK is also from 1979, with Tim Landers on bass, Richie Morales on drums, and a horn section plus background vocals with Randy Brecker doing a great trumpet obligato part. I was trying to go in the direction of Steely Dan and the Police at that time. It was an attempt at a big production on definitely a small budget (my own money), but you know, it still sounds pretty damn good to me! The vocals are O.K. and my guitar solo on this, though not particularly flashy technically, is one of my favorites on record. I came very close to being signed by A & M Records at the time, but they needed to sell 250,000 copies, they said, and they didn't think it would sell more than 100,000. I would have been very happy with that!
JACKHAMMER was from a live tour in 1980 in Europe with Billy Cobham. I remember it was supposed to be a medium tempo shuffle, but Billy played it so fuckin' fast I could barely play it! At least my chops were up at the end of that tour! There is a more relaxed version on my CD "2B Named Later", which came out in 1989 and might be re-released some day.
STEPPING WITH THE LORD I recorded on a CD by my friend, drummer Victor Jones: "Visible Sound Groove". It is a composition by Harry Whittaker which Victor and I used to play often with Japanese bassist and producer Teruo Nakamura's Rising Sun Band. Here I took the melody by myself and the track was used to inspire paintings by the artist Tom Reyes, who originated the Visible Sound concept, painting live to live jazz. We usually do several live jazz/art performances each year in both the USA and Japan, and soon hope to do Europe as well.
WHITE ONIONS was co-written by myself and organist Jon Hammond and is on his debut 1996 Hot Wire release "Late Rent". As is often the case when we write together, he came up with the basic groove and form and I added a melody. After we wrote it, the groove reminded us of "Green Onions" by Booker T & the MG's, so we decided to call it "White Onions". Drummer Bernard Purdie thought it was a bit much when I started introducing the tune as being about "onions of the Caucasian persuasion", but after I convinced him that no racial slur was intended, the title stayed!
JUST THE OTHER DAY is from the 1985 session again featuring Anthony Jackson, Vinnie Colaiuta, and Mark Gray. I set up a slightly oriental flavored marimba synthesizer pattern on sequencer which runs throughout the tune, and we all played along to the sequencer using headphones. I used my cleanest guitar sound, which I really don't do anymore, but here it seems to work well, and the whole thing has a nice mellow feeling.
LOVE FAR AWAY is from 1979, my Crusader days. I suppose you could this one of my Joe Sample-influenced compositions. It's a nice ballad with a funky solo section in the middle. This track suffered a bit from being done piecemeal with click track and putting the drums on last…it's very hard to get a groove that way. That was one of the things I learned while producing this, my first record. But the melody of the composition pulls it through.
PRINCESS was also recorded during the live tour with Billy Cobham's group in 1980. To tell you the truth, I had completely forgotten about it, and after hearing it again I must confess I would have preferred to keep it that way. I really don't care for the sound of the phase shifter anymore…among New York guitar players that sound is known as "Hiramization". But Bert from Hot Wire and Ulrich from EFA liked it, so I hope you do too.
Barry Finnerty, New York 1997