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Topic: Arthur Lee---Love |
Jon Light (deceased)
From:
Saugerties, NY
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Posted 12 Feb 2007 7:01 pm |
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When he died last year there was a forum thread. I asked about him--I was puzzled to find, after listening to :30 sound clips on CD store websites, that I just didn't know the music and it seemed to me like I should have known it--I was into the mainstream psychedelia of the time. I was asking if his music was maybe west coast regional. Well, some reading up on the subject at Allmusic confirms that he didn't tour much and never really did the stuff you need to do to get the music out there. Guy was kind of a mess, I guess.
However.............
I just spent some time on youtube and I discovered that I most certainly do know some of his stuff---never knew who did these songs until now. Some strong idiosyncratic material.
--Alone Again Or
--You Set the Scene
Man, I know this stuff! Seems like I've always known it. Weird how, after all this time I'm suddenly mourning the dude.
Seriously unique. |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 12 Feb 2007 9:02 pm
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Yeah - he was unique and great. I liked all the incarnations of the band I ever heard. This music was also very influential in the last 20 years.
Where I lived at the time - Massachusetts - it wasn't hard finding the records, and I bought all of them. But then, another of my favorite "stealth" bands - Detroit's SRC, who never really caught on either - were readily available there too. I'm not sure if these type of bands were just distributed and sold mostly on a regional basis in certain places, or whether their music just never caught on, for whatever reason. Perhaps some of both. |
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Brint Hannay
From:
Maryland, USA
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Posted 12 Feb 2007 9:05 pm
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| I am of that certain age where I was into the psychedelia at the time also. I had their albums back then (long since lost), and a year or two ago picked up "Forever Changes" on CD. For me, it holds up very well! Amazingly creative stuff. Those were the days... |
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Michael Johnstone
From:
Sylmar,Ca. USA
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Posted 13 Feb 2007 1:12 am
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| The last time I saw Arthur Lee was at Charlie Allen's funeral in 1990. Charlie was the frontman for Pacific Gas & Electric and a great R&B blues singer and a contemprary of Lee. I'd known Charlie since 1969. After the graveside thing we all went to S.I.R where there was food,booze and a backline set up. We had a jam session that carried on into the night and lots of great players were there - I played a little guitar and somewhere in there Arthur got up and sang some cool straight ahead blues tunes along the lines of Taj Mahal like "She Caught the Katy and Left Me A Mule to Ride" - the likes of which I hadn't really heard from Arthur Lee before. It made me think he'd missed his calling when he did all that quirky stuff with Love instead. I never did run into him again after that but I thought he was pretty talented,a real nice guy and a better singer than most people realized. |
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