In One Eye And Out The Other - Cate Brothers

 

Provenance: Saw these cats playing on the title track on a BBC4 compilation show called Southern Rock at the BBC. I'm reasonably sure it was from The Old Grey Whistle Test.

The track was really fresh, true, but the best bit was that the Cate Brothers appeared to be near-identical twins - a couple of healthy looking lads with haircuts seemingly achieved by using each other as mirrors. Criteria enough for me to hunt down the album.

As a sidenote, although I wrote my X-Ray Spex review to coincide with the anniversary of Poly Styrene's passing, I'm mildly pissed off that I didn't do this one beforehand, thus continuing the run of eponymous bands that began with Van Halen and continued with Santana. 

Review: One of the best things about Southern Rock at the BBC was that it really did play fast and loose with the word 'rock'. Taking a rather catholic approach, it wound up including, of course, the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Atlanta Rhythm Section (playing 'So Into You' - cool), but also Dobie Gray, Charlie 'Benghazi ain't going away' Daniels and the Cate Brothers. There is a rock edge to the track 'In One Eye and Out the Other', true, but it's more a funk number, and going by this album, the brothers' true metier was funky blue-eyed soul. 

Fortunately for them, and me - and perhaps you, dear reader, if you decide to check the Cates out after this review - on In One Eye... they do this very, very well. Brother Ernie tends to take lead vocal duty and plays the keys (including some real 'come to church' organ), whilst Earl works the guitar and harmonises nicely. It's a pretty hot bunch backing 'em up too - Steve Cropper and Donald 'Duck' Dunn of the M.G.'s, sax greats Jim Horn and Bobby Keys (literally everyone), Jay "I played the solo on 'Peg'" Graydon and David "I've won sixteen Grammy Awards and I'm Tommy Haas' father-in-law" Foster. With this kind of talent onboard, you'd think it was impossible to make a bad album, right?

The opener 'Start All Over Again' sets the tone, a widescreen soul weepy with Ernie emoting over a river of organ, but things really get cooking on the title track; a slippery, stuttering funk number featuring cute chromatic runs, a crackerjack solo from Earl and a monstrous chorus. Honest to God, this is one of my favourite joints not only on the album, but in the entire funk genre.

I recall when I first heard In One Eye... I was ever so slightly disappointed that, title track aside, it lacked any other real stompers, and altogether was a little soft. I should get my ears syringed, because whilst that it true in a formal sense, closer inspection reveals so much that is warm and accomplished. The closest the Cate Brothers get to replicating 'In One Eye...' comes right at the end of the record, the barrelling 'Where Can We Go' wrapping things up in exhilarating fashion. 

What I hadn't properly appreciated was the brothers' facility with writing nagging, ear-wormy parts that don't always hit in the obvious places. Yes, their choruses are hooky, but on tracks like the prowling 'Give It All To You' the chewiness is in Ernie's tough singing in the verses and the incredible groove the band lay down. The breezy catchiness of the chorus to 'I Don't Want Nobody' works, yes, but it's amplified through rubbing up against the nervy chicken-scratch guitar of the verses. It's just well-crafted material played by crack musicians. When I try to explain the appeal of Nils Lofgren's music to me, I always fall back on "good singing, good playing" and the same applies here. I should point out that Ernie Cate is a much, much better singer than Nils (no offence dude), and one of the most underrated soul vocalists out there.

Really, the only track that still does little for me is the sappy 'Music Making Machine', which just about tips into schmaltz with it's self-pitying lyric. You want to shake them, and point out they've already done their 'road song', 'Travelin' Man', a bouncing horn-powered rave-up that would've slotted nicely onto Dr John's In The Right Place. I guess they went for Al Jarreau but ended up more... (NB: I've no idea where I was going here - Al Pacino? Al Qaeda?)

One minor blemish aside, In One Eye... is superior stuff, an album I play frequently, which is something you should look into doing also.  

A bit of fun trivia for you here, by the way - Jay Graydon and David Foster would go on to collaborate in the short-lived AOR band Airplay, and together with Alan Thicke would write the incredible theme music to Thicke of the Night. 

Graham Central Station - Graham Central Station

 

Provenance: This one came from a discussion I had with my father-in-law about funk; we were chatting about Parliament, the Jimmy Castor Bunch, the Ohio Players (as you do) when almost as an aside he admonished me not to forget Graham Central Station.

Forget? I'd never heard of them. But I had heard of Larry Graham, the bassist for Sly and the Family Stone - so here it is, the band he formed after quitting the hugely influential psych-soul pioneers. Graham's lived a life - Sly, GCS, introduced Prince to the Jehovah's Witness faith, and it turns out he's the uncle of Drake. According to Wikipedia, Graham was also a pioneer of the slap bass technique, so we've got this dude to thank for Victor Wooten and Mark King.

A quick Google and it became apparent I could buy one of those bargain collections of five studio albums for about eight quid. It virtually purchased itself, right?

Incidentally - the name Graham Central Station is a pun. In American English, it sounds like 'Grand Central Station' as 'Graham' is often elided into one syllable. Despite being married to an American for eight and a half years (and counting), I still experience some discomfort with this fact. I have sincerely spent a whole vacation looking for 'Gram crackers', only to find consolation in what I took to be a knock-off brand called 'Graham crackers' (just like Dr Pepper had a rival, Mr Pibb, who was presumably a consultant surgeon). 

To my non-American friends, I'll leave you with this warning; however you imagine 'Louisville' to be pronounced, prepare to be surprised.

Review: What a charming way to begin the album! 'We've Been Waiting' is a group acapella number, where they basically say how much they're looking forward to entertaining you, the listener. I'm not opposed to this kind of gimmick, one that Graham Central Station (spoiler alert) repeat on their second album Release Yourself, a track that introduces each member of the band with their own little slogan. It also features the chewiest synth tone ever produced, so give it a whirl right now because I won't be reviewing that bad boy for a while.

Is this a 'thing' in funk music? There's a little bit of this carry-on at the beginning of Parliament's incredible Mothership Connection, and the aforementioned Jimmy Castor Bunch do a funny turn in the same vein on their quirky jam 'Potential'. 

So what's the deal with Graham Central Station? My first reaction is that it's good, solid funk. It doesn't contain the hyperactivity of James Brown, the sci-fi weirdness of Parliament or the lasciviousness of the Ohio Players, but it does encapsulate something I often say about Nils Lofgren, which is that good singin' and good playin' can get you a long way down the path. Also, at the beginning on 'judge not, that ye be not judged' sizzler 'Hair', there's a cool slap bass intro, so that box has been ticked with a big fat permanent marker. 

For the most part, Graham Central Station is mid-paced soul-funk buoyed by quavering string arrangements, fun horn parts and gang vocals. The slower moments can sound a little like Johnny 'Guitar' Watson's Funk Beyond the Call of Duty (my favourite instalment in the Call of Duty franchise) without the humour (GCS are an earnest bunch), which is no bad thing. Singer Patrice 'Choc'Let' Banks gets featured solo spots on 'Why?' and 'We Be's Getting Down'; on the latter Banks does an especially scintillating job, her elastic vocals pushing against a grinding rhythm to fine effect.

What Graham Central Station lacks is a proper knockout punch. There is not a bad bit of music on the album, but neither is there anything that makes me immediately want to skip back and listen to something again. This needs a 'Summer Breeze' or 'That Lady' to properly elevate it into the top ranks; hell, even less successful acts like the Cate Brothers (identical twins, love it, love it) always had one ace up their sleeve per album, like the driving 'In One Eye and Out the Other'. GCS come close - 'Hair' is probably the best realised song - and indeed, it was a minor hit - but 'Can You Handle It' has a strident, imposing chorus that just needed to be wed to a more inventive verse, and 'People' has a guitar solo that's so fucking sick you wanna weep. Is that Freddie Stone playing?

As I said at the top, I got this alongside four other GCS albums for about the cost of a drinkable pint in London, so I can't complain. For me, this isn't heavy rotation material, and in truth it has dated somewhat. It suffers in comparison to more distinctive and high-energy contemporaries, and its serious-minded messaging of uplift and positivity is suffused with the spirit of an age that has passed by. Nonetheless, it's not bad - hell, it's good stuff - and Graham Central Station's albums would get better. It pays to tread carefully with recommendations from a guy who likes Bob Dylan's 1980s output, but here I have to hand it to my father-in-law for a very decent heads-up. 

Yoshino Fujimal - Yoshino Fujimal

Provenance: I bought this from Tower Records in Tokyo last month. I didn't have to listen to a single note of it to know it was going to be a triumph. Just look at the cover and tell me that's not the smoothest man in Japan?

Review: This album sounds exactly how you hope and expect it to sound. I didn't know it at the time, but Yoshino Fujimal is emblematic of a genre called 'city pop' that thrived in Japan during the 1980s. Sleek and cool, it trended towards the more sophisticated end of the yacht rock spectrum. From what I can gather, Fujimal was a member of the AB's (essentially Japan's equivalent of Toto), a skilled studio musician with a fine ear and chops to burn. I've struggled to find out more about Fujimal and can't see much solo work beyond the late 80s; perhaps it's indicative of nothing more than my ineptitude with Google, because one sad alternative is that he simply didn't receive the wider recognition his talent deserves.

Funk guitars, popping bass and a starlit saxophone all herald the start of 'Who Are You?'; friends, a masterpiece. It's like all the best bits of the Cate Brothers and Christopher Cross if they sang in Japanese. If anyone, next track 'Mid-night Plus 1' is even better; it sounds like Earth, Wind and Fire's 'September', if the latter put on a pastel suit, rolled up the sleeves and came up with a better chorus. It's so good that once I'm done with this review I'm going to skip back and listen to 'Mid-night Plus 1' all over again.

The album is divided into 'day' and 'night' sides, not that I can really tell much of a difference (if its manifested in the lyrics, I'm screwed, as my Japanese pretty much extends to 'yes', 'no', 'please', 'thank you', 'beer', 'hospital'). Though the instrumentation and production belies the age of this collection, it's not to be supposed that Yoshino Fujimal is dated. Instead, guitars either cluck or soar as appropriate, saxophones scrape the firmament and synths twinkle with a neon pearlescence. I can't tell whether this version has been remastered but everything sounds absolutely present and fantastic. In terms of technical accomplishment, it's every bit as finely-wrought as ABC's Lexicon of Love or Donald Fagen's The Nightfly (both, incidentally, released in the same year (1982) as Yoshino Fujimal - if only Sade's Diamond Life had not been two years later I think we'd seriously be treating it as the high watermark in popular music recording).

The first song fully rendered in English - 'Girl's In Love With Me' - could've been a hit. It should have been a hit. It's a skilfully delivered slice of AOR with a nagging hook in its chorus, sweet and addictive. Furthermore, Fujimal is an excellent, soulful singer, seemingly at home with English as he is in Japanese. I can only think that it's the provinciality of the music business that prevented this album or any of its singles from making a mark. Depressing, eh? How many other Fujimals were - are - out there? Still, we got Bros, so who am I to make such a plaint?

Japan was an incredible experience and, unusually for a traveller who enjoys novelty as much as I do, I want to return before long. And when I go back, I'll be devoting some serious time, research and money on snuffling out more gems like Yoshino Fujimal. If you're exposure to Japanese music has thus far been J-Pop and Babymetal (says a guy who, two months ago, only had a Flied Egg (yes, really) album to show on that score) you're missing out. But where else do I turn? Brazilian psychedelia? Italian prog? Heavy metal in Iraq?

I'm going to become one of those twats that goes to WOMAD every year, aren't I?