Yesterday
turned into a beautiful early Spring day. All the more beautiful
because I had the day off work. This is the second week running I
have taken a Friday off and made it a long weekend (last weekend that
long weekend was taken in a bracing, but thankfully dry, Cornwall).
Fridays off are a current experiment with a view to reducing my
working hours and making it a fixture. A much better work – life
balance and gradual wind down to retirement is my thinking.
Taking
advantage of the weather Mrs Darce and I took a sunny stroll to a new
favourite local watering hole. There, spurred on by some successful
DIYing earlier in the day that entailed putting our fridge freezer
back on an even keel (we think a leak of some description had caused
a floorboard to rot), conversation turned to the subject of more
general house maintenance and room makeovers. By the end of the pub
visit we had a plan. Oh dear! DIY and decorating have not been on the
agenda for some years.
So it
seems changes are afoot.
I guess
it is thoughts of approaching retirement (which have been occupying
my mind a lot recently), but I have been feeling nostalgic this past
week or so, and in particular nostalgic for my 70s disco days.
With
changes in the air it made me think of Brass Construction. They were
a go to band for me in the mid 70s. The band originally formed in the
late 60s, with Randy Muller the 'leader', but in their early years
only had only one record release, a 45 in 1970 on Jeff Lane's DOCC
label Two Timin' Lady / Take It Easy. It can be found on
YouTube (what can't!?) and it is noticeable that their brass sound
was immediately fully fledged, and somewhat ahead of its time I
think. However, it was another five years before they committed to
vinyl again. Their debut album, released in 1975, stood out from the
crowd. The brass was prominent, the guitars were insistent, and a
novel string sound had been added to the mix. BT Express had featured
a similar string sound a year earlier? Yes but that had also been the
brainchild of Jeff Lane and Randy Muller. A Wax Poetics article from
2004 is an excellent in depth appreciation of the group and also adds
some interesting detail on how the string sound came to be. They go on to feature a number of tracks that feature Randy Muller's involvement. It is interesting to note I hve nearly all of them.
Kool &
The Gang and the Fatback Band had been dancefloor fixtures with their
feel good funk vibe for a while but Brass Construction's sound,
although anchored in funk, seemed to mark an entry point into a new,
more sophisticated, disco sound and also lay down some early markers
for the jazz-funk scene.
Pulling
out my copy of Brass Construction
for the first time in years I was puzzled by the Virgin price sticker
on the front cover. I thought I had bought this album on its initial
release, but the price sticker suggests it was a few years later.
Perhaps until then I had been surviving with the singles that this
album spawned, or maybe I lost my original copy and bought a
replacement? It's all too hazy now. Scary, I'm sure only a few years
ago my memory would have been sharp enough to have had this puzzle
nailed.
The
whole album sounds really fresh I think after all these years. Every
track is a winner.
At risk
of blowing my Box download bandwidth again (be sure to tell me when
that happens) her is another track. This one was overshadowed by a
few of the other tracks at the time but it it's finally got some well
deserved love from me now.
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