The Collectors - Grass And Wild Strawberries (1968)

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On their self-titled 1968 debut album (also reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music), the Collectors had made an idiosyncratic contribution to the wealth of psychedelic music flooding North America in the late 1960s. In its melodies and instrumental/vocal arrangements, the record fused classical and jazz influences with more conventional rock and pop, particularly on the side-long, 19-minute "What Love (Suite)." Their second and final LP, 1969's Grass & Wild Strawberries, was an equally unusual recording, though one quite different to its predecessor. For this time around, they collaborated with respected Canadian author George Ryga to provide the musical soundtrack to his play Grass & Wild Strawberries, exploring a yet wider range of styles than they had on their first outing.
"I had been writing music for theater productions when I was at university and later on as well, before the Collectors came along," explains guitarist Bill Henderson. "I worked with Joy Coghill, the artistic director of the Playhouse Theatre Company, which was the big theater company in Vancouver. They had commissioned George to do this piece; he had done an earlier piece for them which was his most famous one, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. Then he created Grass and Wild Strawberries, and they wanted it to be a play with music. Joy connected me up with George to see if we wanted to do this. We started working with him, and enjoyed working with him. We actually played the theater production in [the band's native] Vancouver behind a scrim onstage; we were lit sometimes and not lit other times. So it wasn't a musical, but it was a play with music, and had an actual rock band live on stage. It was probably about a three-week run that the play had; we played it every night."

When they made an album of the music, they'd again be produced by Dave Hassinger, who'd also produced The Collectors, as well as working with (as producer) the Electric Prunes and the Grateful Dead, and (as engineer) the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane. "He figured he knew what we could do and wasn't interested in doing less than that, which was pretty neat," says Henderson of Hassinger's contributions. "We were young guys, but we were professional musicians, and really proud of the work we did. We'd do a take, come back in the studio and go, 'No, I was out of tune on that,' or 'I'm a little out of time on that, no, that's not quite right. We gotta go do it again.' So he'd let us do it a few times, and then finally [say], 'Look, you guys. You should take a tip from the Stones. It's not about how perfect you are. When they go out and play, they play until it feels great, and when it feels great, they come back in and say, "Yeah, it feels great." And that's it.' I had never really even thought about that, and he's quite right. You get the one that speaks, and you go, 'This thing rocks, man!'

"On the second album," Bill continues, "it was George's lyrics that tied it together, and we created a number of different kinds of music to go with those lyrics. We got to do more layering, and it might be a little mushier as a result. What we had in the band was a kaleidoscope of talents and skills, and that had to be managed. I didn't know that. But Dave knew that." There's certainly a kaleidoscope of approaches on the album, from "Things I Remember," which echoes the Gregorian-like vocal arrangements that had figured so prominently on their debut LP; the grinding, ominous heavy rock of "Teletype Click," where the robotic vocals were created by singing the parts at twice the normal speed and slowing them down; the more conventional psychedelic folk-rock of the title track, embellished by Claire Lawrence's jazzy sax; and the almost Youngbloods-like country-folk-rock of "My Love Delights Me." Occasional recorders gave numbers like "Don't Turn Away" and "Rainbow of Fire" a pastoral feel, while "Seventeenth Summer" -- which would be re-recorded shortly thereafter on the first album by Chilliwack, a group including most of the Collectors -- would sometimes be extended to 20 minutes by improvisations in live performance.

Asked what made the Collectors stand out from many of their contemporaries at a time when so many rock bands were breaking stylistic boundaries, Henderson speculates, "We didn't come from blues, the way a lot of bands did. Some of the guys did; the bass player [Glenn Miller], drummer [Ross Turney], and lead singer [Howie Vickers] all came from blues and R&B. Claire and I, we'd both played rock as well, but we weren't as steeped in the black tradition. [We] came from something different; jazz, classical, and rock. Both Claire and I had some classical training at university. The classical music that the academics were into at that time was what they called avant-garde. We had a lot of influences that were quite analytical and kind of iconoclastic; the whole thing going on in classical music was breaking the old musical traditions.
"We liked that idea, breaking traditions; that sounded like fun, so we did a lot of that. We had this analytical thing; it was an edgy kind of thing, and there weren't many bands doing that. There were bands that were supposed to be experimental, and we were way more experimental than they were. They were on acid, and we were straight, yet we were playing stuff that everyone thought, 'Oh boy, those guys are heads.' But it wasn't that. It was where our minds were, what we were thinking about, and the way we were treating music, which was fairly unusual.

"There was a palette that had a lot of colors on it, and we just went ahead and used them. We would do bizarre things with music that people don't normally do. One of the songs the Collectors did, you had to start it playing it as slowly as you possibly could, the slowest tempo possible. And then the idea was to gradually speed it up over the period of the song in a way you didn't really notice it was speeding up, but by the end, it had to be going as fast as you could play. I remember some writer from, I think it was Rolling Stone, saying, 'Are you guys really into Jewish music?' Because he heard us doing all these" -- here he breaks off to sing a melismatic line much like a cantor might in synagogue -- "and we loved that stuff. Claire had a real passion for that kind of soul."

The Collectors would not create another long-playing recording after Grass & Wild Strawberries, however, although they did do some work for soundtracks on Canadian films, as well as music for the Canadian Pavilion at the World Exposition in Osaka, Japan in 1970. "We could have gone a lot of different directions," reflects Henderson. "On that first album, there was a sound. I think we lost momentum on the second album because there wasn't, and not only that, it wasn't the same sound; whatever it was, it was different. There was a stream in the Collectors that was growing -- the improvisation stream. We would do it a lot, and we preferred it to writing, actually, 'cause it was writing in the moment. It was where Claire and I were going, big-time." They would keep going in that direction in Chilliwack, whose first lineup was mostly identical to that of the Collectors, the difference being the departure of Howie Vickers, which reduced the quintet to a foursome.

Summarizing his experience in the Collectors now, Henderson adds, "I was a lot younger then, and didn't realize the value of what we had started, if we could continue it. If we could somehow work from a similar template, just try to stay within this vibe that we'd created, especially with the first album. I know that if we could have done that, the band would have really gone on, and I think done really, really well in continuing those kind of traditions. There are bands that did do that, and it worked for them. But in my own mind, it was, 'I got something else I want to do, boom, let's do it.' Not thinking about building a career, thinking about kind of expressing my musical ideas." Not that Bill's done too badly out of building a career out of music -- he became the mainstay of Chilliwack, recording numerous albums with the band, with whom he still tours, as well as working in record production and composing for film, television, and theater (check his website, www.gonegonegone.com, for more info on his present and past activities). And now with the CD reissues of their two albums, twenty-first century collectors can finally hear the Collectors -- the band, that is.

(info by CGR)

01 - Overture
02 - Grass & Wild Strawberries
03 - Things I Remember
04 - Don't Turn Away (From Me)
05 - Teletype Click
06 - Seventeenth Summer
07 - The Long Rain
08 - My Love Delights Me
09 - Dream of Desolation
10 - Rainbow of Fire
11 - Early Morning
12 - Sheep on the Hillside

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Freedom´s Children - Galactic Vibes (1972)

Biography:Extracts from The Story of Freedom's Children by Tom Jasiukowicz (sleeve notes from Astra re-issue in 1997)

If ever there was a rock band around which a legend was created, then Freedom's Children were that band. Were they simply a broken-hearted horde writing psychedelic love songs? Were they galactic flyers in tune with astral days? Or were Freedom's Children just one of the best rock bands the world ever heard, or is it appropriate to say categorically that Freedom's Children were the best band the world never heard.

An ironic suggestion, perhaps, but one with a lot of truth in it. That the circumstances surrounding their existence played against them does not detract from the fact that the original group formed in the year and in the world of music, the ground was breaking.

In contrast to the hit parade sounds of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Monkees, groups like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floyd were producing albums marked by their experimental creativity and music styles termed acid rock or astral music.

In 1966, Ramsay Mackay and Colin Pratley had teamed up in Durban to experiment with their music ideas. In Cape Town they met Kenny Henson, who had been playing blues with Leeman Ltd., and together with Jimmy Thompson, of the same band, they began to perform as Freedom's Children. Their sound was acid-astral rock.

South Africans had not been prepared for this group. The group created controversy and newspaper headlines, in every small South African town they performed at. Some towns banned them. But to those who understood quality rock, Freedom's Children provided their break with conventional thinking and music ideas.

Julian Laxton replaced Kenny Henson on guitar in 1968 and Harry Poulus joined on keyboards. The group travelled to England but, perhaps for the reason that the group was from South Africa, and the politics of apartheid swayed opinion, the musicians were refused work permits and so their dream of attracting world acclaim faded. While the group returned to South Africa disillusioned, began work on the recording of the 'Astra' album.

The album provided the magic of a classic rock album. There were dramatic climaxes, socio-philosophical lyrics, hard, pulsating rhythms, blistering lead guitar solos, sense-riveting sound-effects and soaring vocals.

Ramsay Mackay left the group after the recording of 'Astra' and it was Julian Laxton who drove the band on their last album, 'Galactic Vibes', and where the music on it was still devastatingly good, the aura of 'Astra' had dissipated.

Ramsay Mackay, Colin Pratley, Kenny Henson, Julian Laxton and Brian Davidson all carried on producing music in their respective forms and styles, through the Seventies and Eighties. But if the world of South Africa had been perfect, and had Freedom's Children achieved their breakthrough in England, one can only speculate how difficult the success of this group would have been. The world would have heard some good creative music.
Long live Freedom's Children!
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Freedoms Children(taken for the Afterglow website with kind permission of Matthias Bock, 2001)
Picture the late 1960s, South Africa. A country isolated from the rest of the world because of their racist government, shunned by almost everybody. The last place you would expect to be hit by the late 60s teenage rebellion, drugs & music scene. And a trade ban that makes it difficult for anything to leave this country except for gold and diamonds so much "needed" by the West (OK, no treatise on business and ethics today).

...difficult for anything to leave... and be heard of about in the world...
This was the sad fate of a rock band who evidently were musical genuises of their time, but had the misfortune to live and perform in a place shunned and ignored by the world, which explains why their recordings are so rare and expensive while still being known only to a handful of record collectors.

However, they were no neighbourhood rock band somewhere in Durban, South Africa. They were a band approaching superstar status after their second LP "Astra", playing live on New Year's Day (probably 1971) to an attendance of 10,000 people, as the sleeve notes to their last album "Galactic Vibes" tell us.

They left behind a legacy of three full-length albums. Remember, this was thirty years ago, when most promising bands did not record more than two or three 45s before vanishing into oblivion! I know little of the details like exactly when their LPs were released and under which catalogue numbers - until about two years ago, I did not even know that they made an album before "Astra". So, although it is a little wanting, here is their discography:
Battle Hymn for the Broken Hearted Horde (1968) Astra (1970) Galactic Vibes (1972) They also released a number 45s, but I know nothing about them.

There are no legit reissues of these recordings that I have heard of. "Battle Hymn" so far has only made it to a vinyl repro in 1995 (with a print run of 300), "Astra" was reissued on CD twice (In England in 1993, and on the German label TRC in the same year),whereas "Galactic Vibes" has been reissued both on vinyl (300 copies only) and on CD in recent years. If you entertain thoughts of trying to locate one of the "Astra" CDs, get the TRC reissue. The other release has been carelessly remastered from a very deteriorated LP, resulting in a rather distorted sound throughout the whole album.

Both "Battle Hymn" and "Astra" are concept albums, telling a story, or sharing a common theme between all of the songs. As I still have to lend a careful ear to "Battle Hymn", I will not elaborate on it. "Astra" revolves around the life of Jesus, although I have heard of a few people misinterpreting it as a very bad experience of the Vietnam war... "Galactic Vibes" looks and sounds like a kind of good-bye album for the stalwart fans, containing a 16-minute live version of their song "The Homecoming" which also is on the "Astra" LP, and a number of odds and ends that do not sound as if they were intended to be on the same album.
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Haslop's Hitstory (as heard on The Bruce Millar Show on SAfm, 28 August 2002) FREEDOM'S CHILDREN by Richard Haslop
A few years ago I was at the Austin Record Convention in Texas. While drifting around the vast Palmer Auditorium, listening to thousands of people speaking American, I suddenly heard a South African accent. It came from a guy - who told me he had moved some years before from Johannesburg to Houston - who ran a stall that specialized in psychedelic and prog-rock albums on vinyl. But occupying pride of place, propped up right at the front of his table, was a CD copy of Astra by Freedom's Children. I thought it must be a bootleg, as the album had not yet been released on CD in South Africa.

I have subsequently learned - courtesy of the excellent SA Rock Digest website, which was extraordinarily useful in the compilation of this Hitstory - that there were 1993 CD reissues in Germany and the UK, so I guess he might have had some of those. Anyway, he was asking a fairly fearsome price, and seemed satisfied that he'd sell all of his copies quite soon.
Now, I imagine that the majority of listeners, even in South Africa, don't know who Freedom's Children were, so I can do no better than quote, as their web page does, a couple of lines from ex-Radio Rat Jonathan Handley's Yeoville Canticle, which is featured (twice) on the Glee Club album, Lexicon For A Lunatic: "What say you Ramsay Mackay? What ever happened to Freedom's Children? In your time you had the best band in the land."
There are still those, in fact, who believe that Freedom's Children was South Africa's greatest ever rock group.

Freedom's Children was formed in Durban in 1966 by Scottish-born bass player Ramsay Mackay, guitarist Kenny Henson, who had been playing in Leemen Limited, and drummer Colin Pratley, who had come down from Springs. Mackay, from Eshowe, had been playing in a group called Seven Faces.
Oddly, according to Nic Martens, who would go on to play keyboards in Freedom's Children, another group, also calling itself Lehman Limited (spelling its name differently), and including himself, Mackay and Pratley, had existed in Pretoria the previous year. Martens says that he was unaware of Henson's band of almost the same name, and Kenny Henson has told me that he was unaware of the other band.

Anyway, Freedom's Children - Martens says the name was his idea - was formed, but without Martens. The original keyboard player was Jimmy Thompson. Martens joined the Noel McDermott Band, and then John E. Sharpe's Blues Band, where he played with Julian Laxton, who had been one third of folk trio Mel, Mel & Julian.

The original version of Freedom's Children recorded two singles, The Coffee Song backed with a cover of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, and a cover of the Yardbirds' You're A Better Man Than I, backed with Mud In Your Eye. The next Freedom's Children line-up would also feature a Yardbirds song, Little Games, on a single.

Henson left the band in 1968, going on to form the semi-legendary Abstract Truth with Mike Dickman and Pete Measroch, and was replaced on guitar by Julian Laxton. Among others who spent a short time with - if perhaps not in - the band at this stage were keyboard players Craig Ross and Harry Poulus, who had been with Four Jacks & A Jill, and saxman Mike Faure.
The group's first album came out that year, though it seems that the release of Battle Hymn Of The Broken Hearted Horde caused concern among the band members, at least one of whom was upset that it had been released at all. Bizarrely, it included a Pepsi Cola advert among the late psychedelia/early prog-rock of the rest of the record.

Martens plays on the album, along with Mackay, Pratley, Laxton and a few guests, among whom, though not yet a member of the band, was vocalist Brian Davidson.
South Africa has always been a small and relatively insignificant rock 'n' roll country, so Freedom's Children, like so many others, went to the UK. But the group could not get work permits to play over there, so they came back and went into the studio to prepare for the recording of their next - and best known - album, Astra.

Martens had gone to the UK himself in early 1970 in search of studio engineering work. He had encountered similar work permit problems, but had spent a few months hanging out at EMI's Abbey Road studios soaking in the atmosphere and learning a huge amount about recording. On his return he went looking for work at EMI studios in South Africa, and encountered Mackay and Pratley, who persuaded him to play keyboards on and engineer the new Freedom's Children album.

He had exactly one week to learn the songs, which were then recorded, on fairly rudimentary equipment, between a Friday night and the following Monday morning. Since Martens had two jobs to do, he got no sleep at all.

Astra was released in 1970 and has become one of SA rock's best-loved albums. By this time Brian Davidson was doing all the singing - though Mackay performs the recitation at the end - and Gerard Nel also played keyboards. It is apparently the only South African album to have been released in all possible formats, including 8-track tape and CD.

It featured a song called The Kid He Came From Hazareth. This was originally The Kid He Came From Nazareth, but the old SABC called it blasphemous, and refused to playlist it. However, they would do so, they said, if the necessary changes were made, both to the song's title and lyrics. So they were, with the band actually re-recording the song to include the word "Hazareth". The song was later recorded by the group Wildebeest as Russian And Chips. Mackay once said about their gigs, that, "Some guys from the Dutch Reformed Church, the mayor & police came to see us, they said we were deranging the minds of our audiences."
During 1970 Freedom's Children also played on three tracks of a Dickie Loader album in one of South African music's most unlikely collaborations.

Ramsay Mackay then left the band, to be replaced on bass by Barry Irwin, which caused a new set of problems. According to Pratley, "What I can remember about those days vividly was being sent on a nation wide tour in a VW Kombi. EMI paid us R1 a day each ... Barry Irwin was never allowed into hotels and had to sleep in the Kombi and, at some concerts in really politically sensitive towns, had to wear a T-shirt over his head. Barry wasn't white like us."
This line-up recorded the third and last Freedom's Children album, Galactic Vibes, which included strings and a long Colin Pratley drum solo, recorded live from a time when Mackay was still with the band. The last two albums were produced by Clive Calder, who has just caused an enormous stir in the music industry worldwide by selling the remainder of his Zomba record company to BMG for an astonishing three billion dollars. He has said that, "In my opinion Freedom's Children was then and probably still is today the only SA rock group that, given the right circumstances in the right geographical location, could have become an internationally successful rock band just by being themselves and doing what they did."

There have been some attempts at resurrecting the band over the years, one of which, in 1973, featured Trevor Rabin and Ronnie Robot; and a Kenny Henson/Colin Pratley Christian album entitled A New Day was released in 1990 under the Freedom's Children name. In 1996 Henson, Davidson, Mackay and three others recorded Mummies (Back From The Dead), but it remains unreleased.

Let's give Julian Laxton the last word. "I felt that we were doing something different," he said recently. "I still do."

(info by CGR)

01. Sea Horses
02. Homecoming
03. That Did It
04. Fields & Me
05. Crazy World Of Pod
06. 1999
07. About The Dove & His King
08. Season (Bonus)
09. Judas Queen (Bonus)
10. Mrs Browning (Bonus)
11. Country Boy (Bonus)
12. Your Father's Eye (Bonus)
13. Ten Years Ago (Bonus)
14. Kafkasque (Bonus)
15. Boundsgreen Fair(Bonus)
16. Miss Wendy's Dancing Eyes (Bonus)
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Size: 131 Mb

Bitrate: 256 mp3

Artwork Included

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The Bob Seger System - Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (1968)

Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (1968.) Bob Seger's first album. Although it was in the seventies that Bob Seget would achieve his true rise to fame with his classic Silver Bullet Band, the fact of the matter is that he had actually been making music for well over a decade prior to his Bullet days. In the sixties, Seger had played with a number of bands, none of whom were ever commercially successful. The main part of Seger's career, though, began when he formed a group called the Bob Seger System. It was with this group that seger would record and release his first albums. And his debut album, Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, got released in 1968. Read on for my review of this album. The Bob Seger System of the sixties really is nothing like his classic Silver Bullet Band of the seventies. They sound like two completely different groups, with Seger's voice being the only real linkage between the two (and this younger incarnation of Seger is certainly distinctive enough from the "popular" one.) On this album, Seger delivers the classic sixties hard rock you've come to expect from many other bands of that long lost era, complete with distorted guitar riffs and organ playing in the background. Seger's take on this style of music is great! The only really popular song on this album is the title track, and sadly, it wouldn't become popular for another eight years, and that was only because Seger revived it for his Live Bullet album (I still think this, the original version of the song, is the best.) Another noteworthy track is 2 + 2 = ?, Seger's protest against the Vietnam war. This was a pretty common theme in sixties pop/rock songs, and Seger's take on this theme is pretty damn good. There are plenty of excellent songs on this album - in my opinion, not one of them is weak. It's certainly a transition from the man you know and love, but any true fan of Seger's will be able to appreciate this record. Unfortunately, all of Seger's pre-Beautiful Loser material is currently not readily available on CD. This is a crying shame, because it's some of his best material! If any record company executives are reading this - YOU DESPERATELY NEED TO MAKE THIS RECORDINGS MORE READILY AVAILABLE ON CD!
Take a look at the prices the CD versions have been fetching in eBay auctions to see what I mean. Having them available on CD as imports only just isn't good enough! Who wants to pay upwards of fifty bucks for one album! Ramblin' Gamblin' Man is a tough album to find (as are all of Seger's pre-Beautiful Loser recordings), but they (this one in particular) are well worth hunting down. With this materpiece, you will explore a side of Bob Seger you likely knew never existed - a side I like even more than his popular stuff! If you're a Seger die-hard, it's worth getting. Just be warned - you're gonna have to search for it.
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(info by Darth Kommissar)
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01. Ramblin' Gamblin' Man
02. Tales of Lucy Blue
03. Ivory
04. Gone
05. Down Home
06. Train Man
07. White Wall
08. Blackeyed Girl
09. 2+2=
10. Doctor Fine
11. The Last Song
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Size: 59.0 Mb
Bitrate: 224 mp3
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