Friday, March 21, 2008

Back at the Beginning Again


Straight Ahead by Brian Auger and the Oblivion Express is an album I have loved for 33 years and still listen to quite regularly. Brian Auger was first a B3 player during the British Invasion years and then helped usher in the jazz rock era in the early seventies. Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry were in his early bands and folks who went on to play in Average White were in the seventies unit, the Oblivion Express.

Straight Ahead came out in 1975 and the personnel is a tight six piece: Brian on a variety of seventies keyboards, Jack Mills on guitar, and Barry Dean on Bass. But its the percussionists who make the difference: drummer Steve Ferrone, Mirza Al Sharif, and another fellow on congas. The album sounds different than anything Auger has produced or in many ways, any other record I have heard.

Side One is what makes this album endure. Opening track Beginning Again is an optimistic product of the times. A quote on the album infers that it was inspired by The Teachings of Don Juan and if you know the seventies you know I'm talking fraud guru and not latin lover here. The quote begins "Nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road." As the song says:

If you can face your fears and make your problems scatter
If you don't win today, It really doesn't matter
But Baby when you do, well brother I'll see you,
Back at the beginning

Also in this tune, Auger takes big fat chords striking and sustaining them like a gong over several measures with lightly executed vocals with tight harmony and cross-rhythms from the the percussionists keep the piece accelerated all the way to the fade away ending I don't think I'll ever tire of.


Then there is Auger's killer B3 work out of Wes Montgomery's Bumping on Sunset. Eleven minutes of the greatest kicking back behind the wheel with no particular place to go ever put on record. There is a version with some vocals on his webpage. that isn't the same but has so much of the same spirit. I especially like the cymbal crashes that sound like standing rain water going into the wheel wells and up onto the curb.

Auger is out there doing it still. His latest Oblivion Express is a family affair. A pick up bass player and his daughter Savannah on vocals and son Karma on drums. I saw them last summer and very much enjoyed their set. When Savannah said "Hit Me Daddy" before Brian launched into an exceptionally tasty solo, I realized that was indeed his daughter although those around me didn't catch the difference in inflection between Daaaady and Daddy. Oh well, you had to have been there.

Here's a bit of Auger and family...

posted by well-executed buffet at 9:16 PM
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