Customer Reviews

East Bay Grease

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tower's debut album. Lots of gritty vocals to go with tight horn section. Broke ground as a multi-hued big band out of Oakland/Berkeley that was special then and is still funky today. Much of this album is on the raw, unpolished side, with one exception, the ballad Sparkling in the Sands. When this album came out I was in high school and my buddies and I played that cut so often we practically wore a hole through the record! All Tower's true believers have this album already, but any of you newer converts, pick it up. This is where it all started!

This album sounds very different than most TOP albums, so if you're used to that stickier East Bay Grease they'd develop once hitting the big WB you may have to listen with a different mindset.

The sound on this album *IMHO* is a big "blacker" a bit more late '60s/early '70s feeling, and definitely shows their ties to COLD BLOOD, another band DEFINITELY worth checking out. In many ways tight, but not as tight as they'd come to be, yet they compensate with soul splattering ENERGY. - - The closest you've probably heard TOP to this "sound" is on their BUMP CITY album, when they went back to a dirtier and grittier sound.

FUNKATEERS will love this album. TOP fans (and their following of brass ensemble students turned on by hip instructors) will be split between Love It/Hate It... however, *IMHO* its one of their best and they still perform many of the songs in their show today.

This is ToP at their earliest, earthiest best. The horns may have got slicker, the tunes tighter, and you can choose you favourite vocalist, but for dirty funky blow-outs, you can't beat this album. i know some people who are really big ToP fans, but they still don't own this album for some reason, and they are really missing out. As the title suggests, this is the greasiest, grooviest, greatest stuff they recorded.

Though their horn-heavy charts and funky soul had it precursors (Sly & The Family Stone, BS&T, etc.), few had taken it so far, and with such heavy grooves as this Berkeley/Oakland ensemble. This debut album, originally issued on Bill Graham's small San Francisco label, and out of print for many years, nailed it all on the first try.

The songs are eminently catchy, the rhythms (especially Dave Garibaldi's drumming) are as vital as heartbeats, and the horn charts blew away their contemporaries. The vocals, always a moving target with T.O.P. came from Richard Thomas and Rufus Miller.

Many fans like their next two or three LPs better, as the arrangements became more refined and the band tightened up a bit, but as the founding document of funk city, I'll vote this one every time.

The perfect soundtrack for wolfing down a messy plate of ribs from KC's.

EAST BAY GREASE has withstood the test of time. It is as fresh as it is funky with some serious horn solos thrown in for good measure.

The Rhythm Section:

Francis Rocco Prestia was and is THE funkiest bass player since before Larry Graham. His work has propelled many a funk rif on EAST BAY GREASE [my all time favorite TOP album]as well as the various othe TOP albums he was featured on. This dude can PLAY. Willie Fulton on guitar is a bit 70s sounding, good 70s guitar as a matter of fact, but hey...it WAS 1970 after all, so I think we can let this slide.Surprisingly [to some], David Garabaldi on drums is one of the funkiest skins players on the Planet. Bar none. Not bad fer a white guy, eh?;-)

Vocals:

There have been many TOP vocalists, but my all time favorite HAS to be Rufus Miller from EAST BAY GREASE. Gritty, determined and down right greasy. My second favorite TOP vocalist would have to be Rick Stevens on BUMP CITY; lost to a drug bust/murder. Lenny Williams is a close second to both [TOWER OF POWER, BACK TO OAKLAND, etc].

The Reeds:

Emilio Castillo [tenor] and Doc Kupka [baritone] are the saxes with serious swing.Then there is the wild haired Lenny Picket on tenor sax who danced and played his way into TOP legend. Wow. This guy was a show and a half. His work on Robert Palmer's POWER STATION just exudes his energy. Skip Mesquite plays a nice flute solo on Sparkling in the Sand...too bad he didn't stay with the band after BUMP CITY.

The Horns:

Greg Adams on trumpet and flugelhorn [who has two CDs out on his own which are also very nice, IMO] just blows the walls down.However, as a former trumpet player myself, what REALLY amazes me is Mic Gillette. The man played trumpet, flugelhorn AND trombone. I mean...WOW. Do you know what kind of chops it takes to play all those instruments? The trumpet mouthpiece is fairly small then the flugelhorn mouthpiece has a deeper cup, THEN the trombone mouthpiece is far wider and deeper than the first two. I mean, this is amazing!

Personally, I could play trumpet OR [valve] trombone...but NEVER both. This would be comparable to playing oboe and clarinet...so completely different.

OK...yeah. I get a little worked up about Tower of Power. [I've seen them in concert over 10 times and if you get a chance...GO!] IMHO, they are THE best in Funk music and are still going after 30+ years. EAST BAY GREASE is where it all started. Don't pass this one up.

Knock, Knock...Knock Yourself Out.

I had this album on vinyl in the early 70s as a kid, and even then I knew it was something different. "Back on the Streets Again" has some of the tightest horn grooves ever heard. "Sparkling in the Sand" defies categorization -- despite it's slow tempo, it's not so much a ballad as it is a nine minute cruise, with waves of sound washing over you. The diversity of this band was amazing!

This album shaped my childhood so much that when I became a novelist, I named my first book East Bay Grease in T.O.P's honor-- The horn section is amazing, of course, but this album breathes the fire of Oakland boys howling in the grit of the city. It's a truly great work by truly great musicians.

In 2008, WEA Japan released the entire WB Tower Of Power catalog in remastered form. All of the albums benefit from new mastering, and are worthwhile acquisitions for fans.

I found all of the remastered material to be superior to the Rhino 2CD "What Is Hip?" 1999 compilation set, except, surprisingly, for the material from the 3rd album, which sounds better on the Rhino.

Amazon does a haphazard job of stocking these remasters, so you may have to seek them from Japan-based retailers. Also, Amazon's prices are at least a third higher than buying direct from Japan, although shipping costs will cut into that percentage.

Here are the links for the `08 remasters:

East Bay Grease
Bump City
Tower Of Power
Back To Oakland
Urban Renewal
In The Slot
Live And In Living Color

Again, it's sad that American consumers have to obtain better sounding CD's from another country. WEA, and now WMG, have long maintained a corporate policy of not upgrading their catalog under the "they're-gonna-buy-it-anyway-so-why-waste-profits" philosophy, no matter that rival Sony has made a lucative business model out of remastering nearly the entire Columbia records catalog. Although this internal policy was mandated by the WEA regimes of the past, Edgar Bronfman, the current WMG chief, has maintained the status quo.

So, Tower Of Power now joins fellow WEA artists Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, The Doobie Brothers, Tower Of Power, Neil Young, Van Dyke Parks, Little Feat, Van Morrison, America, Annie Haslam, Everything But The Girl, Roberta Flack, Todd Rundgren, Cold Blood and Paul Butterfield, just to name a few, whose catalogs either partially or wholly exist in better audio in Japan than here in the U.S.

It's a pathetic and frustrating situation.

The SF Bay Area has been typecasted as Hippie central. Nothin' but Airplane, Dead, Quicksilver, jams that last way tooooolong.
So wrong!
Tower of Power was bred and born from the streets of Oakland,step brother of Sly And Family Stone from Vallejo. The CA. funk that still resonates to this day.
Late 60's, early 70's Nor. CA. bands were full of horn bands, Memphis/Stax influenced, i.e. Cold Blood w/ Lydia Pense, Mother Earth, and Loading Zone.
Tower of Power had the best musicians, a shoutin' soul singer, and the charts that made them high above all the rest.
This CD is their first. It is a template for Oakland funk; dirty horns, sweet harmony, and a bass that defines the Bay Bridge: tuff sturdy and don't mess w/ us.
This CD has some drop off in the ballad, "Sparkling in the Sand", but so did the LP. The main hit hard hurray of "Knock Yrself Out", still kicks out.
The LP is hard to find in good shape, it got played a lot. The CD is kinda hard to find..but worth it.

It's hard to imagine more opposite places in such close proximity than San Francisco and Oakland, especially during the late 1960s/ early 1970s. Witness the contrast between the Summer of Love and Golden Gate Park be-ins versus unemployment and crumbling World War II-era shipyards; grooviness versus gritty urban reality. Also witness the pronounced distinction between the bands of the era: acid-tinged free-form jamming (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane) versus the working-class howl of the east bay's Creedence Clearwater Revival and the inimitable funk band Tower of Power.
"East Bay Grease" blasts out of the Oakland flats with an edge and intensity that no hippie band could ever have hoped to match. Driven by a tight rhythm section, raw lead vocals (by Rufus Miller, the first of a succession of singers whom, in Spinal Tap fashion, kept getting waylaid by stints in jail, etc.) and of course that signature horn-section, "East Bay Grease" not only sets the prototype for the string of hit albums and singles that was to follow, but also has its own completely original, unrefined but virtuosic sound that, I believe, sets it at the top of TOP's discography.
Highlight tracks include "Knock Yourself Out," "The Price" and "Back On The Streets Again," which topically could have been recorded in the present era (certain parts of Oakland not having changed much since the day). Unlike other reviewers, I also like "Sparkling In The Sand," which may not seem to fit in at first glance but actually sets the template for their later classic ballads (i.e., "You're Still A Young Man").
And of course, there is only one Steve "The Funky Doctor" Kupka, whose gifts to the baritone sax are immeasurable.