Customer Reviews

Loading Zone

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

 

 

Anyone who spent anytime at all listening to F.M. radio in the sixties will remember the slinky soul instrumental CAN I DEDICATE and Linda Tillery's gritty version of GOD BLESS THE CHILD. The rest is good to hear again, but it's pretty standard BAY AREA sixties soul/rock. For those of us with fond memories of KMPX and KSAN,the high water marks on this CD will take us on a very cool journey back to a time when chances were taken by both the players and the listeners.

For some wierd reason, from 1968-72, a lot of "horn" bands sprung up in rock. Horn band really means rock with a brass section and maybe a few primative jazz moves. As quick as the trend exploded, it vanished.

The Loading Zone was an early part of this wave. This first album--they have two but the 2nd is impossible to get- is basically soul and blues, with one female lead singer and one male one. He is great, sounding like an R&B Paul Kantner, and she is almost right there, but doesn't have the mussle in her voice to make her one of the giants. (She is soooo close.) The band is tight--no showboating here.

A lot of this music is something you might hear in a discoteque scene from a movie in 1967 or 68, which is not a bad thing. As 60s organ and brass driven music goes, this is quite a filling meal. The FM jazz piece, "Can I Dedicate," is a great piece of instrumental blues, taylored for the ascent of progressive radio.

Loading Zone would be even more meaty if not for the production. I have this on both vynal and CD, and on both, the horns are EXTREMELY compressed: there is no seperation or ressonence. This is awfully strange for a unit working in a big band style. If any kind of music should breathe, it is horn blues. (Does anyone else notice this?)

Fix this, and this would be a better album. Still, it is worth having.

If you missed the Summer of Love - 1968 - Golden Gate Park, the Haight, Telegraph Avenue, protests in Berkeley, People's Park, and stopping the war. The Loading Zone was there. Providing the beat, drive, and amplification. Bill Graham's go-to-band. These are the guys from Berkeley High and Oakland that helped hold those activities together. Opening for the touring groups at Winterland or the Fillmore. Playing in the park or Kezar Stadium. Setting up on Telegraph or Sproul Plaza, they were the San Francisco/Berkeley sound of that era. Musically solid and young. Many covers, a few originals. This was the atmosphere.

This album reminds me a bit of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Linda Tillery's vocals are a cross between Janis and any number of jazzy crooners of the mid 60's. The group is often lumped in with psychedelic bands, but they tend to go for blues & jazz type numbers. The original songs are very strong and have a nice fuzzed guitar (again like Big Brother) and decent horn charts. The outstanding song on the album is "the Bells" where Linda loses control of her self. At first you think she's laughing, then you realise she's wailing for her man. It's a very emotional song. The song that follows Kalui Yuga Loo is a great fast paced rocker with stinging guitar. The final really standout track on the album is Can I Dedicate which is a jazzy instrumental, the only fault being the song wears out it's welcome after 5 of the 9 minutes of it's length.

On the downside, the cover tunes are pretty run of the mill, the horns are recorded where they have a tinny sound, and that album cover (which really has nothing to do with the music, but it is the weirdest cover--and it may be the reason it gets lumped in with psychedelic albums--it's really freaky!!)

Overall it's a nice 60's San Francisco artifact, and it nicely replaced my beat up LP. But I'm still keeping that cover!!!!

I bought this album back in 1968 when it first came out on LP and still have it! The turntable I have has a speed problem (almost 40 years old now) so this is the reason I had to update to a cd version. The cd is gr8! and if you were like me when I got this album back then > the album cover would scare even the best of music lovers away but you can't judge a book by its cover > rite..? In short if you deal with Amazon you can't go wrong ! GREAT job AMAZON people !!!!!The Loading Zone