Sunday Music Corner
Way back in the Dark Ages, une femme used to work at radio stations. Part of my responsibilities often included answering phones and talking to the reps from record labels who would call to get the station’s weekly playlist. The stations I worked for mostly had top 40 and “adult contemporary” type playlists (e.g. Crystal Gayle, Peaches & Herb) but some of the reps were quite knowledgable about music and artists in their labels that fell wa-a-a-ay outside of those parameters, and once they found out that my own taste in music was a bit avant garde, would send me demos (yes, that’s what they used to be called when vinyl was the medium) that they thought I’d like.
One of the demos I received was this one, an album titled “Touch Me There” by a guy named L. Shankar, which had been produced by Frank Zappa. (Zappa also performs vocals on one cut under the moniker “Stucco Holmes.” Funny guy he was, that Zappa.) L. Shankar in recent years changed his handle to “Shenker” and composes/performs some of the theme music from the TV show “Heroes.”
Back in the 70’s, it was not uncommon for artists to include as a last cut on the album a piece that was a bit different than the rest of the album. (I’ll have another example of that next week.) This was a last cut, and as one YouTube commenter so succinctly puts it, “so cheesy, yet so f—— awesome!” Give this one until about 4:30 in, then L. Shankar really goes to town on the electric violin. Anyhow, this one makes my top 25 list of my Favorite Songs Ever.
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Wow, I’ve never heard that before…When this album was released I was probably listening Led Zeplin on KMET!
I love you Sunday Music Corner, especially the music from this era.
Happy New Year Dejapseu! To most Indians (of my age I suppose), L Shankar is the guy who played with Shakti which the very few of us, who were introduced to it, were introduced to it in our single-digit years on LP records. 🙂 Shakti was also, for me, the introduction to jazz (McLaughlin) and I was fortunate enough at age 7 to hear Zakir Hussain and his father Ustad Allah Rakha perform in flesh and blood. So this was fab! In a very Amazon-like “if you like X, you may like Y” mode, have you heard L Subramaniam? He performs often in the US but his most well-known album is a collaboration with Stéphane Grappelli (his Yehudi Menuhin collab is great but not a patch (IMO, of course) on the Menuhin-Ravi Shankar collaboration. Oh and never knew you worked in radio! How cool! 🙂
It’s fun hearing music from artists in their beginning stages.
Good Lord (or should I say Mon Dieu), I didn’t know anyone else knew about this album! Actually, I only know OF the album because although we did play it for a time at the progressive rock station I worked for back in the 1980s (WXRT in Chicago), I really only paid attention to the incredible (or incroyable) instrumental track named “Darlene”. Worth adding to any iPod’s playlist as far as I’m concerned!
love you Sunday Music Corner, especially the music from this era.
Work from home India