Copperhead Copperhead {acadia+sony Aca 8005} (1973)

Copperhead - Copperhead
FLAC | Artwork | 24Bit 96kHz: 820 MB | 16Bit 44.1kHz: 267 MB
Cat#: CBS 84483 | Country/Year: Netherlands 19__, 1973 (ReIssue)
Genre: Blues Rock | Hoster: Filesonic/Uploaded

Copperhead was a band organized by guitarist John Cipollina after he left Quicksilver Messenger Service in 1970. After signing to Columbia they recorded their debut album, Copperhead, released in the spring of 1973. Unfortunately, Davis was fired from Columbia shortly after the album's release, an action that doomed any developing band that had been signed under his aegis. The album went nowhere, and when Columbia refused to release their second album, Copperhead folded.

Emboldened by the popularity of Inner Mounting Flame among rock audiences, the first Mahavishnu Orchestra set out to further define and refine its blistering jazz-rock direction in its second – and, no thanks to internal feuding, last – studio album. Although it has much of the screaming rock energy and sometimes exaggerated competitive frenzy of its predecessor, Birds of Fire is audibly more varied in texture, even more tightly organized, and thankfully more musical in content.

Minnesoda did an obscure but fairly interesting self-titled jazz-rock album for Capitol in 1972, produced by Bob Johnston (famous for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, and numerous others). The record was in limited respects like the first recordings of Chicago and, more distantly, Blood, Sweat & Tears in its jazz-rock-with-vocals format…

This box set collects five of the eight albums Poco recorded for Columbia's Epic Records imprint between 1969 and 1974 (the band parted ways with the label and signed with ABC Records in 1975) and aside from 1971's live Deliverin' (which isn't included here), it provides a neat capsule history of the Richie Furay era of the group (Furay left Poco following 1973's Crazy Eyes, the latest album collected in this set). A band that was just a blink ahead of its time, Poco was a bit too country for the rock audiences of the day and a bit too rock for the country crowd back then, but they paved the way for bands like the Eagles to grab a little bit of both of those musical cultures later in the decade. Always fun, energetic, and upbeat, Poco's finest phase came in those early Furay years and this box set affords an excellent way to plug into the best years of this delightful band.

In the early 70's, jazz pianist and composer Hiromasa 'Colgen' Suzuki and his self-titled trio (with Kunimitsu Inaba on bass and Hideo Sekine on drums) started working on a project of musicians which should have made a lengthy series of concept albums mixing jazz rock and world music called Rock Joint. Musicians that worked around this albums were more of jazz background and some of the musicians stayed in the line-up of both albums released as Rock Joint projects even though the style of music was slightly different; first 'Rock Joint Biwa' was centered around the japanese instrument biwa, giving a fresh feel to album's early jazz influenced psychedelic rock (conceptually inspired by mythology in the ancient book Furukotofumi), while the second one 'Rock Joint Cither' was oriented around sitar and Indian music (cither being a mistranslation of sitar)…

The studio album didn't work, but Beck Bogert & Appice's Live in Japan is a bit of a better bet, since it captures more of their interplay, thereby giving a better idea of why Bogert decided to embark on this particular project…