The Pledge

Evil Spirits was funded by a pledge campaign and produced by David Bowie's longtime and frequent collaborator Tony Visconti. “We deliberately recorded the album retro style – the same way our debut album was made, basically,” said guitarist Captain Sensible. “There’s something wonderful about the '70s sounds; glam, rock and punk records – they all sound so great, and Tony specializes in beautifully crafted old-school production. He had us all playing live, bashing it out in the same room with a focus on getting the initial band version of each song as close as possible to the finished thing.”

The West Coast's answer to The Last Poets, The Watts Prophets played an integral part in the raising of black consciousness and laying the foundations for rap. Formed at the Watts Writer's Workshop, Anthony "Amde" Hamilton, Otis O'Solomon, and Richard Dedeaux began performing together as Watts Prophets, setting their socially and politically conscious poetry to spare, often jazzy musical backing. They made high-profile guest appearances on Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life and Quincy Jones' Mellow Madness. And were later the subject of an Emmy-nominated documentary, Victory Will Be My Moan. In 1969, the group debuted with The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts and, two years later, followed with Rappin' Black in a White World, which featured accompaniment by ex-Motown songwriter/pianist DeeDee McNeil. The radical, incendiary tone of their work fit right in with the emerging black power movement and attracted unfavorable notice from the government, with the home of the Watts Writers Project being destroyed by fire in 1975 after having been infiltrated by an FBI informant. Throughout the years, they've remained sporadically active as performers, and were rediscovered by the hip-hop generation as their records were sampled frequently by many hip-hop artists including Ice Cube, Digable Planets, and Coolio. The Watts Prophets remain dedicated community activists today, promoting creative self-expression and the arts to young people around Southern California and beyond. Two bonus tracks. Deluxe Arigato Pak! Water Records. 2005.