Welcome to The Cahokian... A thousand years ago Cahokia — across the Mississippi from what is now St. Louis — was one of the biggest cities in the world. Now it's an empty green spot next to the highway. I'm a middle-aged gay man living in New York City, center of the world, future footnote on somebody's future map. Welcome to the new world.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Music break: I wish I was a hippie in Hawaii in 1972
This lovely song, "El Rey Pescador," is from the legendary private press album "These Trails," recorded by a bunch of hippies in Hawaii in the very early 1970s. Although the vocalist on this track is the Uruguayan singer Carlos Pardeiro, the album as a whole is the work of a Hawaiian guy and his girlfriend from California, plus a couple friends, sweetened in a studio by an engineer playing the amazing Arp analog synthesizer; the rest of it is not in Spanish.
I first heard this record a few years ago on a music blog, without knowing anything about it. I was excited to find out it's just made it to CD on a small Chicago-based label, Drag City. It features some beautiful singing, lots of acoustic guitar, dulcimer — standard hippy folk psychedelia fare — and the CD reissue sounds terrific. The CD also includes the full story of the musicians behind the record and how its release in 1973 was sort of an afterthought to its creation when the moment it documented had already passed. I heartily recommend the whole thing.
OK, back to reality now...
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Very nice. The vocals are definitely the highlight of the song. A little subtle sitar (or synth emulating same?) dates it a bit but fits in perfectly nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteThe feet reminded me of another album I ran across recently that demands to be posted on CJC - hopefully I can remember where I saw it!
I think there were both synth and sitar on the record. There's a couple other tracks on youtube, worth checking out.
ReplyDeleteThe feet are actually credited on the liner notes!