BEYOND THE SOUND - Powertrane (Motor City Music)
Reviewing this album is like giving a job reference to a boarder with deep pockets and the same taste in beer who's been living in the family home for the past three years. Of course I'm gonna oblige! Three years is about how long a mastered copy's been hanging around the I-94 Bar, while a nameless (and now defunct) US label that must have bitten off more than it could chew tried to raise capital to put it out. They're gone; it's here now, on local enthusiast Mike Leskevich's label, and saying it was worth the wait is an understatement.
Powertrane is one of three current vehicles for Scott Morgan (ex-Sonic's Rendezvous Band), vocalist and guitarist who also plays out with soul big band The Solution (with Hellacopters main man Nick Royale) and the lethal Europe-based Hydromatics, whose new album is graced by Aussie Kent Steedman. Powertrane is also home to Robert Gillespie, the ex-Torpedoes and Rob Tyner Band guitarist who chalks up frequent flyer points as a sideman for Mitch Ryder (a major star in Germany.) "Beyond The Sound" is the band's full-length debut.
The vets are joined by effervescent bassist Chris "Box" Taylor, lately of fabulous Ann Arbor pop-rockers The Avatars, and (on the album) firebrand drummer Andy Frost, who's since moved on to be replaced by Dave Knepp. Anyone with half an ear knows it's nothing without that swing, and the Taylor-Frost engine room delivers (delivered) in spades.
Powertrane are dripping in the powerful, no-nonsense, honest-to-goodness rock and roll for which their Michigan home state is renowned. Contrary to their name, they don't play Coltrane free jazz. What they do have a soulful heart beating deep in their collective musical chest, which is always a likely by-product when your lead singer was an original trailblazer for blue-eyed soul as the teen prodigy singer for The Rationals. Gillespie is a stellar rock guitarist with super fluid leads and a distinctive, full tone. Morgan himself is a gifted guitar player, when he gives himself license to cut loose.
Eleven songs here, about life on the road (Inner-Flight Head Royale", "Mixed Up Shook Up World", Nightliner") and ruminations on music ("I Stole Everything"), that are the equal to anything of this ilk you'll hear in 2007. Cock an ear to "Chilly Willy Is Missing", the first track that opens with a withering streak of panned feedback before Morgan's commanding vocal calls the band to order. It's a simple tale told directly with sheets of guitar and Frost's tumbling fills, and it follows that Gillespie's leadwork is superb.
Morgan's lyrics cleverly wind in references to his own work and that of contemporaries from the Motown roster to schoolmates the Stooges but the record's never indulgent or self-serving. More like pragmatic, with lines like:
People think the business has changed
They don't understand that it's still the same
People don't know what they like
People like what they know
("Mixed Up Shook Up World")
How's that for accuracy?
Amid all these fireworks and highway driving songs, there's a change of pace with what might be the centrepiece song: "Pearl" is a soulful ode to a soulmate where backing vocals (Shalia Holmes) and organ (Pat Harwood) leaven the accompaniment and throw Morgan's killer vocal into sharp relief. Here's where the warmth of the Gillespie-Morgan guitar-playing partnership comes into play and where Scott's ease with the soul idiom shines through.
Powetrane's sound evokes as much of the sharp, rusty imagery of Midwestern factories and city streets as the wide, flat plains of the farms that spread out around Michigan's outlying towns. Or endless European toll roads like on "Nightliner" where Scott evokes the feeling he got when he heard one of his Hydromatics songs on tour ("Three weeks on a hellhound bus/Three chords and a cloud of dust".)
"Beyond The Sound" was the single that came out on Electrophonic Records well before the CD and if it suffers for me through over-familiarity, that's not a problem most peoples' ears will have. An taught, economic rocker of a song that revels in the fullness of simplicity (local liquor stores and Hendrix on the radio) but reaches for something more.
There's also a lost (a couple of times over) gem in "Taboo", the tune Gillespie co-wrote with Rob Tyner in his post-MC5 band. This one surfaced briefly on a live EP by The Rob Tyner Band nearly a decade ago on Motor City Jams (and was re-issued on a Japanese label) but try finding it. There's the usual marquee Gillespie lead against jungle drums and another terrific Morgan vocal. The irony is that the song was left off the original (scrapped) pressing after a luckless run at the manufacturing plant. The good news is that it made it. So did the album and it deserves to be heard anywhere in the world that still carries a torch for honest, soulful rock and roll.
No need to beg, borrow or steal a copy - you can procure it direct from the label or the band and that Paypal thing works with any credit card. –
The Barman
ANN
ARBOR REVIVAL MEETING - Scott Morgan's Powertrane featuring Deniz Tek (Real
O Mind)
Pure, unadulterated rock and roll is a powerful thing in the live setting.
Exhibit A is this disc, Your Honour. It's not hip hop and there's
not a trace of sampling to be heard, but if you'll excuse some anatomical wordplay
I'll submit that it's music with balls played from the heart and it deserves
your immediate attention.
Scott Morgan shouldn't need an introduction but he does in many places and that's
a shame. He paid his dues with inestimably great Michigan beat-stompers-turned-white-boy-soul
outfit, The Rationals, in the '60s, should have struck gold as a member of the
criminally underrated Sonics Rendezvous Band in the '70s, and led his own Scott
Morgan band in the '80s, combining soul and power rock. A mutually beneficial
teaming with the Hellacopters in the '90s spawned The Hydromatics, a class vehicle
to be sure but one that's scarcely known outside the European back blocks. Powertrane
is Scott's current project, equipping him with a manic engine room in Andrew
Frost and Chris "Box" Taylor and a hot shot guitarist in Robert Gillespie.
Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek, ex-Stooge Ron Asheton, crazed vocalist Hiawatha Bailey
(of the Cult Heroes) and veteran singer Mitch Ryder have joined them for various
live dates.
This disc captures one night at Ann Arbor's Blind Pig in November 2001, with
all but Ryder from the aforementoined list joining Powertrane's proceedings.
The album's name comes from a piece of Tek patter (everybody gracing the stage
being A2 alumni) and pretty well sums things up. There's a religious fervour
to this. It might be preaching to the converted, but there's always a chance
that the word might spread and inspire someone, somewhere to pick up a guitar
and do likewise. Just as various influences did for these guys.
There are parallels with the 1981 supergroup (love that term) that was New Race,
comprising as it did former Birdman, MC5 and Stooges members for a one-off tour
of Australia. Granted, it's not as maliciously focussed as their disc, "The
First and the Last", but that band was a little more road hardened by the
time their recordings were put down and the disc was substantially tinkered
with in the studio. The point is that New Race was a gathering of the tribes,
and a validation for Birdman of what they'd done by elder statesmen joining
them on stage. It's not being too indulgent in saying that there's a bit of
that happening with Powertrane and that "A2 Revival..." is just as
substantial an event in its own way.
But on to the music and Powertrane is a three-headed guitar machine for most
of the journey. That could have been one axe too many, but for some judicious
playing and a mix that gives each room to breathe. As Deniz said to the Bar's
Ken Shimamoto in a post-Powertrane tour interview, there's almost an orchestral
thing at work when he, Gillespie and Morgan get it on. Witness Tek's own "Hangin'
On" which, in these hands, serves as a blank canvas for the guitarist to
go weaving another version of that stinging guitar line.
"Shellback" takes on a new power before Morgan weighs in vocally on
the bridge to lighten the load. "Taboo", a tune Gillespie wrote with
Rob Tyner and which appeared on the latter's solo album, is worth hearing and
gets an outing here, while three contemporary Morgan/Hydromatics songs ("R.I.P.
R & R", "Runaway Slaves" and "Ready to Ball") are
righteously rolled out in rip roaring style.
Of the tunes to make the cut from Sonics Rendezvous days, "Dangerous"
lacks ferocity (and I'll make a case that "What Gives?" also lacks
the electroshock edge that Birdman gives it) but we're talking degrees on both
counts.The angular guitar attack of "Love to Learn" lacks nothing
when stacked up against the Sonics rendezvous Band or Hydromatics versions and
a storming "Outside" - the traditional Deniz Tek Group set closer
- caps things in fine style before the run home through a quintet of classic
Stooges songs. If hearing Powertrane churn these out (The Iceman and Hiawatha
capably handling vox) with the additional sting of Ron Asheton on board isn't
your idea of a Musical Wet Dream, you're reading the wrong review.
Rooted in the past? Undoubtedly, even allowing for the contemporary contributions
from the catalogues of Morgan and Tek. But with Real Rock and Roll becoming
an endangered species, sometimes a return to the past can cast a light towards
the future. - The Barman
