The World of Sitarsploitation

George Harrison's love of India, its music and philosophies, would have a profound effect on the Beatles and, as they were leaders of pop cultural matters in the mid to late 1960s, this influence would extend beyond the band to the rest of the world.
Allegedly first introduced to the sitar by Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds in California in 1965, Harrison, the instrument first appeared on a Beatles track on Norwegian Wood.
The Beatles were not the only band interested in the exotic sounds of the sitar, in particular its drone effect. The Kinks, the Who and most importantly the Yardbirds can claim to have been ahead of the Beatles in utilising the Indian instrument on some of their tracks.
However, they did not go as far as Harrison and record a track that was closer to Hindustani music than to European pop music. Using musicians from the North London Asian Music Circle, Love You To, on Revolver started a minor pop music trend. Followed up by Within Without You on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band, the use of the sitar in pop and rock quickly became a shorthand for exoticism, spirituality and transcendence. In other words its was another way of saying that the music was like a trip!
Unfortunately, as Harrison discovered, the sitar is a difficult instrument to master and its use does not always complement the structure of pop music. Masters of the instrument such as Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan found themselves becoming increasingly popular in the US and Europe and audiences strove to become part of this authentic and new (to their ears) music.
However, where there is money to be made, there will be exploitation records. I have already written about the brief Indo Jazz moment in UK jazz (read about it here) as well as Bill Plummer and Emil Richard's jazz sitar experiments read about it here and here. Despite being musically intriguing and genre expanding, sitar jazz records were always going to be a minority interest. How much more lucrative it would be to use this strange sound and, just as the leading groups of the day were doing themselves, use it on pop music.

Released in 1966, Raga Rock in many ways epitomises the Sitarsploitation LP phenomenon. Using LA's crack session musicians, the Wrecking Crew, this record features Tommy Tedesco, Howard Roberts and Herb Ellis on guitars, Dennis Budimir on 12 String, Bill Pittman on bass, Larry Knechtel on organ and electric piano, Lyle Ritz on fender bass and Hal Blaine on drums. A killer band if ever there was one. Prior to this there had been another Folkswingers record, which although not including any of the same musicians, did include other LA session people. The first records more accurately lived up to the name being covers of folk hits of the day. This time round they added Indian sitar player Harihar Rao. Rao, an ethnomusicologist at UCLA and an associate of Ravi Shankar would, in 1967, publish the influential Introduction to Sitar.
Here he is mainly used to play around the American musicians giving the hits of the day an exotic feel, Having said that, it is a very enjoyable record. Songs such as Hey Joe, which has a very enjoyable exchange between Rao and one of the guitarists certainly benefit from a sitar treatment.
The choice of material is also important. Paint it Black, Eight Miles High, Norwegian Wood, Shapes of Things were all songs that in their original forms used Indian influences.
The first and possibly the best of the genre.
The concluding track is an original penned by George Tipton. Tipton was the arranger on this record and, according to the sleeve notes, was qualified to arrange a sitar record because he had worked with Jan and Dean and the Mariachi Brass! However, with its fuzz guitar, insistent sitar lines and tight rhythm section it is a triumph and leaves me wishing that they had given him the chance to write a whole album.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic at Decca, the label that had originally turned down the Beatles, decided to get aboard the sitarsploitation bandwagon with this effort.
I have not been able to track down any info about Mr Kothari other than what is offered in the sleeve notes. Kothari was a Ugandan Indian who at the time of recording the record had been in the UK for seven years. Amazingly during that time he has spent all of his leisure time playing the sitar.
Unfortunately instead of going down the rock route of the Folkswingers, Kothari draws on pop hits of the day. We therefore get Strangers in the Night, Winchester Cathedral, Downtown, Guantanamera, the Sound of Music and Cast Your Fate the Wind.
Of greater interest is his version of Eleanor Rigby which is the best thing on the record. His own compositions, traditional in sound rather than pop or rock orientated, are also worth listening to.
All in all I'd recommend passing on this one unless you find it in a charity shop for a few pence.

Who was Lord Sitar? Was he a moonlighting George Harrison as some believed at the time? No he was instead Big Jim Sullivan one of London's premier session musicians (Big Jim Sullivan as opposed to Little Jimmy Page), whose work appears on any number of UK records in the 60s and 70s including, apparently, over 50 UK number ones.
On the face of it, Lord Sitar looks as though he is going to give us more of the same medicine as Chim Kothari. Look at some of the tracks, If I Were A Rich Man, Emerald City, Black is Black. But wait! We also get Daydream Believer, I am The Walrus, Eleanor Rigby, I Can See For Miles and Harrison's Blue Jay Way. Can the good Lord pull it off?
Well its touch and go. If I Were a Rich Man struggles to overcome the material and in some places succeeds. However, its not until we get to the Monkees Daydream Believer that things start to look positive and that is more to do with the strength of the song rather than the chamber orchestra arrangements. Over on the b-side I Am The Walrus, already a very trippy track, gets the full sitar treatment and comes out all the better for it. Eleanor Rigby trundles along nicely. However, all the stops are pulled out for I Can See For Miles which I'm sure would have made Pete Townsend proud - or cry - or both. I'm also very partial to the version of Blue Jay Way with the wordless vocals at the start really giving me a thrill.

In the same Big Jim comes around for another crack at sitarsploitation, or as they call it Sitar A Go Go. My copy is part of the Super Stereo Sounds series that also reissued records by Pete Rugolo, Quincy Jones and others. The first press has a green cover with Big Jim twanging away and ethereal figures floating above him.
Perhaps because he arranged the record himself or maybe he was just getting better at it, but Sitar Beat is a far superior record to Lord Sitar.
Kicking off with a great take on the Beatles' (you almost can't have a sitarsploitation record without a Beatles cover!) She's Leaving Home, Sullivan gets stuck into Sunshine Superman which I love. Perhaps this version of Whiter Shade of Pale is a bit limp but then again the song nothing more than a puddle of slush anyway. However, it is on Sullivan's originals that this record really takes off. Ltts and The Koan are intriguing and effective tracks that show off his playing to the best. The Koan has some great tabla, flute and guitar as well - its a really interesting track.
On the second side Graham Gouldman's Tallyman lends itself well to Sullivan's sitar work. Another highlight of the album is the Sullivan penned Translove Airways (Fat Angel). Over a funky drum beat, fuzz guitar and maddeningly repetitive flue riff and a string section, Sullivan's sitar swirls around, creating a floating, flying, falling feeling. Far out man!
In the top league of sitarsploitation records and one that is well worth picking up.

Chiitra Neogy's The Perfumed Garden isn't really a sitarsploitation record but it does have Jim Sullivan playing on it. Sexual liberation was a key tenant of the hippy ideal. The sexually explicit writing, sculpture and painting in India seemed, to Western flower-children to be more in tune with their views of sexual freedom than the button-downed European views on sex and love.
Thus a record such as this could be produced. The Perfumed Garden "contains writings which are designed to help human beings to achieve the fullest joy in their sexual lives." By today's standards they are not terribly sexual, but perhaps that's not the point.
Sullivan provided an underscore throughout the record and particular highlights are The Encouragement of the Lusty Wife, Leila the Flatterer and Krishna and the Cowgirls.My copy cost less than $5 on ebay and I wouldn't recommend you pay any more than that.

Ananda Shankar was the nephew of Ravi Shankar and he would go on the make a number of amazing records that fused jazz, Indian classical music and his own far-reaching vision.
However, his first record, made in the US in 1970, is often regarded as sitarsploitation because of its covers of the Stone's Jumpin' Jack Flash and The Doors' Light My Fire. Jumpin Jack Flash in particular is an amazing dancefloor killer. Throughout the record Paul Lewinson's Moog adds another layer of incredibly sounds and fascinating textures.  Listen to the washes of sound he adds to Light My Fire.
However, don't be fooled into thinking that this record is just about pop cover versions. Its so much more than the Folkswingers or Big Jim Sullivan. Shankar's own compositions are quite beautiful and are worth the price of the record alone. Tellingly he shares writing credits with Moog-player Lewison.
My favourite original compositions are Snow Flower, Metamorphosis and the epic Sagar (The Ocean). All three seem to me to combine the 'exotic' sounds of the sitar with some of the hippy peace and love vibe the instrument was meant to symbolise. Through using new music and with the addition of the moog, Shankar creates truly different music that is as spaced out as you want it to be.
It's really great stuff.

On first glance this would seem to be an exploitation record of the first order. I mean, why else would you call a record Pop Explosion Sitar Style and then NOT include any pop music. Why else would you have such an obvious 'eastern' sleeve that is an insult to women and Indians? Why else would the sleeve notes say that the music comes with "the heavy rhythms of the Rock Era"?
Strange as it may seem, however, the music on this record is not about exploitation but about authenticity. Read the story here. Suffice to say that the musicians behind this music, Clem Alford on sitar, Kashav Sathe on tabla and Jim Moyes on guitar did not expect their music to be packaged in this way.
Don't expect any cheap, ironic thrills from this record. Instead expect a serious attempt to fuse Indian classical music with western musical idioms.
Truly far out stuff.

Still to be included - Balsara and His Singing Strings, Rajput and the Seapoy Mutiny.

More info and soundclips to sitar records, including and amazing number of Bollywood soundtracks can be found here

INDO-JAZZ: SITAR AND SAX

The funny thing about purity is that it can often lead to sterility. Mix things up a bit and all sorts of unique and unforeseen combinations can result.
Of course the act of 'mixing things up' can also be difficult or worse. People don't always like the challenge of the new. Stasis can be very comforting.
So it was for Joe Harriott. His music was a constant example of trying to 'mix things up'. Although his Free Form experiments were daring and original, his playing was not inherently Jamaican, or British for that matter. His musical building blocks were from the US and he used these to build roads in new and unforeseen directions which would ultimately separate his music from that of his hero Charlie Parker (here).
Musics from outside Europe, often from countries in the British Empire, or recently freed from it, had been increasingly common in Britain since the Second World War. Kwela (read about it here), calypso, ska, highlife, Latin American music as well as many others had been gradually making inroads into the consciousnesses of the British record buying public.
Not only that but the people who made that music had also been coming to Britain. People like Joe Harriott and John Mayer.
Pat Matshikiza, who wrote the South African jazz opera, King Kong (here), in his short and very moving autobiography recounts coming to London and being thrown together with others from across Africa and the West Indies, their differences momentarily put aside by their shared experiences under colonial rule as well as the inability of Londoners to think of any black person as anything but 'African'.
In many ways Harriott and Mayer's Indo-Jazz Double Quartet was a product of the collapse of the British Empire. How else to explain the 'rainbow nation' of musicians? Lead by an Indian and a Jamaican, including musicians from both countries, as well as from elsewhere in the West Indies, England and Scotland, the band was multi-racial and multi-national. But before we get carried away, here is John Mayer on the hostility that the band sometimes received: "Joe Harriott was a man who took all the stick, like myself. We took all the stick from everybody because I was Indian and he was a Jamaican." You only need to read Val Wilmer's marvellous book My Mother Told Me There Would Be Days Like These, to appreciate that most people in Britain had little understanding of cultures outside of their own, much less of people outside of their own country. Wilmer also wonderfully evokes the London of African exiles and immigrants trying to assert their independence and that of their homelands.
John Mayer was a classically trained violinist and composer from Calcutta. He had come to London to play in the London Philharmonic but his ambitions as a composer made this difficult for him. A chance meeting with producer Denis Preston lead to him composing a jazz piece (which he hurriedly wrote from scratch the night before the recording) and this in turn led to the concept of the double quintet. There is some dispute as to who originally had the idea, but I don't think that matters.
In my opinion Denis Preston was Britain's answer to Bob Thiele. In America he would have been running a label like Impulse. As it was, his Lansdowne Records and the Lansdowne Recordings he produced for EMI, embraced the best of British jazz but were also wildly experimental and adventurous. Preston made jazz records with Indian musicians, Ghanaian drummers (here) and (here), Goan guitarists, some Jamaican avant-garde free-form, classically inspired serial compositions, jazz and poetry, jazz inspired by poetry, he even produced Stan Tracey's tribute to Duke Ellington and, if he had been in America like Bob Thiele, he would have got Duke himself to play. Not all the musicians he worked with appreciated his style, indeed many allege he ripped them off, but like Thiele, he got the best from them and those who did fall for him remained loyal for life.

 The Indo-Jazz Suite is not the first jazz record which used sitar. This accolade must go to a Bud Shank record in 1961 which used Ravi Shankar for one track. What is completely different about the Indo-Jazz Suite, what elevates it, and all of the Harriott/Mayer collaborations, above mere exotica, is that it is not music that utilises Indian instruments for the sake of their 'foreigness'. Rather it is an amalgam of an Indian compositional tradition and a jazz tradition. For me, why they are superior to Bill Plummer's Cosmic Brotherhood and Emil Richards' Microtonal Blues Band (read about them here and here), is that Mayer was the driving force and not Harriott. In a way, this could only have happened in London. In America in the fifties and sixties, non-Americans, whether from Indian, Africa or South America, were only exotic sidemen. Perversely, the hangover from Empire, acknowledged in the sleeve notes to the Indo Jazz Suite by reference to Rudyard Kipling, the arch-defender of colonialism and the Empire, allowed Mayer, and to a lesser extent Harriott, to be given control of the music.
All the tracks on all three Harriott/Mayer Indo-Jazz records were composed by Mayer - although one track is an adaptation of Harriott's  Subjecty and one a co-composition with Pat Smythe. This really does mean that it is Indian music plus jazz and not jazz with some Indian sounds to spice it up - although this was an accusation levelled at the music at the time. It is Indo Jazz and not Jazz plus Indian music.
Nevertheless, without Harriott, I don't believe the music would have the force that it does. He is completely uncompromising. His playing is not above the Indian ragas, or even weaving between the pulse of the Indian players. He is harsh, abrasive, cutting this way and that through the music, carving out his own space that is completely Joe Harriott. Perhaps it shouldn't work but it does. He brings the hard edge of his free form playing and forces it to mix with Mayer's structures. It is quite brilliant.
Another factor in the music is that Harriott and Pat Smythe are the only constants in the jazz side of the double quintet. The Indian classical side (really a quartet plus classically trained flutist Chris Taylor) remain unchanged through all three records. I think that this provides a base for the Indian side of the music to remain dominant while the jazz side of the equation is constantly learning how to fit in.

Coleridge Goode, who played on both Indo Jazz Fusion records but not the Indo Jazz Suite recounts in his autobiography how complex the process of producing the music was. His take on it was that the jazz musicians would have to practise to be able to play in the different time signatures and different modes so that the Indian musicians could join them.
I can hear a definite development from the first record through to, in my view without doubt the best of the three, the last record. In the Indo-Jazz Suite there is a tentative feel to the playing and the music as though no one is quite sure where it will go and how to play. Harriott sounds crisp and sharp but he is not as completely in control as he would become.
I guess, given the success of the Indo Jazz Suite, and the touring that followed it should not be a surprise that the band improved. For Indo-Jazz Fusions, Harriott is joined by Coleridge Goode (who replaced Eddie Blair who would go on to play with the Mahavishnu Orchestra with that other lover of Indian music John McLaughlin) and Shake Keane (read about Keane here). Goode found the experience interesting and exhilarating and his autobiography contains a quote from Harriott saying the same thing. However, you have to wonder whether there could ever be room for two leaders and I suspect that having been the leader and song writer for his own quintet it was difficult for Harriott to be a member of the double quintet.
Nevertheless, Indo-Jazz Fusions II is the masterpiece of the three records. Harriott is clearly now at home in the idiom, although ironically he seems to play less. Of the jazz musicians, Smythe and Taylor seem most at home, both of them putting in amazing performances. Meanwhile Diwan Motihar, the sitar player is simply incredible. As Ian Carr says in the sleeve notes "now problems and compromises are over: the fusion has taken place".
All of which makes it a shame that it is Harriott's last Indo-Jazz record.

Mayer would continue with the concept, producing a further album, Etudes. Don't what ever you do make the same mistake that I made. I saw the above record from France, which on the reverse is credited as including Harriott. It doesn't. It is Mayer's Etudes repackaged to fool idiots like me. Sax duties are taken up by Tony Coe, with Kenny Wheeler on trumpet and Goode still on bass. The Indian musicians are still the same as the other Indo-Jazz records.
It is a good record, although Harriott's presence is sorely missed. Coe, as good as he is, simply doesn't have the irascible character to take on the Indian aspect of the music with the result that he is too understanding and understated. Good but not great.
Clearly other people noticed the success of Indo-Jazz. The project was lucky in its timing with George Harrison's adoption of the sitar and a general turning towards Eastern mysticism amongst hippies. A number of sitarsploitation records would be released on both sides of the Atlantic to cash-in on this growing desire for non-Western sounds. In many ways this was simply an extension of the exotica craze that had taken off in the 1950s. Non-European instruments were pressed into service either covering the hits of today or to give a slightly 'foreign' sound to otherwise western musical forms. Indo-Jazz was different from that but nevertheless benefited from it.

First of the Indo-Jazz cash-ins was Raga's and Reflections by the Indo Jazzmen. The sleeve credits Krishna Kumar on tabla and Tambura Kapur on sitar but does not mention the jazz musicians. The tracks are credited to Issacs who may be Ike Issacs. Anyway, its great stuff and even the inclusion of a Christmas Carol can't pull it down. While the Harriott/Mayer records are cerebral and inquisitive, Ragas and Reflections has more of a feel of a jam session - as befits a cash-in record. I'd like to think that this is some of the same musicians as from the double quintet, moonlighting to make some extra money. However, having listened to this back to back with the Indo-Jazz records, it just doesn't seem likely.

Finally, the last hurrah for Indo-Jazz, we get Curried Jazz by the Indo British Ensemble. The band includes Kenny Wheeler who had played with John Mayer as well as the Australian Chris Karan on tabla which I feel just adds to the Empire feel of the thing. The opening track Yaman (The Colonel's Lady) is one of my favourites. However, despite the inclusion of Dev Kumar on sitar and Sitara on tabla the whole thing is arranged and composed by a Brit Victor Graham. Jazz with an Indian flavour indeed.

Indian music would continue to influence jazz, and jazz musicians would continue to be interested in musics from around the world and use 'exotic' instruments to produce usual sounds. However, the collaboration between Harriott and Mayer would prove to be the high point of this hybrid music.

JOE HENDERSON - THE ELEMENTS

If, like me, you saw this record in a second hand shop you might have thought "What's this?" But look, the cover tells you all you need to know. Not only does it have the always great Henderson (his Blue Note recordings are simply essential) but it also has such great musicians as Charlie Haden on bass, Michael White on violin and Alice Coltrane on piano, harp, tamboura and harmonium. Joined by Babu Duru Oshun, Ndugu and Kenneth Nash on drums and percussion its a completely killer ensemble.
Recorded in LA in 1973 it doesn't sound quite like anything Henderson had previously recorded or would record again. If anything it is most closely aligned with his work on Alice Coltrane's Ptah the El Daoud recorded three years previously but thankfully without Pharaoh Sanders. Using a array of unusual percussion, the various instruments of Alice Coltrane and some fine playing from Michael White on violin the whole record has a vaguely eastern and spiritual feel to it. It also helps that Henderson's tenor has been given some serious echo, which only highlights the purity of Coltrane's harp work. The whole thing is underpinned by some funky and imaginative bass work from Charlie Haden.  

The set is, as the album title suggests, based on the four elements, fire, air, water and earth. We open with fire which is for the me the best song on the record. Haden's fluid bass and Leon Chancler (Ndugu) open up setting the funky tone. Henderson comes in, heavily echoed, skipping and dancing like tongues of fire. The fire/music becomes hotter as Coltrane starts to vamp on piano and the percussion crackles. White's violin is scratchy and jagged, as though the flames were licking outwards and seeking new fuel to burn. Coltrane comes in on harp which adds a wonderfully cool and calm feel to the hot proceedings. She is, however, just as funky as her band mates. Its a truly wonderful song that I can't get enough of.

After the funky, hot, crackling Fire, Air is to my ears something of a disappointment. I think that Henderson is reaching for John Coltrane but not quite getting there. He plays some short sharp, attacking lines, at times over blowing in a 'sheets of sound'-like manner. His playing is fluid and rapid, constantly moving upwards in the register and he is completely in command, as you would expect. I just don't feel it. To me there is something slightly inauthentic about his playing here.
Once more Haden's work is incredible and the percussion, whether by Nash, Ndugu or Oshun, is also great. If you can push the bass up when listening to this I recommend it. Unfortunately, although the song tries to move and achieve lightness but just doesn't quite take off and is instead somewhat ponderous. What do you think?

Over on the B-side Henderson brings us Water. Opening with Coltrane's tamboura, Henderson plays some eastern sounding licks which are again drenched in echo. It doesn't so much evoke water as a dessert. Slowly, tentatively the rest of the band join in over the drone of the table and underneath Henderson's horn which progressively sounds more and more like a call to prayer. The effect is slightly ominous and I can never listen to it without waiting for the moment of release, which does not come. Despite the echo and eastern feel, Henderson remains funky and warm. His playing snaking and flicking, seemingly exploring a new terrain over the tabla drone. Its an amazing song that draws you into an almost panoramic and exotic world. A seven and half minutes it seems to finish all too quickly.

To closing track, Earth continues in the slow, funky, eastern way of its predecessors. Opening with some fine drumming before Haden's deep insistent bass comes in, Earth seems to be about the solid immovable nature of the world under our feet. Henderson has overdubbed his tenor and he seems to be playing off himself. Meanwhile Coltrane's harmonium touches add to the funky atmosphere. Slowly the band fade out leaving Haden to solo. Coltrane returns on the harp and Henderson plays a gorgeous flute while Nash intones "Time, Time, Time".  Spiritual, funky, deep and uplifting. All in all a really remarkable record.

EMIL RICHARDS AND THE MICROTONAL BLUES BAND - JOURNEY TO BLISS

In his masterful book The House That Trane Built, Ashley Kahn refers to this album's "cultural curiosity" and "otherworldly" nature. According to Kahn, Impulse under Bob Thiele was always looking for cross-over records and latched on to the emerging hippie scene in California.
Records such as this, Gabor Szabo's Jazz Raga, Bill Plummer's Cosmic Brotherhood (read about it here) and Gary McFarland's Point of Departure were all intended to be pop-jazz, rock-jazz cross-over hits. Unfortunately they rarely were. The slightly split nature of record label is shown in the linear notes which try to draw a parallel between Richards' modal experiments and those of his label mate Coltrane. Yet at the same time Richards reveals that he hopes that "the kids" will dance to his music. Perhaps - listen to this opening track and see what you think. Tommy Tadesco's guitar and the leaping percussion work do make it possible to dance to, but I can't see many people in 1968 choosing this over the Doors!

Richards had a pedigree as a jazz musician having played with Charles Mingus, Shorty Rogers and Don Ellis by the time he made this record. All of whom would also experiment with some fairly out-there music. However, at the same time he had also developed a career as a studio musician and had played with some more pop-orientated musicians such as Sinatra and Doris Day.
He also appeared on the Zodiac Cosmic Sounds record and I can't help thinking that record and Journey to Bliss are very similar. Both utilise a wide variety of instruments, although there is no Moog on this record. Both also play on some very sixties ideas about spirituality and belief as well as a rather over-serious exploration of so-called 'alternative' views of life. Both records also included a number of LA session musicians. Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Mike Melvoin on Zodiac Cosmic Sounds and Dave Mackay, Tommy Tedesco and Joe Porcaro on Journey to Bliss. And although the Journey to Bliss voice-over is not as smooth as Cyrus Faryar there are distinct similarities, not least the portentous seriousness of it all.
There is something to my ears that is just too 'clean' and 'studio' to convince that this is a serious record. I am reminded of another vibes player, John Sangster, who also came from a jazz background, played a great deal as a session musician as well as dabbled in 'exotic' sounds.
There is, I think, also a touch of exotica in this record. Many of the musicians on the exotica records of the 50s had jazz backgrounds and Martin Denny clearly wanted to be Dave Brubeck!
Just listen to Mantra and imagine it slightly slowed down with some ridiculous bird calls. Reminds you of Martin Denny doesn't it?

The second track, Bliss is really the younger brother to the four part B side track Journey to Bliss, with Richards playing a very similar riff on a similar instrument (I'm afraid I just don't know what it is and there are 58 to chose from according to the sleeve! There is a sound at 2.40 in the clip that I love. It has that slightly mad Radiophonic quality that Delia Derbyshire's treated sounds had. Great stuff.

Side One finishes with Enjoy Enjoy. As the sleeve notes point out it is "in a twelve-based meter and can be counted (take a deep breath) as 32331 or 57 or 444 or 3333 or 6/8 or 3/4 or 12/8 or 4/4 or, as Emil puts it, as ????!!! Indeed." Reminds me of some of the extravagant sleeve notes for exotica and easy records. Through the careening percussion Tedesco's guitar once more adds a dash of rockiness together with Dave MacKay's keyboard. It doesn't last long and the whole track slides into atonality before coming together for a joyful reprise.

One Side Two we get back more firmly into a very Californian attempt to 'trancend' using 'eastern' methods. And its rather fabulous, if somewhat of its time. Using what sounds like all 58 instruments and Barbara Gess's poem intoned by, I think Emil himself, the suite flows forward in a dream-like and possibly drug-like state. Here is the second half of it.

In ways in which exotica satisfied the desires of Americans for far away places without the need to leave their homeland, so to did albums like this. By emphasising the jazz element and replacing the obvious tropes of exotica with a new psychedelic 'now' image records such as this appealed to a new audience who would never have listened to Arthur Lyman but perhaps ultimately wanted the same thing - the thrill of a new world without leaving home.

BILL PLUMMER AND THE COSMIC BROTHERHOOD

I like sitar-jazz records. There is something about the collision of two disparate forms of music that intrigues me, as it no doubt intrigued those who made them.
As far as I can gather traditional sitar playing does not have room for improvisation. It is built up of layers of cyclical playing, ragas, that can be as forumlaic as western classical music.
This record was released in 1968 while the John Mayer/Joe Harriot Indo-Jazz Fusions record came out in 1965. As such it was not a ground-breaking record.
It also differs from the Harriot/Mayer record in that none of the musicians are from India. As such this is not so much a meeting of two different musical cultures but more the use of a set of musical devices and instruments by a group of jazz trained musicians.
And there is nothing wrong with that. It does, however, mean that the music is in danger of veering into exotica or even exploitation territory. I love both of these styles of music so I'm not too bothered. However, as much as the linear notes try and persuade you otherwise this record is a blatant attempt to cash in on America's increasing interest in the 'east'.
The 'east' in the western imagination has stood for a large number of things and in the sixties it came to be seen as place of spiritual enlightenment. A place to escape the horrors of western capitalism and the mechanised, ordered world, a place where people could find out who they were. The Beatles' sojourn with the Maharishi was very influential.
The 'east' also came to be connected with a kind of drugged out bliss. The music that westerners associated with this was often the sitar. It was strange and exotic and is floated and swirled rather than pummeled and attacked as so much western music seemed to do. The repetitive nature of ragas also helped stoned people to reach bliss. 
There is very much a soundtrack flavour to the Comic Brotherhood. A feeling that a mood is being evoked by people who really don't know too much about it. The presence of studio session bassist supreme and member of the Wrecking Crew Carol Kaye does nothing to make me think otherwise.
At this time there were lots of these kind of records being put out whether they were sitar-sploitation such as the Folkswingers,freak-out exploitation such as the The Zodiac Cosmic Sounds or Emil Richards' New Time Elements. Wonderful records all but surely the produce of men trying to appeal to an audience they didn't really understand
Take Arr 294 on the second side. To my ears it sounds like the kind of 'freak out' track that you might hear in a Davie Allan soundtrack - although with added sitar.
The opening track, Journey to the East, is a poem set to music by Hersh Hamel who would go on to spend time with Art Pepper. It's repeated verse "Peace/ Is What I/ Had Come Searching For/ Spiritual Comfort/ Thoughts far/ From Those of War" I think neatly sums up what the 'east' stood for. Backed by some fine sitar playing this is one of the highlights of the record for me.
There are also two covers, The Look of Love and Lady Friend, the later being a Byrds track by David Crosby. Bob Thiele, who produced this record and ran Impluse, was always searching for pop-jazz hits. Although his label put out many records by 'new thing' artists such as Coltrane, Shepp, Ayler and re-released records by Sun Ra, he also put out a lot of easier and smoother records.
In my opinion the musicians seem most at home on these covers, no doubt because they were familiar and because they are basically jazz versions of the songs with sitar on top.
I got this record from an ebay sale. There used to be a web site called Show and Tell Music who, a few years ago, sold some of his collection in large batches. If I'd had any more money at the time I would have bought more but as it was I was very pleased to get the records I did. If you are out there and read this, please update your website - it was great.