MARBLES Marbles (Vinyl Countdown, 2006)

"Red Lights"

Estos chavales tenían grandes canciones y mucho potencial pero sólo consiguieron publicar un par de fantásticos singles que son el principal argumento de este elepé. El resto son maquetas y algún tema en directo y aunque el sonido no es bueno les sobra talento. El texto que viene a continuación está extraído de Punk Mod Archives .

David and Howard Bowler and Dave’s friend Eric Li who he met as a freshman at Columbia University formed the band in 1974 in NYC. Shortly after, Jim Clifford joined as Bassist. We started writing songs and playing shows all over the city and became frequent headliners at CBGBS. They used to give us entire weekends there where we headlined with acts like Blondie, the Ramones, B52’s, Talking Heads and lots of others. One Saturday night in 1978 we opened for AC/DC.

Our first single was "Red Lights" b/w "Fire and Smoke". Terry Ork signed us after signing Television and Patti Smith. He actually wanted Fire and Smoke as the A side be we convinced him that Red Lights was really the single. We recorded a bunch of demos for Hilly Kristal that were supposed to be released on CBGB Vol 2. but the Lp was never released.

Our second single came out on Jimboco Records. "Forgive and Forget" started getting airplay on a major station in New York-WNEW FM- by DJ Vince Scelsa. I never did thank him for playing the record which he began playing regularly.

In 1979 we were getting disillusioned and broke up the band but reformed as a production company called Atomic Records. We signed artists to our label and recorded two Lps for A&M Records.

In 1988 we wrote and produced a top 40 US single called “Saying Sorry Don't Make it Right”. The featured artist was Denise Lopez, a singer we had auditioned for the song. In 1989, Keyboardist Eric Li died from a drug overdose.  Two of the founding 

Video de Marbles tocando en directo  "Red Lights"

Canción # 1309: PLUMS NED DORIS Mama Didn´t Lie (1967)

Estoy escuchando estos días "Swedish Graffiti Vol. 2", un doble elepé del sello Sonet que recopila bandas suecas de los sesenta. Aparte de grupos más o menos conocidos como Tages, Ola & The Janglers o Jackpots, me llamó la atención sobre todo este bonito tema de Curtis Mayfield cantado por Doris Svensson.

CANDLEWICK GREEN Doggie - Like We Still Do (Acción, 1972)

"Doggie"

Candlewick Green ganaron en la TV británica un concurso de nuevos talentos y fueron fichados por Decca que les publico "Doggie" como primer single. Un par de años más tarde con nueva estética y más pasticheros incluso tuvieron un relativo éxito con el tema "Who Do You Think You Are".

DOUG OWEN From The Start (ABC-Movieplay, 1977)

"Bad Girls"

A pesar de que el sello Hickory de Nashville estuvo especializado en country puro y duro durante muchos años, de hecho era casi el brazo armado de Acuff-Rose, acabó por diversificar su oferta con artistas de otros géneros como en el caso de este chaval llamado Doug Owen que publicó este bonito elepé lleno de coritos, efluvios de Gilbert O Sullivan, unos arreglos de cuerda guais y algunas canciones que acaban quedando en la memoria. 

"It's interesting how records can hang around for so long. I recorded another one after "From the Start". It's called "Doug Owen/Evenings East. I was but a kid when I got my break in Nashville. I've never pursued  a career in music where I wanted to be a star. Just writing songs and traveling around the world. I'm now in the Atlanta area looking for jobs playing and doing session work. Anyway, thanks again for liking my early work.

Best wishes
Keith Destry (Doug Owen)

La siguiente información esta extraída de su myspace.

Keith Destry started his professional career in entertainment as Doug Owen, writing songs for Moe Bandy, LaCosta and Kenny Rogers. Early in his career, Owen (who changed his name to Keith Destry in 1987) performed with Bob Hope, The Captain & Tennille, Helen Reddy, Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods, and many others. Influenced by the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Destry's sound (a mixture of Big Beat, Folk and Country) shoots off the disc, full-bodied,fresh. (What once was old...is new again). His first release, POPULUXX/War of the Worlds, was recorded in a 12ft. x 4ft. storage room in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. His child-hood friend and co-producer Chris Thomson recorded the album using an old Yamaha PSR 630 (for backing tracks), then overdubbed vocals and guitars. They mastered War of the Worlds in Austin Texas at Affordable Sound Studios. Recently returned from a two year tour in Europe, where Destry was the first American singer to perform on the Czech Republics top variety show "Country Estrada". He also worked as an FX assistant on the sci-fi movie, "Hellboy". For the time Destry is residing in his hometown of Little Rock, and on the side is preparing to promote his line of original art.

RASA Coming Into Full Bloom (Lotus Eye, 1979)

"My Wasted Life"

Me llamó la atención estos días una de las últimas incorporaciones a la lista de seguidores, la Healing Mystical Science Collective, que se definen como: "Group of Artist, Musicians, Healers and Spiritual Beings. From out of space comes a Collective of Artist and Musicians from Riverside, CA. Vortex. H.M.S. Collective is a group of galactic gypsies channeling good vibrations, positive energy and a unique spiritual uprising of experimental sounds and psychedelic art. ", todo realmente muy molón, sobre todo lo de gitanos galácticos, así que para ellos esta dosis de Rasa, a los que también les iba lo del rollo espiritual.  Aquí va una bio extraída de la página de Robert Campagnola

The group RASA began in the summer of 1978. Robert Campagnola, then known as Harikesa Swami, had been playing devotional Sanskrit bhajans in a joking manner on a large organ recently donated to ISKCON Germany. Some of these songs were recorded and the tapes passed around. Jorgen Sundsvall (Vegavan das), heard these tapes and decided it could be potentially profitable to record an album and distribute it. He invited Robert into a room in the building where they stayed where he had secretly arranged a recording session with a drummer (Dattatreya), piano player Madhava Puri Das (Mats Olausson), electric guitarist (Stig Sjoberg), bass player and a recording engineer (Sperling). Robert sat behind the piano and started spontaneously playing Cintamani while the others gradually joined in. This became the first track on the extremely successful album, Oasis, which sold many hundreds of thousands of copies throughout Europe. Subsequent RASA albums were released, some with the same original musicians, and the band grew so popular they were requested to play the large open air concerts in Germany before huge crowds.

To facilitate the recording of the material, Robert built a recording studio in Korsnas Gard, Sweden, with the help of Ekhardt Matz (Ekanath das) and others. Together they learned the art of recording, mixing and mastering, and custom built many of the facilities within the studio that were used to record other albums and shows for bands and Radio Krishna, a popular Narradion production for Stockholm. The music and lyrics were either adaptations of traditional Indian songs or original compositions by Robert. The band ceased to exist in 1984 . From 1987 till 1995, Robert recorded under the band name of BLISS.