Some of us are blessed with great instincts for finding cool music of all stripes.
Others of us…
… such as myself…
…will forever be catching up to the arbiters of good musical taste, and have to stumble upon it any way we can.
Here are some examples of great music I “discovered” – by simply meeting the artist or member of the band.
And no, I’m not talking about a local bar band’s demo, or second cousin twice removed Rodney’s self-released didgeridoo/noise rock album. To be clear, that’s hypothetical. I have no such cousin, though one can dream.
I am limiting this to artists that recorded for a label, so that definitely narrows things down a bit.
Prince, 3rdeyegirl:
Plectrumelectrum (2014)
Sometime around the mid-2000s, I was put in charge of a teen choir at a church, and on one occasion we were missing a drummer. The music director recommended I reach out to a high school drummer that she had used before, Hannah Ford. She ended up playing drums for me a couple of times and she was excellent.
I was told that she could actually rock out way harder than what was being asked of her in church.
Photo: Courtesy of Zildjian
The last time I tried to book her, her dad said she was singing in a production of High School Musical and unavailable. After that, I lost touch with her, though I saw in a local music magazine that she was fronting a blues band.
Several years later, I heard from a number of people that she was playing with none other than Prince. He had recruited her as a guest artist for three shows in Chicago after seeing videos online of her performing.
He had her help him find a female guitarist, Donna Grantis, and together with bassist Ida Nielsen, the three of them became 3rdeyegirl, Prince’s band for two tours.
Photo credit: PR Photograph
They released one album with him, Plectrumelectrum, in 2014.
If I hadn’t met Hannah Ford, it is doubtful I would have ever heard Plectrumelectrum, being that it was Prince’s 36th studio album and well past the era where I was familiar with his music.
I’m glad I didn’t miss it.
It’s an old school, energetic combination of funk and rock, with Prince’s trademark playfulness, but set against no-nonsense tighter than tight grooves. The girls all have serious chops and aren’t messing around.
The album is credited to both Prince and 3rdeyegirl. It feels like an equal partnership, with top notch musicianship and tight vocals across the board. Hannah sings lead on three of the songs.
With Prince sadly passing away in 2016, there would be no hope for any more music from this lineup, but one album is better than none, and hey:
Sleeping at Last
Saturn (2014)
Photo credit: sleepingatlast.com
A good friend of mine, Brian, was getting married. I don’t use the term musical genius lightly, but he qualifies.
He asked me to play for his wedding and he only had two requests:
- The recessional march needed to be the Victory Fanfare from the game Final Fantasy IV
- And one of the preludes needed to be an improvised organ piece that was just ridiculously dissonant enough to be recognized as such by musicians but not the average person.
I fulfilled both requests. I was told that I could pick whatever else I thought would be appropriate to play before the ceremony, so the rest of the prelude pieces included “Princess Leia’s Theme” from Star Wars, Styx’s “The Best of Times” (his dream was to meet Dennis DeYoung, but the 1981 version), and “Canon in D Minor”. (It’s exactly what it sounds like.)
Brian loved all of it.
The bride never told me how she felt about any of it.
At the reception, my wife and I were seated at a table with some formidable musicians. On one side of us were drummer Paul Wertico, who played with Pat Metheny for 20 years, and jazz guitarist extraordinaire and Catholic priest John Moulder. Brian had produced projects by both and had played in a trio with them.
I had met both of them before, but on the other side of us was a musician named Ryan O’Neal, whom I didn’t know. His wife was a close friend of the bride. Brian had told me in advance that Ryan was a genuine success in the music biz.
Under the moniker Sleeping at Last, his songs were featured in a number of TV shows, and he had just landed a song on the Twilight soundtrack.
He and his wife were very down-to-earth, and we talked quite a bit that evening. The next day, I looked up his music and was struck by the beauty of his compositions and lush arrangements.
He continued to increase in popularity, and currently has several songs with hundreds of millions of plays on Spotify. There are a number of songs I have found striking, but one that moves me in particular is “Saturn” off of Atlas:
Mr. Fingers
Introduction (1992)
Photo credit: Marc Sethi/Courtesy of the artist
In the early 90s, my band was recording a demo in a studio in Chicago. One night, some of us arrived early for a session and while we were waiting, we heard the engineer mixing down some female backing vocals on a song called “On a Corner Called Jazz” that sounded incredibly smooth. When they were done, the studio owner introduced us to the artist, Larry Heard.
About a year later, my sister Elise gave me a cassette of songs by an artist named Mr. Fingers, and I instantly loved it. I
It turned out that Mr. Fingers was Larry Heard, and I was listening to the album that he had been working on in the studio when I had met him.
What I didn’t know was that he was one of the pioneering figures in house music in the 80s, and commonly attributed as a primary progenitor of deep house, a jazz-funk hybrid of Chicago house. The album I grew to love was Introduction. If you are in the mood to chill, put this baby on and just let it wash away all of the anxieties of the day.
New Colony Six
Breakthrough (1966)
In the late 00s, I had been working as an accompanist at a church for a short while, when someone told me that one of the deacons at the church, Ray Graffia, was a founding member of The New Colony Six, one of a number of Chicago-area rock bands to achieve national success in the 60s.
That list includes The American Breed, The Buckinghams, The Cryan’ Shames, The Ides of March, Shadows of Knight, and toward the very end of the decade, Chicago Transit Authority.
Photo credit: Bob Sanderson
I was familiar with one of the band’s biggest hits, “I Will Always Think About You” (#22 Hot 100), a staple on oldies’ stations, but what I didn’t realize is that this song was more representative of their later “soft-rock” sound. When I listened to their first album, Breakthrough, I heard a garage rock band that wasn’t quite as hard-hitting as some of the blues-based British invasion bands, but had its own sound going.
With its liberal use of organ, and electric guitar lines fed through a Leslie speaker, along with catchy melodies and tight harmonies, I found it an enjoyable listen.
The lead track, “I Confess” made it to #2 on the chart for WLS, the local top-40 station, and #80 on the Hot 100. My older brothers and my sister Patty all remember it fondly. It transports me to a time that I was born too late to experience, but always imagined- when countless guys in high school started rock bands with their friends, learned to play instruments and some of them actually made it out of the garage and on to the radio.
Sandy Cleveland
My Heart Will Never Lie/We Love Together:
(1970s)
Back in 2012, I had been the music director for just a month or so at a church where I had no previous connection. I was working with a cantor on a song that needed soulful, funky vocals. The cantor said, “I’m not best suited for this. You need to talk to Sandi.”
It turned out that Sandi was the wife of our guitarist, John, and happened to be standing nearby.
When I approached her about singing in church, she was none too happy with the cantor that had sent me her way. “She should not have talked about me to you without me knowing and I am definitely going to have words with her. I don’t sing anywhere because somebody thinks I should. If the Spirit calls me, then and only then will I do it.”
I told her that I could totally respect that. I asked her if I could run a song past her in the future that she could consider singing if it felt right. She agreed to it, and eventually she did sing at our church on several occasions and knocked it out of the park every time. The Spirit had indeed called, Sandi answered, and we all felt it.
Several years later, John told me that sometime in the 70s, Sandi had recorded a couple of songs as Sandy Cleveland, for Arrow Brown.
He ran a small soul label called Bandit Records in Chicago, as well as a household full of his many wives and children, of which Sandi was NOT a part.
He told Sandi that he would shop the songs around and make them hits, but then she never heard much from him again and nothing really came from it.
Years later, Sandi received a phone call from Numero Group: an archival record label, letting her know that they would be releasing a compilation of music from the Bandit label, and that Sandi’s two songs would be on it. John sent me a link to the songs, and I instantly loved both of them. I could totally hear star potential in her incredible voice.
It made me wonder what could have been, if Arrow Brown had been maybe just a little less whack-a-doodle. The good news is that Sandi didn’t stop singing and I am grateful I’ve gotten to hear her voice, both past and present.
The 21st Century
Remember the Rain? (1974)
For several years in the 00s, I volunteered for an organization that houses the homeless in basements of churches, each church taking one night a week. One night, one of the guests told me that in the 70s, he sang in a soul group called The 21st Century.
They came out of Crane High School on Chicago’s west side. He then sang a song he said they had recorded called “Remember the Rain?”.
Intrigued, as soon as I got home that night, I looked up the song online and found it. It was a beautiful, wistful ballad with a sky-high lead vocal, typical of that era of soul.
I later learned that it had actually charted on the Billboard Hot 100, right at #100.
I couldn’t remember the name of the man who sang it to me, and I never saw him again, but I believe his story, and the song still haunts me when I listen to it.
Classix Nouveaux
The Very Best of Classix Nouveaux
(1980-83)
Around the mid-90s, I was hired to play for a Catholic conference centered on Mary, held at Boyne Mountain Ski Resort in Michigan. These were ultra-conservative folks, so I was surprised to hear that a rock band from the U.K. had been brought in to give a concert.
The group was led by a guy named Sal Solo.
At the concert, he started out by saying that he had been lead singer in Classix Nouveaux, a band which I would later learn had formed from the breakup of X-Ray Spex in 1979.
They were one of the early new wave bands, associated with what was called the New Romantics. While they only had one top 20 hit in the U.K. and were not known much in the U.S., they achieved great popularity in several other countries, particularly in Poland, where they had six Top 10 singles.
He played a video of the band performing one of their songs, “Guilty”. The song was a hybrid of punk and new-wave and had an earworm of a melody.
Sal was featured in a black trench coat and dark make-up, with a silver Flying-V. It looked menacing, and I imagine that the crowd of mostly older devout Catholics were terrified. I was instantly enamored with both the song and the video.
Sal went on with his story. The success and adulation as a rock star had somehow left him feeling empty.
Searching for something more, he was encouraged by Nick Beggs, bassist for Kajagoogoo, to go on a retreat near Assisi, Italy, at the San Damiano church, where he had a powerful experience of God, and fervently returned to the Catholic faith of his childhood.
As a solo artist, Sal’s 1985 single about this experience, “San Damiano”, went to #15 in the U.K.
He eventually left mainstream music, and recorded an entire album based on the decades of the Rosary, which we heard that night at the concert. I loved it and got a chance to meet the band and get to know Sal a bit. We kept in touch and eventually, I was involved in an effort to get his band to come to Chicago for a concert.
At that concert, he met some folks that were willing to help him establish his music ministry in the US.
He relocated from the U.K. to Chicago, where my wife and I became good enough friends with him that we invited him to our wedding. My sister-in-law was starstruck, as she had been a huge fan of his in Poland.
During all this time, I was still unschooled in the music of his old band Classix Nouveaux. But within time, I obtained a copy of a greatest hits CD that was released in 1997 and got totally hooked on it.
Sal’s unique multi-octave voice and penchant for infectious melodies and the band’s use of both synths and guitar played well in my head, fitting right into the soundtrack of high school, even though I hadn’t known them back then.
My wife knew some of the songs from growing up in Poland, and between the two of us, we wore that CD out. If you haven’t heard this band and you are a fan of early 80s new wave, definitely check them out.
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But the real news is how lucky all of those professional musicians were to rub shoulders with rollerboogie! I enjoyed all of these stories…a peek into the lives of professional musicians that have had some experience with success without becoming household names.
A classic icebreaker question is, “Who have you met that’s at least moderately famous?”
And for years, my answer has been, “I got nobody.” So it was a delight to live vicariously through rb’s experiences.
And to echo @Link Crawford, I’m sure the artists names in the article enjoyed the experience as well.
I’ve heard Sleeping At Last and Mr. Fingers, but only in passing. Maybe JJ can confirm this, but I think Sandy Cleveland was popular with Northern Soul fans.
I wasn’t into the New Romantics but I remember Classix Nouveaux’s song “Guilty.” Didn’t it get some play on MTV?
New Colony Six and The 21st Century are new to me but the revelation here is Prince and 3rdeyegirl. Super fun and funky! I’ve just added the album to my “Driving” playlist. This is great stuff, rollerboogie, but I’m going to blame you if I get a speeding ticket.
Vroom vroom!
Guilty did get airplay on MTV.. I was told that they were in steady rotation in the early days, when MTV was only available on the east coast. Sal said not many bands had videos yet, so they got a lot of play for being ahead of the curve.
Glad you are enjoying the Prince/3rdeyegirl. I think it’s fantastic.
Sandy Cleveland is a new name to me. I know that a big part of the Northern Soul scene was one upmanship amongst DJs, finding the rarest records possible as a badge of honour and using them to entice the crowds.
Sandy would certainly seem to fit in with that. I’ve done some looking online but references to her are very sparing. There’s a couple on soul chat sites looking for copies of her records and there’s this listing for a copy of My Heart Would Never Lie To Me, sold for $108 in 2013.
https://www.popsike.com/Soul-Funk-45-SANDY-CLEVELAND-My-Heart-Would-Never-Lie-To-Me-on-USA/221221319769.html
I remember Classix Nouveaux and Sal Solo’s sole hit. Interesting to read the sometimes circuitous routes that life can take and has led these people to and from the music industry. Some really interesting stories.
I have one connection of this ilk. The year below me at school and living in the same village as me was Brett. Being a small place we knew each other to talk to without being in the same immediate friendship group. While at high school he got a part in Byker Grove, a long running children’s TV drama on BBC 1. He was in that for years but after leaving school he aged out of it. I last saw him in person a year or so after he left Byker Grove and he was working behind the bar in a pub.
Another year or so later I was watching a music show on TV which featured an interview with a new boy band; Point Break. Who, to my great surprise contained Brett. They had one top 10 single and another four top 30 hits but were dropped after one album. I’ve done some googling and he was last seen a couple of years ago managing a bowling alley.
I love this.
Incredibly cool stories, Rollerboogie! Thanks for sharing these many brushes with greatness with us here!
Thank you, Ozmoe!
I have had a couple of brushes with the famous or famous-adjacent.
I was fortunate enough to meet Kenny Malone, the famous sessions drummer, several times. I was good friends with his daughter and met him through her. I had no idea at first what a big deal he was in Nashville music circles. I told a good friend of mine (T, who I have written about in other places) that I had met him because T was a gifted and passionate amateur drummer, and I thought he would be interested. Interested? He was bowled over. Could I please, please, please get him an autograph? I asked his daughter if he would mind, and she told me that he loved having breakfast with other musicians. T immediately began planning a trip to Nashville. Kenny met him, and they spent a couple of hours together, just the two of them, talking drumming and eating pancakes. And, yes, he got an autograph, along with a personal note and some musical annotation. It was still framed on his wall when he died.
I didn’t buy any new music because of meeting Kenny, but I found out that I already had quite a bit of his work. He recorded with John Prine, JJ Cale, Don Williams, Dr. Hook, etc., etc. Oh, and he played drums on a couple more that you may know, “Jolene” and “Drift Away.”
I had a close call with a soon-to-be-famous Julien Baker when she was roommates with my grandniece. I didn’t meet her, but I did meet her dog. I’m sure that I would not have listened to Boygenius without that connection, and I would have missed out on something good.
That reminds me. Margo Price waited tables at my favorite Nashville bar. It closed down during the pandemic but she was already famous in Country circles by then. I didn’t know her well but probably wouldn’t have listened to her stuff without knowing her through that.
So I really need to know, what was your favorite Nashville bar?
The Flying Saucer, next to Union Station. It’s now a restaurant that’s too expensive for me to walk by.
We used to stop there once in a while when we went to the Frist. But, yeah, not even slowing down near the new place.