Tower of Power
East Bay Grease
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This is simply a fine, funky album. Tower of Power is a ten-man black/white/chicano band out of Oakland, California, the birthplace of the Black Panthers. Their central force is lead singer Rufus Miller, whose rough, gutsy style focuses what might otherwise be just another brassy big band. The strength of his vocals puts the rest of the group–three saxes, two trumpets, drums, guitar and bass –into perspective. The band comes in all sassy and boppin' but Miller is never overpowered; the balance is just right. Since no one is attempting any virtuoso moves, the songs aren't excuses for three-minute drum solos or run-on riffs that make other large groups so boring. Instead, the
Read More instrumental work is forceful and attractive without becoming an end in itself. The brass sound is appropriately raw, rarely strident, and Willy Fulton on guitar plays all in and out of them like an electric hummingbird. The material–six songs written by Emilio Castillo and Steve Kupka, who play alto and baritone sax, respectively–is knockout dance music: a distillation of the James Brown spirit, filtered through the sweet looseness of San Francisco–tight but not tense. And more than a little stoned. "Social Lubrication," my favorite, is about grass or anything else that gets you high, from TV to religion –"everyone's got their own way." "The Skunk, the Goose and the Fly" elaborates on three rhymed phrases ("drunk as a skunk," "loose as a goose," "high as a fly") for an archtypically simple, even silly, rock song–jazzed up but irresistibly absurd. The one slower cut, "Sparkling in the Sand," doesn't have quite the force of the others, possibly because, as the longest cut (nine minutes), much of its interest dissipates through repetition (the vocal here is by Rick Stevens and sounds stylish but light-weight–in keeping with the song, no doubt, so the man deserves another hearing). The other vocals by Miller are tough and choppy, not entirely intelligible, but played against high backing voices for maximum effect and variation as lively as the instruments. Makes me want to get up off my chair, or, in the immortal words of Archie Bell, "Lemme put this hamburger down; I don't want no malt–I wanna dance." (RS 78) VINCE ALETTI |
