Showing posts with label Paul Taylor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Taylor. Show all posts

Friday, April 7, 2023

#605 : Mem Mods - Vol. 1. (PhillyCheezeBlues.Blogspot.com)

 


2023 – Mem Mods

By Phillip Smith; April 7, 2023

Release Date : Feb. 24, 2023

Original source : phillycheezeblues.blogspot.com

Longtime friends Steve Selvidge (Big Ass Truck), Paul Taylor and Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars), sons of Memphis music legends Sid Selvidge, Pat Taylor, and Jim Dickinson are now legends by their own right.  It took a pandemic to reconnect these three musicians who played together as kids in the 1970s to make this intoxicating new instrumental recording. With Selvidge on guitar, bass, Rhodes, and drum machine, Dickinson on bass and various keys, and Taylor on drums, percussion, various basses, synth pedals, and soundscapes, the trio drew inspiration from the music they loved growing up in Memphis.  They set the pin in the Bluff City as ground zero, exploded the sound into the outer dimensions, and created a dozen hypnotic, funky, space jams.

The album begins with the forward-driving beat and funktafied futuristic sounds of “Capricorn Catastrophe”.  This is a splendid slice of psychedelia topped off with horns.  Soaking in the warm groove of “Congressional Tadpole” is an absolute treat.  When I hear “Knotty Pine Kitchen”, I have visons of disco lights moving slowing across the ceiling and wall.  My brain totally expects to hear the soulful deep voice of Isaac Hayes kick in at some point.  I adore the funky Stax-flavored intro on “Midtown Miscommunication”.  It eventually wanders into Zappa-land.  Growing up in the Sixties and Seventies, one of my favorite toys was the ever-so-strange game of Cooties.  I never played the game; I just built the weird little creatures so my army men would have something to battle with.  “Cootie Party” may not be about that, but I like to pretend it is.  The Mem Mods trip concludes with “Horn Lake Hookup”.  If there is intelligent life out there, this is what they sent back after listening to the Memphis sounds in its heyday. 

I love the Mem Mods Vol 1., and hope there will be many more of these.  They are great!  

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TRACKLIST

 

01 Capricorn Catastrophe

02 Three On The Tree

03 Feather's On A House Cat

04 Congressional Tadpole

05 Harmolodica

06 Knotty Pine Kitchen

07 Midtown Miscommunication

08 Sonoma Smashup

09 Sparkle Skate

10 Cootie Party

11 Perseveration Blues

12 Horn Lake Hookup