Alcatraz-Vampire State Building (1971)

1. Simple Headphone Mind (10:00)
2. Your Chance Of A Lifetime (5:06)
3. Where The Wild Things Are (3:03)
4. Vampire State Building (13:10)
5. Piss Off (3:18)
6. Change Will Come (6:08)

- Rüdiger Berghan / piano, vocals
- Klaus Holst / guitar
- Klaus Nagurski / flute, tenor saxophone
- Ronald Wilson / bass
- Jan Rieck / drums, percussion

I'd been wanting to post something about this album for a while b/c I really like it, the review comes from the Prog Archives website:

Another fine Krautrock recording to come out of Hamburg. Playing through small venues [such as hostels], Alcatraz' repertoire comprised mainly of covers of well known bands; Ten Years After, Keef Hartley Band, Savoy Brown, Vanilla Fudge, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep. Branching out with compositions of their own, the band began listening to jazzy bands such as Soft Machine and Tony William's Lifetime. Putting two and two together their sound falls somewhere between their earlier Hard rock contingencies and Jazz, with a healthy dose of Improv.

The album was recorded under peculiar circumstances. Recorded at Faust's studio in Wümme, the farm surrounding the studio was sieged by police after suspecting a crack down on a terrorist hideout. The band still managed to get through the whole recording process within the day, unfazed by the incident.

Featuring flute, sax, piano, bongo, and the signature sound is made between the interplay between lead lines from Sax or flute enmeshed warmly by fuzz- guitar work with vocals only featured on two tracks.

For those put off by Krautrock absurdities this album shouldn't provide any problems, it does possess some more 'out there' improvisation jams [no more than your average Art rock band], but never wanders off into meaningless noddling. While a fine album, the album doesn?t find that extra edge to captivate me into regular listening.

Finally the album has been re-released via the master tapes, containing extensive linear notes. During the re-release of the album the musicians unearthed three new tracks originally recorded at Hamburg Windrose Dumot Studio, which were recorded a few months after the deadline of the full album. All three songs can be heard of the CD version.

Guess I'm the only one who likes this...

Okay, that's REALLY nice stuff. Love the flute work. The whole thing has a very "Santana-vibe" to it, it has that same groove. The sax player must have spent some time listening to Albert Ayler, that's the kind of vibe I hear.

I'll have to track this one down, thanks for sharing!

Kewl, I knew if you liked it or hated it you'd have some good points either way. I never thought of the "Santana-vibe" being there but now that you mention it I do hear it, it's a "santana-vibe" from the Greg Rolie days me thinks. As far as the sax player/Albert Ayler vibe, I never thought of that either, your points are making me appreciate this album a lot more.

I'm interested in checking out more stuff with this type of vibe, if you find any other hidden treasures let me know.

Detuned wrote:

I'm interested in checking out more stuff with this type of vibe, if you find any other hidden treasures let me know.

I sure will, I have a ton of stuff in that vein. There's a couple of bands I've been wanting to post on but can't find any vids on 'em to post some samples. For now check out my Fuzzy Duck post in the Prog section.

re: the Santana thing. I'm really only a fan of the first couple Santana (band) albums, that groove they had on the self-titled album and Abraxas is legendary looking back on it now. The live material from that era that's come out is also amazing.

Santana's influence was similar in a fashion to the Afro Cuban stuff that Dizzy Gillespie had recorded in the late 40's...that material revolutionized the rhythm section in jazz and allowed people like Art Blakey to dig deep into the African roots of the music, made it more real. You can hear all kinds of bands picking up on that Santana groove during the era.

Of course, the Miles Davis and John Coltrane recordings from the mid to late 60's is the well that Santana was drinking from.

I love it, all this shit is related.

Great points, D. Carlos Santana owes a lot of his success (I'm speaking of his early years, which I prefer) to his influences and his backing band. It seems that as his backing band members changed they got more pop oriented.