You're back.
Or maybe you never actually left or maybe you've found yourself here for the very first time.
Doesn't matter. You're here now.
For a few years I was Facebook "friends" with the late Ralph Carney who among a lot of things was in the Akron band Tin Huey. One of the cool things I got from this online "friendship" was an exposure to a number of Ohio related things that I wasn't aware of. This was easily the best. An album by a band called 15.60.75 or more affectionately known as the Numbers Band.
I had no idea that this existed and even if you'd told me it did I would probably have dismissed it as something I wouldn't like without even bothering to give it a try. I would have been very very wrong. I fucking love this record and I can't even explain why. Hell, I kind of stumble around trying to explain what they sound like to people. They're kind of like an avant-garde version of a Bar Blues band like they'd spent just as much time listening to Captain Beefheart and Albert Ayler as T-Bone Walker. The songs hit a groove, there's some low key vocals and it just runs on relentlessly. It's a fucking monster Lp and so oddly compelling listening that I'm having a hard time typing because I'm listening to it again in the headphones.
I had no idea that this existed and even if you'd told me it did I would probably have dismissed it as something I wouldn't like without even bothering to give it a try. I would have been very very wrong. I fucking love this record and I can't even explain why. Hell, I kind of stumble around trying to explain what they sound like to people. They're kind of like an avant-garde version of a Bar Blues band like they'd spent just as much time listening to Captain Beefheart and Albert Ayler as T-Bone Walker. The songs hit a groove, there's some low key vocals and it just runs on relentlessly. It's a fucking monster Lp and so oddly compelling listening that I'm having a hard time typing because I'm listening to it again in the headphones.
Here's a video clip of them playing the title track live in 1976. (And that's Chrissy Hynde's brother Terry on the saxophone. I like his band better than hers.)
There's a great and informative post on this blog about the trials and tribulations that went into actually making the record. the tl:dr is that it took three tries 1) show cancelled 2) the recording engineer fucked it up (the bonus track "Drive" is from this tape) and finally 3) they recorded live in front of an initially indifferent crown opening for Bob Marley. Bob Marley. 1975. In a club in the middle of Ohio long before generations of pot smoking frat boys and Trustifarians ruined his music for fucking everyone.
So there it was. The album existed and came and went and was all but forgotten until 2013 when Exit Stencil put out a "deluxe" reissue with three bonus tracks as a double lp experience that took me a little while to track down a copy before I knew about Discogs and with a few record store people looking at me blankly.
So there it was. The album existed and came and went and was all but forgotten until 2013 when Exit Stencil put out a "deluxe" reissue with three bonus tracks as a double lp experience that took me a little while to track down a copy before I knew about Discogs and with a few record store people looking at me blankly.
So I present it here. Your mileage is certainly going to vary. But I really dig the fuck out of this one.
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