Steve Drake Band "Stark"1976 US Prog Rock
- 11 years ago
From album Steve Drake Band "Nature Intended" 1976 US..
'Slark' - The song title was 'Slark' written by the British band Stackridge. I've always wondered why Stackridge didn't achieve bigger successes in the States. Admittedly this wasn't there finest moment, but the instrumental segment sounded pretty good with the volume cranked up..
You have to look to Palmer Rockey or Alexander Spence to find an LP with an artifact buzz to challenge this unbelievable item. A young New Yorker, a pathological liar and con artist, creates a fictious rock star career by stealing other people's music, and then unexpectedly meets his match in the most dishonest, crooked record label of all time! In terms of artist and label combinations, nothing can match the meeting between 'Steve Drake' and Tiger Lily. I have written about the whole bizarre story in Ugly Things magazine; suffice it to say that this karaoke rock extravaganza proves that in the rock music business, things were as weird and 'anything goes' in the mid-1970s as they were in the mid-50s. The two Steve Drake LPs floated around on rare dealer lists for a good dozen years, usually commanding high prices since they are pretty rare, before the actual story behind them (and the even rarer Steve Kaczorowski LP) was broken by myself in 2006, with some input from Rockadelic Rich and a couple of Drake's old band buddies from Long Island. Nature Intended is ridiculously schizophrenic, ranging from ballsy guitar-rock to orchestrated soft-prog, and despite the 'Steve Drake' credit, some tracks feature female lead vocals -- incidentally, Jennie Haan from UK band Babe Ruth, who unknowingly supplied music for Drake's karaoke scheme, alongside Stackridge, Be-Bop Deluxe, and others. This is a priceless item to pull out when music-interested friends are over for a stoned or drunk evening, where the parallel train derailments of Drake and Tiger Lily can fuel philosophical debates into the wee hours..
Further British 70s rock scene and shady record label connections can be found on the first album by NO DICE, though the story gets a little hazy here. Released on Western Hemisphere, a presumed tax-scam front with Roulette distribution (just like Tiger Lily), this obscure 1976 LP credits one Steve Drake for all songwriting, listing his C.A.B publishing company and better yet, shows him as the “producer”. No Dice were a real, existing British band who would release two more albums with a less dubious look than this “Cool Me Down” debut. Although stylistically in the Kacz school, there is no musical overlap with the “Steve Drake Band” albums, and it’s possible that the Roulette wiseguys simply threw Steve’s name onto the sleeve credits as a joke, or to confuse the paper trail, knowing that if some IRS agent managed to track Drake/Kacz down, whatever he told them would have little connection to reality.
'Slark' - The song title was 'Slark' written by the British band Stackridge. I've always wondered why Stackridge didn't achieve bigger successes in the States. Admittedly this wasn't there finest moment, but the instrumental segment sounded pretty good with the volume cranked up..
You have to look to Palmer Rockey or Alexander Spence to find an LP with an artifact buzz to challenge this unbelievable item. A young New Yorker, a pathological liar and con artist, creates a fictious rock star career by stealing other people's music, and then unexpectedly meets his match in the most dishonest, crooked record label of all time! In terms of artist and label combinations, nothing can match the meeting between 'Steve Drake' and Tiger Lily. I have written about the whole bizarre story in Ugly Things magazine; suffice it to say that this karaoke rock extravaganza proves that in the rock music business, things were as weird and 'anything goes' in the mid-1970s as they were in the mid-50s. The two Steve Drake LPs floated around on rare dealer lists for a good dozen years, usually commanding high prices since they are pretty rare, before the actual story behind them (and the even rarer Steve Kaczorowski LP) was broken by myself in 2006, with some input from Rockadelic Rich and a couple of Drake's old band buddies from Long Island. Nature Intended is ridiculously schizophrenic, ranging from ballsy guitar-rock to orchestrated soft-prog, and despite the 'Steve Drake' credit, some tracks feature female lead vocals -- incidentally, Jennie Haan from UK band Babe Ruth, who unknowingly supplied music for Drake's karaoke scheme, alongside Stackridge, Be-Bop Deluxe, and others. This is a priceless item to pull out when music-interested friends are over for a stoned or drunk evening, where the parallel train derailments of Drake and Tiger Lily can fuel philosophical debates into the wee hours..
Further British 70s rock scene and shady record label connections can be found on the first album by NO DICE, though the story gets a little hazy here. Released on Western Hemisphere, a presumed tax-scam front with Roulette distribution (just like Tiger Lily), this obscure 1976 LP credits one Steve Drake for all songwriting, listing his C.A.B publishing company and better yet, shows him as the “producer”. No Dice were a real, existing British band who would release two more albums with a less dubious look than this “Cool Me Down” debut. Although stylistically in the Kacz school, there is no musical overlap with the “Steve Drake Band” albums, and it’s possible that the Roulette wiseguys simply threw Steve’s name onto the sleeve credits as a joke, or to confuse the paper trail, knowing that if some IRS agent managed to track Drake/Kacz down, whatever he told them would have little connection to reality.