I’ll be digging deep into my vinyl album collection for this funky selection.
I knew that I was in a very different world last New Year’s Eve when I was in northern California, hanging out with a bunch of musicians at a birthday party where a lot of jamming was going on, and some people were talking about who wanted to be there and couldn’t, talking about their friends.
Cover of Back to Oakland
“Oh, he’s got something goin’ on with Tower of Power, they had a gig tonight.”
Stuff like that.
It was all said in such a low-key, no-big-deal way. Musicians in the Bay Area seem like one big family. It’s like they run into each other all the time, they hook up somewhere, everyone checks out each other’s shows, etc. But it was the names that I was hearing from that time that I was hanging out, celebrating a birthday, that made my jaw hit the floor, made me stammer a bit.
“You … know someone … from … Tower of Power?”
I mean, I’m just a country boy from Idaho. How many big names did I know? I was just there to be amazed.
I may be from Idaho, but I did know about Tower of Power, one of the funkier bands you’d ever want to hear from the Bay Area. In fact, somewhere — dating back from long ago — I still have a perfect audiophile vinyl recording of “Back To Oakland.”
I do love that “Oakland Stroke.”
Related articles
- Tower of Power’s sound stands alone (hamptonroads.com)
- My music playlist for today (April 20, 2012 edition) (viewfrommiddleclass.wordpress.com)
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