BLIND FAITH
Blind Faith were an English blues rock band, composed of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech. The band, which was one of the first “super-groups”, released their only album, Blind Faith, in August 1969. They were stylistically similar to the bands in which Winwood, Baker, and Clapton had most recently participated, Traffic and Cream. They helped to pioneer the genre of blues/rock fusion. (More from Wikipedia)
Chris Spedding has played with a lot of the English heavy hitters, including early work with a band called Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments. They played at a famous Hyde Park concert in July 1969 that also included the Rolling Stones, Blind Faith and, at the very beginning of their career, King Crimson. When Pete Brown was later pushed out by basically everyone else in the band, Spedding became the front man in the Battered Ornaments; and his fame began to grow.
(November 2011)
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Meanwhile, Buddy Holly was at the height of his powers as a musician, though record sales began to slip as a result: Holly’s final 45 during his lifetime, “Heartbeat” b/w “Well . . . All Right” peaked at #82 on the Billboard singles charts. Of the “B” side, Bruce Eder notes: “[Buddy Holly] might even have advanced farther than a big chunk of the group’s audience was prepared to accept in late 1958. ‘Well . . . All Right’, for example, was years ahead of its time as a song and a recording.” “Well All Right” is one of the tracks on the excellent Blind Faith album that was released in 1969.
(June 2013/1)
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I have never seen any of these local CD’s anywhere except at the place where I bought them. But lesser known and unknown albums accumulate with the hit albums, and record stores offering both new and used albums try to sell them also.
I guess I first learned of this when I would go into a record store and start flipping through the stacks. Many stores have separate sections set up for major artists like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Pat Benatar, the Band, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, the B-52’s, etc. Then at the end would be a section simply marked “B”; here would be found albums by other artists whose names start with B. Some would be well known – a stray Boston or Blind Faith or Jack Bruce album might be found there, say – but most were utterly unknown to me. I would kind of flip through them, but I rarely bought anything.
Now when I go into a record store that has major artists in their own marked sections, I usually pass those by and go straight to the plain “B”!
(December 2015)
