Lost Seventies soul One of my favorite periods in soul music history was the very early Seventies. Think: "Superstition," "Smiling Faces," "Papa Was A Rolling Stone," "Sex Machine," "Slippin' Into Darkness," "Machine Gun," "Freddie's Dead," "Respect Yourself," "Family Affair" (just to name some of the biggest hits). The last was from one of the albums that really set it off, Sly's "There's A Riot Goin' On" (the Rolling Stone review when it came out called it "smack rock"). All of a sudden, street reality was in. Soldiers coming home from 'Nam with habits, women turning tricks to feed the babies, junkies and criminals everywhere scaring everyone to death. Sly dealt with all this allusively, in stoned/free-associative fragments that still left you narcoticized or scared, depending on which side you were on.

A band named Mer-da (aka Black Merda) made an album called Long Burn The Fire sometime in '70-'71. I know almost nothing about them except that they went from home in Mississippi to Chicago to make two albums for Janus Records (a subsidiary of Chess), of which Long Burn... is the second. The album reminds me of a lot of different people: Hendrix (the R&B base, without all the processing and feedback), Curtis Mayfield, Sly. Their singing sounds about halfway between Al Green and Bob Dylan. Their songs make explicit what Sly mumbles about: people who are broke and despairing and in relationships that have exploded. A song called "My Mistake" sounds like a garage band doing its best the Chi-Lites impersonation. The singer sings a sweet tribute-style ballad to the man he killed for messing with his wife, then decides he should have killed the wife instead. As the Gs say, that's keeping it real.

I wish I could point you to Amazon or someplace for this one--but the last reissue from '96 has been out of print for awhile now. I managed to find vinyl and get a CD out of it, so until EMI or whoever owns the Chess catalogue decides to reissue the album I wouldn't feel guilty about burning you a copy. Mark's review: ****