{"id":15489,"date":"2018-11-13T05:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T10:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15489"},"modified":"2018-11-09T09:02:11","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T14:02:11","slug":"listen-to-this-the-zuider-zee-story-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/13\/listen-to-this-the-zuider-zee-story-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen to This: The Zuider Zee Story (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

After the Shine\u2019s Gone<\/b>
\nLooking back some forty-plus years, Orange isn\u2019t sure what plans \u2013if any \u2013 CBS\/Columbia had for his group. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018Well, we\u2019re with the largest record company in the business, so that\u2019s got to mean something,\u2019\u201d he says. He does recall playing a gig at Alex Cooley\u2019s Electric Ballroom in Atlanta, opening for Canterbury, England progressive group Caravan. After the show, he met label executive Terry Powell. Powell presented him with a pre-release copy of Wish You Were Here<\/i>, by one of the label\u2019s biggest acts: Pink Floyd. \u201cNow I realize what it meant: \u2018Welcome to the Machine.\u2019 The irony was lost on me at first, but it wasn\u2019t lost on me later on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orange and Bertrand\u2019s protestations aside, the Zuider Zee<\/i> album on Columbia is a strong set of songs. And while the production sheen gives Orange\u2019s songs a softer vibe than they might have otherwise had \u2013 think of Wings at the Speed of Sound<\/i> or Pilot\u2019s 1974 LP From the Album of the Same Name<\/i> \u2013 the album isn\u2019t completely done in by that approach. \u201cThe album got over-compressed; that\u2019s why you have to turn it up louder,\u201d Orange says. \u201cI\u2019ll leave the name alone whose fault it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orange and his band ended up disappointed with their experience with Columbia. \u201cWe expected so much and then we got so little,\u201d he says, noting that after sending the band back to the studio to remix \u201cListen to the Words\u201d for a single release, the label decided against releasing that \u2013 or any other single \u2013 from the Zuider Zee<\/i> LP.<\/p>\n

And the fallout from that decision reverberated in some troubling directions. \u201cCertain criteria had to be met as far as getting airplay,\u201d Orange says. \u201cIf you had a new release, you had to have a single, too.\u201d He recalls the band doing radio interviews, only to be told afterward, \u201cWe won\u2019t be playing this interview until we get the single.\u201d Moreover, when the band visited record shops for in-store appearances, they found themselves in a situation right out of This is Spinal Tap<\/i>. \u201cWe\u2019d be assigned to go to the store to sign records,\u201d he says, still incredulous at the memory, \u201cand they wouldn\u2019t have any!\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re Not Thinking<\/b>
\nOrange reveals that despite the unhappy experience with the ill-fated Zuider Zee<\/i> LP, plans soon got underway for a second album. He recalls the label execs asking him to compile a list of producers with whom he\u2019d like to work; he suggested Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker and American pop wunderkind Todd Rundgren, and waited for a response from CBS.<\/p>\n

The next news Orange received was that the label wanted to meet with the band again. So once again he sat down with Terry Powell, who told him, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to do another album.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then the strangest thing happened,\u201d Orange recalls. Powell took him aside and asked if they could meet again the following morning \u2013 without the rest of the band. At that breakfast meeting, Orange says Powell told him, \u201cThe label really wants to go forward with you, but \u2026 not so much with the rest of the band.\u201d Feeling a strong loyalty to his band mates, Orange turned down the offer.<\/p>\n

Orange delivers a post-script to the tale: \u201cSix months down the line, the band left me,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich is funny now. But not so funny then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Royal Command Performance<\/b>
\nAnother story \u2013 humorous then and now \u2013 concerns a gig that late-period Zuider Zee played not long before the group fell apart. In contrast to its opening slot for Caravan, on this night in January 1978, the band was scheduled to open for a band from England called the Sex Pistols.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were walking around before the soundcheck,\u201d Orange recalls. \u201cThere was this guy with no shirt or shoes on; he had some cuts on him. And he had this low hanging pair of trousers that weren\u2019t so tight on him because he didn\u2019t have any body weight at all.\u201d Making matters worse, this fellow was picking at a huge scab on his arm. Orange thought the guy was \u201ca street urchin. I saw him and I thought, \u2018Oh, God. That poor bastard. He\u2019s in terrible shape.\u201d He recalls thinking, \u201cI hope they don\u2019t call the cops on this guy, because they\u2019ll beat him to the death. They\u2019ll never find his body!\u201d<\/p>\n

When Zuider Zee finished the opening set, they cleared their gear off stage. \u201cWhen it came time for the Sex Pistols to go on, I realized that the \u2018street urchin\u2019 was Sid Vicious!\u201d As far as the Pistols\u2019 performance, Orange \u2013 now an enthusiastic fan of punk acts including Fear, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys and the Clash \u2013 describes it as \u201canticlimactic. The sound was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Better Than All the Others<\/b>
\nFor many years thereafter \u2013 until Gary Simon Bertrand found the tapes that would become Zeenith<\/i>, the story of Zuider Zee was forgotten by most. And the path from discovery of those recordings to their 2018 release was a lengthy one. Bertrand had reconnected with the band\u2019s former manager Russell, who revealed that he had tapes packed away in various storage facilities across the southeastern U.S. After some hunting, Bertrand found himself in possession of a number of two-track master reels. In 2013 he shared his discovery with archivist\/journalist\/musician Alec Palao, who would produce the 2018 release and write its enlightening liner note essay.<\/p>\n

Because the unearthed Zeenith<\/i> masters are two-track, there wasn\u2019t any way to do any sort of revisionist remixing to make the tapes sound \u201ccurrent.\u201d Arguably, that\u2019s to the band\u2019s advantage: the songs on Zeenith<\/i> have a timeless quality just as they are. \u201cAs far as the writing and how the songs are constructed,\u201d says Bertrand, \u201cI don\u2019t see that we would have done anything different, had we had the [multi-track] masters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Breaks <\/b>
\nAlec Palao remarks upon Zuider Zee\u2019s place in pop history. \u201cOne should be careful not to compare them too much to Big Star,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause they were definitely coming from a different kind of place.\u201d But he does recall his thoughts when he first heard Bertrand\u2019s cassette dub: \u201cWow. This really pushes all my buttons. The Beatlesque thing. Sort of glam stuff. I love the idea of a band doing that kind of stuff in 1975 when everything is Marshall Tucker Band boogie.\u201d While he finds the Zuider Zee back story fascinating, he\u2019s unequivocal on one point. \u201cThe music is the thing that counts,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Today Bertrand still lives in Louisiana. While he\u2019s not currently in a band, he still plays his drums at home. And he\u2019s remained good friends with Orange. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re still neighbors,\u201d he says. \u201cEven though it\u2019s long distance, Richard will often play me his new songs over the telephone. And it\u2019s just as exciting to hear his new material today as it was 50 years ago when we first got together.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Zuider Zee, Richard Orange moved back and forth between the U.S. and Great Britain, and went on to form a band called Zee (not<\/i> the duo of the same name featuring Pink Floyd\u2019s Richard Wright). He was eventually signed to a publishing deal by Beatles\u2019 publisher Dick James. Later, Orange spent time working as a house songwriter for a division of Motown. His \u201cAll the Way to China (Hole in My Heart)\u201d was a worldwide hit in 1989 for Cyndi Lauper. Today he lives in Oklahoma. Bringing things back to his Memphis connection, Orange\u2019s most recent solo album, 2005\u2019s Big Orange Sun<\/i> was recorded at Sun Studio.<\/p>\n

Richard Orange remains justly quite proud of his 1970s work with Zuider Zee, yet he\u2019s more than a little surprised at the current interest in his music from those days. \u201cI\u2019ve had to [think] back more than 40 years, for which I\u2019m very grateful,\u201d he says. \u201cBetter late than never, they say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… After the Shine\u2019s Gone Looking back some forty-plus years, Orange isn\u2019t sure what plans \u2013if any \u2013 CBS\/Columbia had for his group. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018Well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,55],"tags":[3598,3597],"class_list":["post-15489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-powerpop","tag-richard-orange","tag-zuider-zee","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-55-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15495,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15489\/revisions\/15495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}