![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/hackamore_brick.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I don’t deliberately set out to be a contrarian, but it often works out that way. One good example: like most rock critics, I count myself among the fans of The Velvet Underground<\/strong>. But here’s where I go all oppositional: I think their finest work is Loaded<\/em>. Though I value and enjoy John Cale<\/strong>‘s contributions to the band, the post-Cale pop-oriented Loaded<\/em> is, for me, the band’s most consistent musical statement. It’s also the only VU album I can actually listen to all the way through.<\/p>\n So with that milepost established, perhaps it’s little surprise that I found the Real Gone Music reissue of an obscure album by a little-known band a real delight. With a title like One Kiss Leads to Another<\/em>, one might expect some sort of pop piffle confection, or a lightweight romantic musical outing, but in fact this little-known 1970 album from Hackamore Brick<\/strong> is nothing of the sort. The fact that it was originally issued on Kama Sutra \u2013 a label known primarily for bubblegum, a label more closely associated with The Jaggerz<\/strong> (The Rapper\u201d) and Sopwith Camel<\/strong> (\u201cHello Hello\u201d) than anything leaning much in a rock direction \u2013 might render it even more suspect.<\/p>\n But if one looks and listens beyond that, what one finds is an album that sounds like, well, Loaded<\/em>.<\/p>\n Hackamore Brick only cut this one LP, and they’re so obscure that Wikipedia doesn’t even have an entry on them. But as one-offs go, One Kiss Leads to Another<\/em> is surprisingly strong. The title of \u201cOh! Those Sweet Bananas\u201d even sounds like a takeoff on a Loaded<\/em> tune (\u201cOh! Sweet Nuthin’\u201d), and the track sounds a bit like \u201c\u201dRock & Roll.\u201d And \u201cI Watched You Rhumba\u201d sounds like a doppelganger for \u201c\u201dHead Held High” or \u201cCool it Down.\u201d (You can play this little game with most all of the album’s ten tracks; less so with the bonus cut, an inventive rethink of the Leiber-Stoller classic \u201cSearchin”.)<\/p>\n Curiously, Tommy Rettman<\/strong>‘s liner notes make no mention of any sort of VU connection (Loaded<\/em> was cut in New York City’s Atlantic Recording Studios in summer 1970; little info about One Kiss<\/em> exists, but we do know that it was cut at NYC’s Bell Sound, and released at the end of 1970. So one has to wonder, no?)<\/p>\n Richard Robinson<\/strong>‘s production is very dry, very demo-y, and that aesthetic fits the songs well. Tommy Moonlight<\/strong>‘s \u201cRadio\u201d sports some just-loose-enough vocal harmonies, but on most of the track, the lead singer does a tuneful take on Lou Reed<\/strong>‘s approach. Prominent use of keyboards (electric piano and combo organ \u2013 the latter, probably a Farfisa) is the most defining characteristic of the band’s musical approach (and the primary way in which they sound different from the Velvet Underground). The lengthy keys-centric interlude on \u201cAnd I Wonder\u201d is the instrumental highlight of the album, and totally unexpected in light of what has come before it.<\/p>\n Rettman’s liner notes put some needed meat onto the skeletal info about the band; suffice to say that they followed a familiar story arc: the got together, got better, got signed, cut an album, got pushed around by the label, broke up, and faded away. All in the space of a relatively brief period of time. But the half hour or so worth of music they left behind deserves a wider hearing. To that end, the original band’s two mainstays (Moonlight and Chick Newman<\/strong>) reformed in 2009 to perform some of the material live. Rettman suggests that Hackamore Brick deserve to be spoken of in the same sentence as Blue Ash<\/strong><\/a>; that might be overstating it a bit, but then again, perhaps not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t deliberately set out to be a contrarian, but it often works out that way. One good example: like most rock critics, I count myself among the fans of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,62,64,65],"tags":[960,1796],"class_list":["post-4360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-hackamore-brick","tag-real-gone-music","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360","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=4360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31970,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions\/31970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}