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Tower of Power celebrates a half century of funk & soul with new live CD+DVD recorded in Oakland<\/i><\/p>\n
When Emilio \u201cMimi\u201d Castillo launched Tower of Power with fellow sax player Stephen \u201cDoc\u201d Kupka, he never imagined that the Oakland-born soul-funk-r&b group would still be going strong 50 years later. And while members of the lively outfit have come and gone \u2013 more than 60 musicians have passed through its ranks \u2013 Tower of Power celebrated its 50th<\/sup> anniversary in June 2018 with a pair of shows at Oakland\u2019s Fox Theater. And those performances \u2013 featuring the current band plus a breathtaking string section and a bevy of returning T.O.P. alumni \u2013 are documented on a new release. 50 Years of Funk & Soul<\/i> was released March 26 in multiple formats including vinyl, CD and DVD.<\/p>\n Founding members Castillo and Kupka are at the core of the nine-man lineup, along with drummer Dave Garibaldi, who first joined Tower of Power in July 1970. In the group\u2019s early years \u2013 documented on albums like their 1970 debut East Bay Grease<\/i>, 1972\u2019 Bump City<\/i> and their eventual Gold-selling self-titled LP from 1973 \u2013 some people didn\u2019t know quite what to make of the band.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they’ve always<\/i> had a hard time figuring us out,\u201d laughs Castillo. \u201cEven when horn bands became popular, we had a different sound and a different approach to songwriting. It was hard to put us in a box, and that was a challenge for the industry.\u201d Tower of Power stood apart from the San Francisco psychedelic sound exemplified by the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. \u201cIt took a while for people to figure it out,\u201d agrees Garibaldi. But in the Bay Area, it didn\u2019t take long at all, because it was a hotbed of all the music that was happening.<\/p>\n Castillo gives much credit to Bill Graham for helping to expose the horn-centric band to a wider audience. \u201cIt all happened because of Bill Graham,\u201d he insists. \u201cIf he hadn’t signed us, I doubt whether we’d even be talking right now. I\u2019m serious.\u201d He recalls Tower of Power\u2019s audition for Graham at the storied Fillmore West. \u201cRight after the gig, I told the other guys, \u2018I’m flying back to Detroit to go spend the holidays with my family. If nothing happens with this, I’m not coming back.\u2019\u201d He emphasizes that he fully expected not to return.<\/p>\n \u201cThree days later,\u201d Castillo says with a smile, \u201cDoc called. He said, \u2018You gotta come back!\u2019\u201d Graham wanted to sign Tower of Power to his newly-launched Fillmore Records. Thanks to a distribution deal with industry giant Atlantic Records, East Bay Grease<\/i> made it to the ears of a nationwide listener base.<\/p>\n But Tower of Power was different from the prevailing styles. And that meant that when they embarked upon their first national tour \u2013 with fellow hometown heroes Creedence Clearwater Revival \u2013 it was an uphill battle in some markets.<\/p>\n Garibaldi laughs as he tells the story of a gig in Louisiana. \u201cIt was 1971, something like that,\u201d he says. As the opening act, Tower of Power was playing the Shreveport Coliseum. The house lights were still on as concertgoers filled the venue. \u201cPeople were throwing stuff at us,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were throwing Coke cans \u2013 full<\/i> ones, actually \u2013 at the band while we were playing! So, that should tell you right there what kind of acceptance we were getting. It wasn’t that way everywhere, but that particular instance was pretty dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n Things got better quickly. Between 1972 and 1979, Tower of Power landed three of its singles \u2013 \u201cYou\u2019re Still a Young Man,\u201d \u201cSo Very Hard to Go\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Change Horses (In the Middle of a Stream)\u201d \u2013 on the Top 40 pop charts. The band scored twice as many Top 40 singles on the R&B chart of that era, with seven other singles making it into the lower reaches of that chart. And though it took several years to be certified, 1973\u2019s Tower of Power<\/i> \u2013 featuring the crowd favorite \u201cWhat is Hip?\u201d earned a Gold Award (500,000 units sold in the United States). \u201cWe didn\u2019t get that until many, many years later,\u201d Castillo says. He believes that 1974\u2019s Back to Oakland<\/i> sold at least as well, but it hasn\u2019t been certified.<\/p>\n To date, the group has released 20 studio albums of new material, and 50 Years of Funk & Soul<\/i> is their seventh live album. Throughout the 1970s and beyond, the best way to experience Tower of Power has always been to see and hear them live onstage. But the costs associated with touring a large band and crew meant that the band didn\u2019t find financial success on the level of many other popular touring acts. Garibaldi characterizes Tower of Power this way: \u201cGreat live band, cool songs, and all that stuff, but not a commercial enterprise by any means, because we always did things kind of the way we wanted to do it. Our focus was just on making our music.\u201d<\/p>\n And that focus is at the core of the new 50 Years of Funk & Soul<\/i> set. Augmented by strings and joined by former members Chester Thompson, Lenny Pickett, Bruce Conte and Ray Greene, Tower of Power tears through 22 songs, selected from across their deep catalog.<\/p>\n Asked to pinpoint his band\u2019s most notable defining characteristic, Castillo offers a perhaps unexpected answer. Allowing that the five-piece horn section would seem to be the band\u2019s special ingredient, he instead says that it\u2019s Tower of Power\u2019s rhythm section that sets the group apart. \u201cWe approach rhythm differently,\u201d he says. \u201cSyncopating the rhythm affects what we do with the horns, what we do with the background vocals, and even how the lead singer sings. That’s what separates us from the other bands, and that’s why it was so hard for people to put us in a box, because we didn’t have that old \u2018woodchopper\u2019 drummer.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, only a few of Tower of Power\u2019s musicians still live in Oakland. But Castillo believes the city\u2019s character is still present in the band\u2019s music. \u201cThe soul that came out of Memphis and Muscle Shoals had that sort of Southern, country feel,\u201d he says. Oakland soul is more urban. It’s blue collar, and it’s down to Earth.\u201d And that describes Tower of Power as well as anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tower of Power celebrates a half century of funk & soul with new live CD+DVD recorded in Oakland When Emilio \u201cMimi\u201d Castillo launched Tower of Power with fellow sax player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,41,49,69],"tags":[2255],"class_list":["post-20844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funk","category-interview","category-new-release","category-soul","tag-tower-of-power","cat-31-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20846,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20844\/revisions\/20846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}