Moloch

About

Guitarist Lee Baker (the late great) is a legend among musicians with any knowledge of Memphis' rich and varied history. Those lucky enough to play with him will attest to that fact. Rocker, Delta bluesmen, country picker, and other knowledgeable players passing through sought him out. Produced and mostly written by Don Nix, Moloch is Baker's first major presence on vinyl. It's an amalgamation of rock, hard blue, psychedelia, and white boy soul -- the Jimi Hendrix Experience meets the Box Tops with a bit of Furry Lewis influence thrown in for good measure. The record is a snapshot of some of the wildly eclectic stuff coming out of Stax, Ardent, Sam Phillips', and American studios in Memphis in the late sixties and early seventie. Although the album is now known for being the first time the song "Goin' Down" appeared (also famously covered in Memphis by Jeff Beck), there were two major hinderences that prevented it from gaining any real popularity: first and foremost the album was released on a Stax subsidiary which made distribution a disaster. Secondly, Rolling Stone magazine slammed it. As luck would have it, the review, appearing alongside a favorable Grand Funk review, was reprinted on a poster in Grand Funk's Live Album! Grand Funk were not exactly critic's darlings either-- but at least they had Terry Knight running their show brilliantly in those first crucial year, while Moloch was basically an oddity on a subsidiary of a soul label, Stax. As to the negative reviewer below who disses the Moloch album referencing the aforementioned review, I can only say this: Rolling Stone is your Bible? They have been notoriously wrong about many bands and albums over the years; giving, for example, Led Zeppelin's early albums reviews that were so negative that the reviews themselves have become legendary! Zeppelin, fortunately, had a mastermind, Peter Grant, in their corner who knew how to get around the industry better than anyone before or since. There is a goldmine of music from that period of Memphis' musical history that is highly collectable on vinyl and only occasionally available on CD. .

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

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