ELECTROMAGNETS - (S/T) - ERIC JOHNSON - SIGNED - LP 1975 - 1ST PRESSING

$

35

ELECTROMAGNETS  (w/ ERIC JOHNSON)

“ELECTROMAGNETS”

EGM      SD-1001

1975

EX / EX

FIRST PRESSING

AUTOGRAPHED (ERIC JOHNSON)

BEST COPY ON EBAY AS OF 4-28-2017.  One other UNSIGNED copy is sitting at $87, incl. post. The dealer describes the disc condition as: “with a lot of scratches” and the cover as “acceptable”.

VERY hard to find mid-1970s progressive / jazz rock LP featuring Austin, Texas guitarist extraordinaire Eric Johnson.  I bought this LP in Austin at Inner Sanctum in 1975 and got it autographed by Eric at The Guitar Center in the late 1980s in Denver, Colorado which was across the street from The Rainbow Music Hall where his gig was scheduled that evening.

Distributed on the tiny private EGM label (Austin), it had a small pressing and disappeared.  Local musicians snapped them up plus local fans and that was it. The only copy on eBay right now is ‘beat up’ according to the honest seller and still is sitting at $87.  Plus this one is signed.  BTW, Eric was a great guy that afternoon.  Not only did he sign the LP, but we sat around and shot the bull about Austin in the 70s, and he gave me tickets to the show and got me backstage (my girlfriend was pleased).  Note:  Chris Geppert sings on the LP.  Chris would become Christopher Cross in the late 70's and have a phenomenal run of radio hits including "Ride Like The Wind",  "Sailing", "Say You'll Be Mine", "Alright", "Think of Laura" and "Arthur's Theme".  He won 7 Grammys and an Oscar and was a close friend of the Electromagnets back in the day.

Stored vertically in a smoke free environment for 47 years.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Electromagnets.  Kind of long but I just cut & passed it.  Good read, though.  “Electromagnets was a Fusion band which was founded in 1973 and only recorded one album in 1974. Their music is very sophisticated and successfully fuses advanced Jazz concepts with raw rock music. The band was founded by Steve Barber and Bill Maddox under the name Aussenhorowitz. For the recording of their self-titled album they were joined by Kyle Brock and Eric Johnson. The album was well received among critics and Jazz-Rock fans, but unfortunately the band broke up shortly after the album was recorded.

The Electromagnets, winners of the jazz division of the Sun's band poll, have been blessed from the start with an audience which, if not enormous, has always been fervent. In the summer of 1973, when they made their debut at the Nickel Keg, an out of the way club in San Marcos.”

Excerpt from 1975 Austin music news:  “The Electromagnets at the 'Dillo!Times have changed. With no loss of enthusiasm, their audiences have multiplied so that the band can count on a couple of hundred listeners at any of their increasingly rare Austin performances. Not bad for a non-boogie, non-glitter, non-progressive country quartet of serious musicians.

Now at last a record has appeared. With it, critical pats on the back have begun to trickle in and summer finds them in the process of trying to break from the regional to the national scene, from around the country, and the 'Magnets are thinking of bigger and better things. This an especially tricky feat, since their appeal is to the listener with intellectual quality seldom associated mass audiences.

The Electromagnets music is difficult to describe, but "jazz-rock" is as close as anything else around. Influenced especially by Weather Report and Chick Corea's Return to Forever, the 'Magnets differ from many another group playing jazzy rock by their deep familiarity with jazz structures and their ability to fuse these patterns with, not simply pile them upon, rock rhythms.

At present, Electromagnets is a four man band with Bill Maddox on drums, Kyle Brock on bass, Steve Barber on keyboards, and Eric Johnson on guitar. Their story is a central chapter in the history of jazz in Austin.

The nucleus was a thing called Aussenhorowitz, which consisted solely of Bill Maddox and Steve Barber sounding like twice as many people as they combined drums, keyboards, and a shared bass line to mix jazz-like harmonies with your basic boogie. Aussenhorowitz however, met with zero commercial success and quickly perished.

Maddox and Barber then picked up bassist Brock and reedman Tomas Ramirez and formed a group called the Edsels. Ramirez of course went on to work with the Lost Gonzo Band and the Jazzmanian Devils, but he was one of the first and most important shapers of the jazz element in the Electromagnets.

More jazzmen came and went. The Edsels expanded into an 11 piece band including Larry Crook and Nick Phelps (both now with Nova) and John Treanor (currently with 47 X It’s Own Weight) and changed their name to the Lurching-Id Bop Orchestra. Influenced by a range of musicians from Albert Ayler to Tower of Power, their ascent was incandescent but regrettably brief. The Austin area was not ready for the Lurching-Id Bop Orchestra.

But the LIBO was an interesting and zany focus for the embryonic Austin jazz scene of that time, and out of it came the original Electromagnets in the summer of 73. This band consisted of the original band minus Eric Johnson plus assorted floating percussionists and horn men and was crazy. At the Nickel Keg the band gleefully enjoyed concocting sight gags, ritually sacrificing hamburgers and performing similar spontaneities specifically designed to alienate proponents of boogie music. In between tricks they also played some good stuff. As a San Marcos newspaper, coincidentally named Weather Report, said, "These guys are incredible. Sure it’s hard to boogie to an intricate 35/4 rhythm, but then, this is music…The next morning, I woke up and all my warts were gone."

In January 1974, the Magnets dropped the horn section and added Eric Johnson and their music began growing into its present somewhat more commercially viable form. Although trained in classical music, Johnson was very much influenced by Jimi Hendrix and other hard rockers like Led Zepplin. He came to the Magnets from Mariani, a rock band on home the bills with ZZ Top and Bloodrock. Johnson is a brilliant guitarist by any standards more accessible to an audience of whom a large part has never heard of John Coltrane or Eric Dolphy. In Johnson's solos you can hear Allman and Clapton –bright stars in his galaxy and his ability to blend rock riffs into jazz arrangements has made the 'Magnets material of models–but if you listen more closely you can sense Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian coming up over the horizon.

An outstanding trait of the Electromagnets is their ability to listen to one another and therefore to function as a unit rather than a rhythm section supporting a couple of flashy soloists. True, Barber and Johnson often exchange leads in intricate and soaring dialogues that leave the listeners spinning, but their ears remain wired to percussion and bass. A nod from Maddox and the music turns on a dime, the time shifts, Brock bass launches into a run and Johnson and Barber are there riffing behind him. ESP, some call it, but the 'Magnets call it the New Electric Musik.

Their new album is called Electromagnets. Recorded at Odyssey Sound in Austin, originally as a demo tape, it was re-mastered at A&R Records in Dallas. To produce the record the 'Magnets formed their own record company, but it will be distributed by Jem Records, Inc.

Mostly pleased with their new effort, the band is hoping that the album will gain them a larger audience and more regular meals. For the 'Magnets are faced with a problem common to avant-garde jazz groups in a schlock-rock culture: how to maintain integrity and at the same time survive. Recently, for example, they were fired from a Houston club because their music "didn't sell enough whiskey." The answer, as they see it, is to educate their audiences–not to drink whiskey, but to appreciate advanced music. So, with over seven hours of material to draw on, they tailor their music to the audience, beginning with a pronounced rock orientation and gradually moving into more subtle rhythms and harmonic complexities.

The crusade appears successful, since not only 'Magnets audiences but the local jazz scene has grown remarkably in the last three years. Commenting on KLRN'-TV's Austin City Limits program, Electromagnets manager Park Street noted "Jazz in Austin is expanding, while progressive country has leveled out”.

Like the 'Magnets live work, most of the material on the album is instrumental. A couple of tracks contain vocal work by Steve Barber and Chris Geppert, but it is mere flavoring. The record's material is obviously the result of a joint effort, and credits are divided fairly evenly among the band, still, the guiding hand of Barber appears most distinctively. This is only natural, since the keyboard man has years of training in composition at Southwest Texas, where he studied harmonics theory and became extremely interested in twentieth century 'serious' music, especially Stockhausen's.

Thus the jazz of the 'Magnets is less blues and funk oriented and more cerebral than is usual. It is also admirably suited to electronic instruments, as Barber's work on electric piano, organ, and Mini Moog synthesizer testifies.

Electromagnets offers a pleasing variety of tunes ranging over the large part of the spectrum from rock to jazz. Tomas Ramirez and John Treanor join the band to good effect on "Minus Mufflers," inspiring hope that the 'Magnets might once more step out into the flora and fauna of horns and reeds."