I’m in this book! – The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know. Sal Maida, Mitchell Cohen

I’m in this book! – The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know. Sal Maida, Mitchell Cohen

by | May 12, 2022 | On My Mind |

Heylo Bassers, I’m very excited and proud to have been asked by Sal Maida, to write an essay for The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know by Sal Maida, Mitchell Cohen & Friends. I chose my essay on the band, Free, and their self-titled album, Free. I would encourage you to buy the book because so many of the essays are really fun, interesting, and are a deep depth of knowledge. It’s truly an oral history by some really great and interesting writers. The foreword is by David Fricke. https://hozacrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/the-white-label-promo-preservation-society-book Here’s my essay, for your pleasure: “You feel the beat a lot like Andy Fraser”, she said.  Who’s Andy Fraser, I thought? I went home and looked him up and realized he was the bass player on Free’s “All Right Now.” The following week I went to Los Angeles to attend Bass Player Live and visited Amoeba Music on Sunset Boulevard for the first time. I bought “Tons of Sobs”, “Free”, and “Fire and Water” and when I returned to NYC, I listened and listened and listened to those albums. This was 2012-2013. What I lack in historical knowledge, I surely make up for in curiosity. When I put on “Free” the bass line to “I’ll be Creepin’” shook my memory bank.  I said to myself with a tint of shame, “I know this.”  The bass is forthright, defined and explicitly sets the tone for the whole album. Andy Fraser was a teenager when he played in Free. He didn’t have to prove his worth in the band, or his talents. He let...