Spaceark - Don't Stop (vocal & instrumental). 1976 USA-Los Angeles

From Los Angeles, Spaceark is a super example of funk and early disco with fine horns, sax, and organ. Strong jazz undertone. It's the same track on each side, with one featuring female vocals that makes the song that much better. This has some of the smoothest grooves you can hear. Excellent. This is the original black label. There's another pressing of these two tracks, on the same imprint, with a blue label under the name of Dolly Way & Space Ship Earth.

Own. Found at a local estate sale (2024).

8/4/24

Fried Chicken – Funky D.J. / Juke Box. 1976 USA-Louisiana

From Baton Rouge. A) is slow groove funk at its most pure and simple. Nice clavinet with declarative harmony vocals. B) adds horns while maintaining the funk. You can guess how this sounds without hearing a note.

4/3/24

Iron Tongue - (Ride on Down to the) San Antonio Line / It Could Have Been a Real Love. 1976 USA-Chicago

Cool name for a band. Looks like a modern heavy group from Arkansas nabbed it as well. Guessing these guys are from the Chicago area because of the label base. Guitar tone is almost psych, but ultimately this is bar room dancin' hard rock n' roll music. Fist pump your Old Style bottle while trying to two step at the same time. B side is remarkably similar, though bordering novelty territory.

2.5 / 2.5

3/31/24

Grupo Miel - Get Down Tonight / Sombras de Colores. 1976 Chile

The first track is a cover of KC & The Sunshine Band. That's... interesting. Some cool Moog work though. The B side is intriguing. Starts off as a ballad and then goes into a prog direction with some fine guitar. Then back to more poppy material. Amazing a band like this could exist in Chile during Pinochet's reign. They don't appear to be political, so that probably helped. They were post Sacros.

3.0 / 3.5

12/30/23

Heavy Blow - All Across the Nation / What You Got You Got. 1976 USA

Yet another complete unknown, this one clearly is influenced by Funkadelic and Parliament. A) starts with some humorous bits, then launches into a killer wah wah guitar and Hammond organ rhythm, with active percussion. And then it closes with a (way too short) monster fuzz guitar solo. B) picks up the pace with some thumpin' bass and similar lyrical themes, and some great organ. When word gets out about this, look out baby.

Ownership: SP: 1976 Fast Buck. Found this at a local b&m (2020) for a whopping 80 cents.

Without a doubt my best new discovery coming from a real record store - in decades. The multiplier on this one is likely to be enormous. But I'm not selling... Not sure where this is from, though the outer sleeve has handwritten "S.F. 1976" (I see it on one of the labels too). I'll presume that to be initials verse San Francisco, but you never know. Since I bought it here, it may also be from Denver. It sounds like it's from the upper Midwest though.

9/25/20 (first listen); 5/16/21 (review / new entry)