Filed under: Eccentric Soul Revue, Syl Johnson | Tags: 9:30 Club, Guns n' Roses, Megadeth, Syl Johnson, Use Your Illusion I & II
Easily one of the highlights of the tour was seeing Syl sport a Megadeth Countdown To Extincition t-shirt on stage under his jacket in Chicago and DC. We picked up a copy of Guns n’ Roses Use Your Illusion II in Columbus for the long car ride to the 9:30 Club and midway through the highly pompous album – check “Get In The Ring” to refresh your memory – we realized that Syl has this heavy Axl Rose inflection in his voice these days. This led us to the idea of a Syl Johnson cover album called, Blues Your Illusion I & II. Try singing this like Syl, “Ohhhh you could be miiiinnnne. But your waaaaay out of liiiinnnnne.” I think we are on to something….
Filed under: Eccentric Soul Revue, Syl Johnson | Tags: Eccentric Soul Revue, Syl Johnson
The week seemed like a year. Look at our inboxes for proof that the world is constantly moving, even as we were trapped in a van for 10 hours a day debating who was worse: Spin Doctors or Hootie (fight it out amongst yourselves in the comments section). The idea of typing up a tour diary seems impossible right now, what with boxes of merchandise to unpack, accounts to settle, and the daily grind of running a record label (we only tour in a spare time), but hopefully we’ll be able to put some of the madness down before it’s replaced by new headaches.
A few people must be thanked, people who likely will never read this, but thanked they will be regardless of RSS feed. Bill Sullivan, for keeping this entire thing from going off the rails (even if it did go off the rails in Brooklyn). Erik Selz, for convincing promoters to give us an absurd amount of money for a totally unproven side show attraction. Dana Meyerson at Biz 3, for making sure we were in front of everyone who reads a paper, magazine, or church bulletin. Scott Adamson, for keeping it together in the midst of a terrible tragedy. John Allen for the hospitality in Brooklyn, Damon Carfagna for the same in Columbus. The cities of New York and Brooklyn for not ripping our van off while it was filled with $25K worth of merchandise. Charlie Shipley, for the programs, even if we didn’t need all 4700.
To everyone who came out, we hope you had a wonderful time. And to those who stayed home… well… you done fucked up.
Now, to the point of this post. When Tim Sutton at Getty Images wrote and said he wanted to shoot the Brooklyn show, we expected that he would get a handful of shots from the crowd and be done with it. When he arrived on Friday night and went straight back stage, we knew it was going to be much deeper. This is just the tip:
You can listen to Michael and Syl on WFMU via Trouble’s show this morning. We apologize for the bad cable that caused some audio problems during the set and get ready to hear Syl break it all down for you. You can stream it here.
On Friday, the inimitable Syl Johnson came to our office for what must have been the 73rd time. Over the last four years, we’ve spent a lot of time getting to know him, beginning with our initial phone call in which he immediately assumed we were trying to rip him off. Not a great way to start off, but you can’t blame a guy who’s been hoodwinked so many times by this ugly business of music.
When we began our initial sketches of how we would reissue the Twinight catalog, we envisioned having their hit maker having a prominent roll in the track list of an expansive box set. What we didn’t know about was the long trail of litigation he was walking to get the rights to his masters back. Deciding not to stir the hornets nest, we paired our initial compilation back, refitting it around the “Lunar Rotation” concept and leaving the Syl battle to be fought another day.
Late in 2007, Syl began wrapping up his suits, winning the rights to his masters and publishing back. We started toying with the possibility of doing something larger than merely reissuing his Twinight recordings, but unable to get his name in ink on anything beyond an agreement to perform at the Eccentric Soul Revue. Slowly but surely, we were making a dent. Royalties for his production work at Twinight (something he’d never been paid for) rolled in, the revue was a smashing success, and suits against Michael Jackson and Will Smith were settled in his favor. Our deal, which had sat in his lap for nearly two years, was brought back into focus. Sorry for the delay, Syl could only offer, “A mind is a terrible thing to tamper with.”
But back to last week. On Friday, August 14th 2009, Syl Johnson put pen to paper for a deal that will finally see the bulk of his output properly reissued for the first time. Oh sure, Collectables, Charley, and Kent have issued compact discs of the Twinight material over the last twenty years, but all have lacked the one thing that makes a truly great reissue: involvement from the artist. And since this stuff has been on CD a handful of times already, we’re upping the ante significantly. Syl Johnson: Complete Recordings 1959-1972 will cover all of his Federal singles, his work for tiny outfits like TMP-Ting, Special Agent, Cha-Cha, and Zachron, all of his Twinight singles and album tracks, period cuts that were later issued on his rare Japanese-only P-Vine LP, and a grip of previously unreleased songs that we’ve unearthed with him on this journey. The four disc set will allow you to ditch any other versions of these recordings you may have acquired over the last decade and clear up any misconceptions laid down in prior booklets with a thorough biography, track by track annotation, and scores of unpublished photos.
When all the paper was piled up, stapled, and put into an envelope, it might have been the happiest we’ve ever seen him. His eyes were little glossy, but that might have been because of the glaucoma test he’d had just before coming over. For a brief moment we fooled ourselves into thinking that the hardest work was behind us, but these things don’t build themselves.
