Eccentric Soul.
What if you recorded a bunch of music, and no one ever heard it? Such is Arrow Brown's story. And such is the story of Bandit Records. The whatever happened to . . . except few even remember enough to ask that. Yet this disc isn't about nostalgia or undiscovered tunes. It's some kind of anomaly, a what the hell is this moment within the suite of soul-funk-gospel music; a hybrid. Imagine The Delphonics meet up with Solomon Burke. Throw in some Ike and Tina (the early stuff) and Nina Simone and the Jackson Five and you still aren’t there.
There is something allusive about late ‘60s/early ‘70s soul that nostalgia only partly explains. I’m not nostalgic for this music (my earliest record spending only came about 1980). But I’m drawn to it in a way I can’t explain. We can easily say that nostalgia is a fabricated feeling anyway; one doesn’t have to have experienced a moment in order to feel for it again. But this kind of nostalgia I see as something outside of such cultural fabrications. It’s more like a wish for encounter. Imagine the soundtrack of a Tarantino following you around (Bobby Womack singing “110th Street”) and you can feel this music with you. You wish for it. You wish to hear it around you in odd moments and encounters.
What if you recorded music and no one heard of it? This is such a bizarre album if only for that one point.
