Steve Hiett – down on the road by the beach cd/lp
€ 15,90 incl. btw
Reissue op Be With van prachtige plaat uit begin jaren ’80, die destijds alleen in Japan uitkwam maar de laatste jaren een behoorlijk gezochte plaat begint te worden.
Enorm zomerse laid-back klanken, die regelmatig doen denken aan Vini Reilly en Durutti Column.
Mooi verhaal ook achter deze plaat.
‘For the first time since its inception 36 years ago, Steve Hiett’s elusive ‘Down On The Road By The Beach’ is finally made available outside of Japan. Now widely celebrated as a desert island disc, very little is actually known of its unfathomable genesis.
A career devotee of Brian Wilson’s ground breaking harmonies, Hiett shot The Beach Boys for Rolling Stone – as well as The Doors, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix while establishing himself as a fashion photographer.
In 1982, representatives from Tokyo’s Galerie Watari visited him to propose a solo exhibition. Asking if he could insert a 7” of original music into the back of the exhibition catalogue, Hiett laid down ‘Blue Beach – Welcome To Your Beach’ in a Parisian radio station, playing all of the instruments himself, and two more cuts in New York with Yoko Ono, The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan hired-gun Elliott Randall. Once dispatched, the phone began ringing off the hook with requests for him to fly to Tokyo. Assuming these long-distance callers were wanting him to check proofs for the book, it wasn’t until he arrived that he discovered CBS/Sony had facilitated an entire album. Heitt hastily gripped some petty cash, bought a guitar and retreated to his hotel room to start writing.
Entering the studio the following day, he was further surprised by a waiting room of session players known as Moonriders – one of Japan’s most acclaimed rock bands of the 1980s. Intimidated by their indecipherable sheet music, Hiett suggested Randall join them and with money being no object for major labels at the time, his wingman was on the next plane out of New York to finalise the high production indulgence. Near-ambient arrangements that float in a space between The Durutti Column, Steve Cropper and Ashra.’