Lots. . .

. . . of OHO music . . . 

(from http://www.expose.org/index.php/articles/display/oho-gazebo-3.html)
Oho — Gazebo
(Ohomusic OM067, 2018, CD)
by Peter Thelen, Published 2018-08-06
Oho has been making great music since the early 70s, seemingly swerving and dodging any typical styles and genres as they avoided the classification game, instead going for whatever direction their muse took them at any point in time. The three founding members O’Connor, Heck, and O’Sullivan (Hence their name OHO) have long left the band (although Mark O’Connor is a guest one one track here), multi-instrumentalist and singer Jay Graboski who had joined by the time of the band’s first album Okinawa in 1974 is still among the members, all through the years guiding the band through their continuous evolution. And still, on their latest album Gazebo, the band still eschews any kind of classification, other than in a very general sense. In addition to Graboski, the current members include Ray Jozwiak (vocals, keyboards, and accordion) and David Reeve (drums, vocals, keyboards and more), the latter having been with the band since the beginning of the 1990s. In addition, no less than twenty guests have contributed to this track or that adding everything from trombone, french horn, saxes, bass, 12 string, pedal steel, percussion, additional vocals and more. The eighteen cuts herein are all listed as group compositions (with the exception of a couple interpretations) but one can sense that the diversity of what’s on offer here shows that ideas are are hatched and developed by individual band members and from that point developed as a group, having a lot of fun along the way. Thus, the tunes represent more of what the members’ interests are instead of trying to shoehorn their sound into any genre. One can find a little bit of everything herein, though everything on offer is played and sung impeccably by a group of experienced musicians who probably don’t care if you like it or not, it’s what they do, and being independent of any record labels, it’s all at their prerogative and pleasure.

“How Is Where We Go” is a great tune, and a catchy one as well, and pretty much exemplifies Oho’s creation process: write and arrange a great tune with thoughtful lyrics, bring it to life with whatever is needed to perfect it (some pedal steel went a long way in this case, plus additional lead guitar, percussion and vocals), and you end up with a tune that meets a number of criteria of excellence and doesn’t really sound like anything you’ve heard before. The opener “Ring in the Brightness” is a tune that is just as vital, a funky and powerful rocker with a horn section featured. The band does a tasteful cover of Randy Newman’s “Baltimore,” perhaps with a bit more of a rock punch than the original, with some great sax soloing from guest Gene Meros, following that up with “Blood Brother,” a good-timey piano tune that sounds like something from another era, with a horn section featured, and different singers taking their tunes as the song proceeds. “Denial” is another great tune with powerful arrangements and great lyrics and harmonies, built on an acousic guitar roadbed with accordion and other arrangements supporting judiciously.

With a good 65-plus minutes of great new material, the band added a couple excellent tunes “Slough of Despond” and “Limousine” that were on their two previous albums Where Words Do Not Reach and Bricolage respectively, and “Unique” which was an instrumental tune on the former, now is re-featured with lyrics. “Ocean City Ditty” which was originally an overtly commercial sounding single released a few years back by the band, is now remixed with additional female vocals and a horn section, with an overdubbed DJ intro and outro. “Out of Thin Air” is an old Oho tune from the early 90s, but a classic that got a complete re-recording here, much improved from the original that opened the Oho album in 1990. “Bleeding the Fifth” is a downright heavy tune with guest lead vocals from Barry Lee Reichart , a thunderous bass line and overdubbed layers of screaming guitars throughout. The album’s pièce de résistance comes near the end, and who would have thought that anyone could combine The Yardbirds “Over Under Sideways Down” with the famous Disney tune “It’s a Small World” and make it work, but Oho did it, and although this doesn’t sound much like either of the originals (though it tracks the Yardbirds a bit more closely), it’s a great interpretation of both tunes more or less superimposed on one another. Nothing short of brilliant. All taken, Gazebo is another great step forward from a band who’s name is synonymous with adventure and unpredictability.

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Puff. . .

Yeah, sure, Puff the Magic Dragon, blah, blah, blah. . .

Whether you love that song or despise it, Peter, Paul and Mary were much, much more than that!

(from wikipedia.com)
". . .Manager Albert Grossman created Peter, Paul and Mary in 1961, after auditioning several singers in the New York folk scene. After rehearsing them out of town in Boston and Miami, Grossman booked them into The Bitter End, a coffee house, nightclub and popular folk music venue in New York City's Greenwich Village.

They recorded their first self-titled debut album, Peter, Paul and Mary, the following year. It included "Lemon Tree", "500 Miles", and the Pete Seeger hit tunes "If I Had a Hammer" (subtitled "The Hammer Song") and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?". The album was listed in the Billboard Magazine Top Ten for 10 months, including seven weeks in the #1 position. It remained a main catalog-seller for decades to come, eventually selling over two million copies, earning Double Platinum certification from the RIAA in the United States alone.

In 1963 the group also released "Puff, the Magic Dragon", with music by Yarrow and words based on a poem that had been written by a fellow student at Cornell, Leonard Lipton. Despite urban myths that insist the song is filled with drug references, it is actually about the lost innocence of
childhood. . .

The trio canceled several dates of their summer 2007 tour, as Mary took longer than expected to recover from back surgery and later had to undergo a second surgery, further postponing the tour.

Travers was unable to perform on the trio's tour in mid-2009 because of her leukemia, but Peter and Paul performed the scheduled dates as a duo, calling the show "Peter & Paul Celebrate Mary and 5 Decades of Friendship."

The Peter, Paul and Mary trio came to an end on September 16, 2009, when Mary Travers died at age 72 of complications from chemotherapy, following treatment for leukemia. It was the same year (2009) they were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

In 2010, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, the surviving members of Peter, Paul and Mary, requested that the National Organization for Marriage stop using their recording of "This Land is Your Land" at their rallies, stating in a letter that the organization's philosophy was "directly contrary to the advocacy position" held by the group. . ."

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Alms. . .

. . . for the "poor". . .

(from In God's Name by David  Yallop)
". . . Pope Paul's poor Church for the poor grew instead immeasurably richer. The Vatican divestment of Italian wealth had resulted in men like Sindona and Calvi robbing the world to pay St Peter and Pope Paul. . . "

(from Father Jesus Lopez Saez writes of David Yallop)"
". . . (Yallop) eloquently demonstrates that the Vatican practiced a disinformation campaign. . .Lies about little things, lies about big things. All these lies had but one purpose: to disguise the fact that Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, had been assassinated. . ."

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The roar of the crowd. . .

My friend Joe, he of the red American flyer 26-inch bicycle (it was more an extension of his being than a mere bicycle) and I played electric guitar and accordion arrangements of songs by Peter, Paul and Mary, Buck Owens, Buddy Holly (yes, Buddy Holly's music was in there too), and a number of other 'fake book' songs. Our repertoire included Pack Up Your Sorrows, The King of Names, On a Desert Island, I'm In Love With A Big Blue Frog, Sam's Place, Buckaroo, Tall Dark Stranger, Love's Gonna Live Here, My Heart Skips a Beat, I've Got A Tiger By The Tail, Black Texas Dirt, Baby Elephant Walk, Tijuana Taxi, Spanish Flea, Third Man Theme, Zorba The Greek, Solitary Man and Love Is Strange.

We even entered a 'talent show', which I don't recall was actually a competition or simply a variety show, organized by our local Catholic church, to which we both belonged by benefit of our families. And since I don't remember that, I certainly don't remember whether or not we won anything. But it didn't matter. We got to play the music we loved in front of an appreciative crowd. It doesn't get any better than that.


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Way. . .

. . . Way before I discovered the joys of jazz/rock fusion, my musical tastes took a turn that was probably pretty natural considering that the accordion pretty much started it all. My friend Joe - he of the red American Flyer and the hill at the elementary school in my neighborhood where we would sit (yes, on our bicycles) and discuss everything from soup to nuts and solve the problems of the world. . . well, at least our little world - had pretty eclectic tastes and what just the kind of personality I needed to gravitate toward at that time in my life. One of those tastes that rubbed off onto me was for a folk trio who had already been making music successfully for a number of years and of whom I knew some (Puff the Magic Dragon was a childhood anthem), Peter, Paul and Mary. And as is the case with much music that I loved in my early days, I couldn't then explain to you what attracted me to it, although now you would be sorry if you asked me to explain, I was enthralled by the simplicity, the intertwining harmonies and the contrast of the three voices when Peter, Paul and Mary performed.




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