So TA, aleady asked this of Pali...
How do rate his albums? I'm only familar with Stoned pt1 and Lost Album.

Bfunkthe1 said:

That's a difficult question because they're all so good for different reasons.

But if I had to only pick one, it'd be a horse race between the first two.
Maybe Lewis II (the second) would have the edge because of tunes like Blue Eyes (who thought he could pull off something close to a Jazz ballad), I'm On The Floor (super soul groove), The Way You Done Me (a lesson on how to do R&B in 7/8), Satisfied (fabulous melody & great guitar outro).

And I must add that the man understands the value of great bridges in songs.



Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records
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paligap said:

Based on his recorded material, my guess would be Heart of The Sunrise.



Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

I think his music is very addicting. And I haven't even got to the 1st and 2nd album yet! Man I'm waaaay behind right.

Bfunkthe1 said:

And just when you think you've got the cat almost figured out, this happens...



...Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica Reborn

He basically re-records 12 of the 28 tracks from the Frank Zappa produced Troutmask Replica by Captain Beefheart.


Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

^

Ummm. So how is it?
Btw, is there any indication he is doing new music? I read that he might be but not as Lewis Tayor per se. A differnt name or somthing?

Lewis reminds me of the caucasian version of TTD.

Graycap23 said:

I was thinking that too. His voice is similar at times to TTD.As well as his eclecticism.

Bfunkthe1 said:

Not sure, but I also think he might still be playing rhythm guitar with the Edgar Broughton Band (as Andrew Taylor - Lewis is actually his middle name)...he's been doing that on and off for the last five years...I believe there's even a UK DVD of their shows, from a few years ago...someone pointed out that he's probably happier playing in the background with friends, much more than being in the spotlight....




...
[Edited 3/30/10 8:02am]

^
That's what I heard too.
So let's precede LT and go back to Captain Jack. I think that was his pseudo name before Lewis Taylor. Right?

Bfunkthe1 said:

well, Sheriff Jack... but yeah, he was with Edgar Broughton earlier, but left around 1986 to do the two psychedelic albums and two EPs under the Sheriff Jack name. The albums for Chime Records: Laugh Yourself Awake (1986) and What Lovely Melodies! (1987) and two the mini-LPs: Let's Be Non-Chalant (1986) and Everybody Twist (1987)...after a 10 year gap, he reappeared, but this time doing the combination of Soul/Funk and Progressive Pop, under the name Lewis Taylor....

Just my opinion, but the earlier stuff was interesting but didn't really grab me like LT's stuff-- it was almost like those stories about guys like Robert Johnson and Sonny Rollins-- they went away for awhile, did some serious woodshedding, and came back transformed....




...
[Edited 3/30/10 9:23am]

paligap said:

Say wha.....

Graycap23 said:

Yup!


...
[Edited 3/30/10 9:24am]

paligap said:

Looks like I have some work 2 do.

Sheriff Jack. My bad.
Thanks for that info. I'm gonna concentrate on the LT stuff for now.
With a new friend's help.
I'm gonna order LT debut LT II next.

...

BTW I've printed it here before., but here's one of the most in depth pieces on Lewis --done just before the wheels came off....



Soul Enigma: Lewis Taylor Comes to America
[8 February 2006]

Find out why you've been missing some of the best soul music of the era.

by Mark Anthony Neal


"My favorite CD right now is Lewis Taylor ... My stylist had a mix-tape with his song 'Bittersweet' and I had to know who was singing."
— Aaliyah, 2001

For much of the last decade, arguably the most brilliant R&B artist of this generation has toiled in relative obscurity in Britain. It's not that Lewis Taylor is unknown -- Elton John, David Bowie, D'Angelo, Chaka Khan, Darryl Hall (of Hall & Oates), Pharrell, Questlove and the late Aaliyah -- are among his fervent admirers. The British music press has also heaped a great amount of praise on Taylor, anointing him the "new British blue-eyed soulster". Meanwhile the star-making machine(s) in the United States -- which manufactured hand-to-mouth desire for a mediocre black British talent like Craig David -- has been seemingly oblivious to Lewis Taylor. It was really only on the fringes of the Neo-Soul nation that one could utter Lewis Taylor's name and even then, given the difficulty of tracking down Taylor's music in the States, it was often as a by-product of an on-going mythology surrounding Michael "D'Angelo" Archer (quickly becoming the Sly Stone of the hip-hop era). With the release of Stoned (HackTone Records) -- the first recording by Lewis Taylor released domestically in the United States -- the North London native should finally attract the audience that his music deserves.


Why isn't Lewis Taylor more well-known in the United States? Well, we could start with the shortsightedness of Island Records, the label that initially signed Taylor as a solo artist in 1994. Or we could discuss the corporate gatekeepers in urban radio who seem to revel in the possibility that contemporary R&B will remain one of the most uncomplicated (and un-creative) outposts in the music industry. And then there's the issue of Taylor's whiteness -- a boost for pretty R&B-boys like Justin Timberlake or Jon B a decade ago, less so for the 30-something "neurotic" that Taylor was when his debut Lewis Taylor was released in 1996.

"When I first got the attention from Island Records," Lewis Taylor explains, "it was because I have one song in which I phrase a little bit like Al Green, and the record company said 'we found the new Al Green' and they hadn't even met me yet." This was back in 1994 when Taylor was shopping what he describes as an "awful" demo. But it isn't just Al Green that you hear on that first solo recording; you hear strains of Bobby Womack, Marvin Gaye, and a litany of '70s Soul men. As the story goes, Leon Ware, who wrote and produced much of Gaye's I Want You (1976) and a significant artist in his own right (check out Musical Massage), broke down in tears after hearing tracks from Lewis Taylor. To the more discerning listener there are also resonances of Tangerine Dream, Radiohead, Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (1969), and most queerly the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds(1966) -- music that could charitably be called atmospheric. In other words Lewis Taylor pushed the boundaries of what we comfortably thought of as R&B -- R&B for folk as literate in the Mary J. Bliges and R. Kellys of the world as it is in Luther Ingram and Tim Buckley.

Thirty years ago Taylor's brew would have made him the darling of "progressive" FM-radio -- a programming maverick like the late Frankie Crocker (a longtime fixture at New York's WBLS (WLIB-FM) would have drooled at the opportunity to have Taylor's music included in what he called the "Total Experience in Sound". Taylor unfortunately made no in-roads onto the US radio scene, which made it virtually impossible to get a hearing in the States. Given the real creative labor that artists like Meshell Ndegeocello, Mint Condition, Erykah Badu, the Family Stand, and most fabulously D'Angelo were undertaking in the early-to-mid-1990s, Lewis Taylor should have been an unqualified commercial and critical success in the United States. Unfortunately Island Records never really "got" what Taylor was trying to do.

"It was very difficult at the time" Taylor recalls, Island "really struggled to understand it." It's not that Island didn't recognize the value of a "skinny little [white] lad who can sing like a Soul singer" but they didn't know how to market Taylor's music. As Taylor describes his eponymous debut, "The songs on [Lewis Taylor] are all textures and moods and feelings -- the songs are very loose, but it's very difficult to tell because they're so densely and heavily arranged." According to Taylor, "My singing voice is so much different from my voice as a musician, and I was trying to get it all in there at the same time." What seems like a joyous concoction for hard-core fans of R&B and Soul was a marketing nightmare for a record company "just on the verge of becoming the company that they are now". Taylor recalls one exec at Island who kept asking, "When's he gonna come out with his 'Money is Too Tight to Mention?'" in reference to the 1985 recording that introduced the so-called "blue-eyed" Soul of Mick Hucknall and Simply Red to American audiences with the album Picture Book. Simply Red's chart-topping cross-over "cover" of Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes' "If You Don't Know Me By Now" (1988) was indeed the blueprint that Island hoped to follow with Taylor, had the singer been willing.

Part of what Taylor resisted was the whole packaging of just the latest "blue-eyed" Soul singer: "[It] really bothered me at the time, so much so that in response to the first album, I stopped promoting it after a year, and went home ... and recorded a completely different album, that was the most un-R&B album you could probably ever hear." According to Taylor he made a recording that married Fleetwood Mac's Rumors and the Beach Boys, that "eschewed most of the R&B influences" [Later released as "The Lost Album"]. In response to the British press calling him the "new British blue-eyed soulster", Taylor famously told Blues and Soul magazine back in 1997, "Well I suppose the most unintelligent answer I could give to that is 'fuck off'." Taylor is a little bit more contrite eight years after his outburst: "I felt like I painted myself into a little bit of a box and it sat very uneasily with me."

Island rejected Taylor's "Lost" album, and he finally went back to the studio to record Lewis II, which was released in 2000. While Lewis II is much less moody and esoteric than Lewis Taylor -- the follow-up plays more like a dance album -- the reality was that it was still a far-cry from anything like Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite(1996). In search of a lead single that could earn Taylor a hit, Island had him record remakes of tracks like "Until You Come Back to Me" (aping Aretha's version), Diana Ross and the Supremes' "Reflections", and Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland". Eventually it was Taylor's rendition of the late Jeff Buckley's beautiful "Everybody Here Wants You" that was included on the album, though Taylor still struggled to find an audience in Britain or the United States

The best chance that Taylor had to breakthrough to American audiences, particularly the Neo-Soul nation, was a possible collaboration with D'Angelo on what would eventually become the much delayed Voodoo (2000). Many Neo-Soul audiences first heard of Taylor via D'Angelo's claims that he was a fan of Taylor's. As Taylor explains his relationship with the equally enigmatic D'Angelo, "We were mutual fans --and around '98, I got a call from one of his manager guys ... they just had a bunch of ideas, they weren't really sure what it is they wanted. I think their idea was to get me over [to the states] and figure it out while I was over there." What Taylor really suspects is that "they were having a little bit of difficulty keeping [D'Angelo] focused ... He's getting invited to all these crazy parties and they are trying to keep him in the studio" hoping that "[I] would be a calming influence on him." To make a very long story short, Taylor spent four days in a New York City hotel with no contact with anyone from D'Angelo camp. "I just got very fed-up with it, I threw a hissy-fit and I left, without even telling them," Taylor recalls. "The two of us have still to this day, never met." A similar story occurred when Chaka Khan reached out to Taylor to do some things together. These experiences, along with Taylor's on-going struggles with Island records (who dropped him after Lewis II) further enhanced his disillusionment with the recording industry.

Without a label deal, Taylor sulked back to his home studio, where he began to record Stoned, Part One, which was released in early 2003 on his own label Slow Reality. Subsequent releases on Slow Reality included Stoned, Part II (upbeat remixes to many of the tracks found on the original), the aforementioned Lost Album (2004) and Limited Edition(2004) As Taylor wrote in Music Week back in 2002, "the reality is that [the music] doesn't need that much. The people who hear it like it -- it's as simple as that." Despite the brilliance of Taylor's earlier recordings, there's little doubt that Stoned represents him as his most accessible. The recording was a logical choice for the folk at HackTone who wanted to introduce Taylor to a larger American audience, by repackaging the original recording with additional tracks like the never-before-released Stylistics' cover "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)" and "Back Together", which also appears on Limited Edition. Accordingly Taylor has mixed emotions about some of the hype that Stoned has now generated in the States: "I've been so used to everything being the way that it has been. And for me, we're talking about a record that was released awhile ago and I've moved on a little bit."

Now, working primarily with his life partner Sabina Smyth, Taylor's suggested that their collaborations have "opened up the music for me and opened up my approach to making music and even listening to music. I think progressively each release we put out on our own label has been more a lot more open." He adds, "But by the time we started putting our own records, gradually it's been less and less about being completely focused on the idea of being an artist and succeeding and a lot of those things that are really vitally important to artists." Over and over again, Taylor says "life gets in the way" to explain his retreat from the mainstream recording industry -- the career is "not so important anymore". With a starred review in Rolling Stone and a recent appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien it looks like Taylor's career is what will be getting in the way, and for American audiences of quality Soul and R&B, that's a blessing."





...
[Edited 3/30/10 10:06am]

Thanks P for that. Very informative.

Taylor isn't even his real surname. It's Bristow.

The Leon Ware thing is absolute bullshit, by the way. And the Chaka thing? Well, he just never bothered returning her calls.

Mong said:

Thanks -I'd heard that Taylor wasn't the real surname, but I never knew what it was...


...

Mong said:

You seem to have a bit of an inside track on all things Lewis/Andrew/Taylor/Bristow.
Any idea what he's up to currently as far as music?



Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

Bfunkthe1 said:

If you've heard his cover of Heart Of The Sunrise by Yes, it's a similar treatment in that the arrangements are close in structure but with the "Lewis Taylor thing" injected.


Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

^
Have not heard his cover of Heart Of The Sunrise.
Shoot I'm just now finding out he redid Electric Ladyland! Which I don't think is on the version of Lewis II I ordered.

Bfunkthe1 said:

orgnote, sir!




...

^

And just so those who care know I've purchased 4 LT CDs this week.On line of course because they're either out of print or no where to be found. At least locally.

Mong said:

So can you sir hip us to what Mr. Bristow is doing musically? Anything we will be able to hear or purchase?

Not a clue. The most recent albums weren't exactly earners, so I can't see him releasing another album. It doesn't help in a era where people can't be arsed for the most part to pay for music. I'm sure he still records his own stuff.

Mong said:

Thanks for the info.
Just listened to debut album. Wow. Folks who never heard this album, I strongly suggest this album. Sometimes I think know what's up and then I realize things do slip by me.
Maxwell meets Radiohead while channeling Marvin Gaye and Brian Wilson. Yet still original. Go figure.

Love this guy...

On that title track 'stoned' he does some really aggressive guitar parts near the end that really cemented it for me. He does it on 'shame' too.

Fyi, LT's CDs are getting really hard to find at decent prices.And these include used copies. If you just want to DL album you're fine. Amazon, itunes etc has them. But if like me, you like to have actual CD with artwork, notes etc, good luck. Although I noticed Stoned US version is very easy to find used and very cheap. Which is a great place start. Imo.