Windy City Strut

Rip It Up, Issue 128, 1 March 1988, Page 8

Windy City Strut

. According to Dr John there are two types of song, says Bill Lake. “There are song songs — standards, like ‘Stardust’ — and there are record songs, done for a record: what I’d call feel songs.”

A Bop in the Ocean, the album Bill Lake and the Living Daylights have released on Eelman, is full of feel songs, and there are even a couple of those treasures the good Doctor calls song songs. Lake wrote most of the tunes in conjunction with Arthur Baysting; both are members of the ongoing Wellington R&B tree that reaches back almost two decades of windy city soul. The Living Daylights have been playing together for over a year, building a strong following for their weekly slot at the Oaks. The band is like a cut down, turned around version of the Pelicans, of which Lake and bassist Nick Bollinger were core members, and players have included Ra, formerly of the

Pyramids, and saxophonist Neville Schwabe, exNetherworlds. Alan Norman plays piano, Martha Samasoni sings, and on drums is the übiquitous Ross Burge. “We work on a different principle from the Pelicans,” says Lake. “Even though they weren’t pushing terribly hard for success, we did have a vague idea that we might become something. It sort of grew into something that people took seriously, and we took seriously. Syndrome

“I don’t really like getting into that syndrome, but you get to a point where you do these gigs and make a huge investment, risk your

all, and maybe make SIOO. Playing a place like the Oaks, you’re paid a fee and don’t outlay any money. The cost of it is you don’t become a well known band.” Like Al Hunter at the Auckland’s Shakespeare, or the Warratahs at the Cricketers, the Daylights found a happy medium, with a regular gig that enabled them to play mostly originals and still keep the crowd happy. Lake sings about half the songs on Bop, and although the great Gluepot gigs last September with the Jive Bombers showed he’s developed as a frontperson, he still likes to.have others doing the singing. Ra Te Whaiti left some time ago, and now his replacement Patrick Lenniston has gone to Australia, so the search is on again for a male vocalist to join Martha Samasoni and Lake at the mike.

“If only I had a singer I could teach to do what I want to do, because I can’t really do what I want to hear — I'm not that strong,” says Lake. “If I could get a singer like Peter Marshall [ex-Hulamen, now Holidaymakers] or someone, I

could probably get them to do a lot more, but they’re very hard to find in New Zealand. Ra was a brilliant singer, he really had it, plus he’s got charisma to burn. When he got

on stage he was like a real soul performer, he’s unique.” Character Another loss is sax-player Schwabe, who left to briefly join Ardijah. “A rare character,” says Bollinger. “A lot of jazz players think, oh, rock and roll is easy. But when it comes to playing it, they

haven't got any feel for it. But Neville gets a real R&B feel.” So do Burge and Norman —and Bollinger, whose love of New Orleans music shown on his Radio Active show is also reflected in his playing. He describes the peculiar loose New Orleans rhythm as “everyone playing simple parts that lock together, which make up this funky feel. The rhythm keeps going in your head, you know where the beat is.”

Lake: “You can’t make yourself late, you just are. After a long apprenticeship attempting to play Little Feat, you couldn’t avoid being a bit like that. Muddy Waters’ band was renowned for having those late beats.” The Daylights have a looser sound than the Pelicans, and this translates to the record. As opposed to the slow perfectionism of the Pelicans albums, A Bop in the Ocean was recorded live in the studio. “I found the Pelicans records a bit stiff, because we'd spent so much time doing overdubs,” says Lake. “This time I thought I’d rather go for the sound. I thought if Aretha Franklin and her

band — not to mention all the good music I’ve ever liked — could do that sort of thing in just a few takes, we ought to be able to do something, after playing so long live.” Technique

Some recording techniques now regarded as old fashioned were used. On ’Good For You’ Lake wanted the backing vocals in one channel, like the old soul records. “On modern pop records, they’re panned to sound like a huge choir, but the voices aren’t distinct. Stick the voices in one channel, and they sound like a real group of people standing there.”

’Defrost Your Heart’ is one of the strongest ballads, one I imagine would be suitable for our own godfather of soul, Rick Bryant. Lake thinks of it in terms of Womack and Womack: “I’d like to hear two singers handle it, I really like that dual sound, with a high falsetto just taking a couple of words, against a sandpaper voice.”

The songs incorporate a stew of R&B flavours, from Little Richard to the Neville Brothers, Little Feat to Ry Cooder, but there’s no mistaking the voice of Lake and Baysting: “I think about this a lot,” says Lake. “When I come up with a piece of music I hear all the antecedents myself, ‘This sounds like ...’ Arthur’s always saying, forget that, just do it — because it’s going to turn out different, and it usually does. You can’t eliminate it. The only stuff I listen to is black music from blues to the present day, and that’s the way I want to write.” Now, the Daylights are having a re-think while they re-group. Fane Flaws is waiting in the wings to play, says Lake, and just to further confuse the Wellington R&B tree they’re thinking of having two bands, one for originals, one for covers. There’s no doubt though, that both “gone be funky.” Says Bollinger: “The danger of working away at something is that by the time you get really good at it, everyone else has moved on. In a sense I suppose we are a bit anachronistic, but music does keep coming round in cycles.”

Chris Bourke