HOW TO DONATE
Our costs will always be there. So readers who can donate towards the cost of the site, please open a Skrill account. Readers who wish to contribute to BigO will now have to use Skrill (click here). We are no longer able to use PayPal to receive donations. Register an account at Skrill. To make a payment, use this e-mail address as recipient’s e-mail address in Skrill: mail2[at]bigomagazine.com. Looking forward to hearing from you.
+ + + + +
JUST TO LET YOU KNOW
To reduce spamming, the BigO website is going through Cloudflare. What it does is scan your browser to ensure the visitor is not a spam. Do not be alarmed as this usually takes only a few seconds. Email us if you still have difficulty accessing the BigO site; or playing or downloading the tracks. If you know a better way of reducing spam, do let us know.
+ + + + +
WAR
Houston 1986 [no label, 1CD]
Live at Rockefeller’s, Houston, TX; June 28, 1986 (Late Show). Very good soundboard.
Thanks to goody for sharing the show at Dime.
+ + + + +
Click here for the Early Show.
+ + + + +
While there are some tunes common to both shows, they’re completely different in their approach in each one. You should definitely grab both of them! Strong and notable here, for example, is the extended blues outing on the classic ‘Look On Yonders Wall’ that’s played as an intro to ‘Slippin’ Into Darkness’. Before that, we’re treated to a 16-minute-long jam on ‘The World Is A Ghetto’. And as the WAR catalog is strong and their many songs were popular among a widespread listenership, I will agree that my placing them under the Funk banner doesn’t quite address it all. I hope this reaches all of you who are fans or even simply curious. That being said, there’s hardly any live material of theirs available anywhere, so I thought this would be something many of you might enjoy!
Fans of Lee Oskar’s incredible mastery of the harp and all things musical otherwise will find lots to love here - he knows exactly what to play and there’s a lot of it - never a wrong or misplaced note!
It’s by no means a perfect recording - the sound man is definitely in a battle at times with the level of what’s going through the board vs. what must have been projected from the stage in the small club that was Rockefeller’s. Lonnie’s keyboards run a bit hot til he grabs a volume slider or foot pedal to tame the occasional hot stab. The drums are prominent here and there where they may have been better served by being more in balance and maybe a bit lower in the mix - such are the pluses and minuses of a SBD recording. The dynamics of the band, sensitively coming down and then rising up to maximum heat, are fully on display. Watch out!
Yer PervFesser
You may have noticed there is a lack of our art department’s usual excellent contributions.
The provider of these masters has requested there not be anything other than the musical content, and I hope everyone honors that preference as I’d like to continue offering them, should there be more. That would include others here and elsewhere coming up with any artwork as well. Please and thanks for understanding! (We do realize it’s the innernets and, once freed, these babies are indeed going to have lives of their own…) Trying to please many, erm, ‘masters’. I’ve been to the movies…
+ + + + +
Lineage:
Master cassette > Played back with Dolby B on a Nak Dragon through an Avid MBox Mini III into a PC running Audacity 2.4.2 software > Audition (Align channels; adjust levels; track splits, fades) > TLH (FLAC Level 8; Align sector boundaries; .ffp) > foobar2000 (tags)
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
Please Do Not Hammer The Links. Due to the size of some of the files, please be very patient when downloading the tracks. It could be that the server was very busy. The tracks should still be around. Please try again later.
Kindly email us if you encounter persistent problems downloading the files. Also email us if you have any rarities you’d like to share with our readers.
Disc 1
Track 101. Band Intros/Southern Part Of Texas 12:58
Track 102. Cinco De Mayo 9:30
Track 103. Outlaw 5:58
Track 104. Low Rider 7:22
Track 105. The World Is A Ghetto 16:28
Track 106. Spill The Wine/All Day Music tease/Summer 6:39
59 mins
Disc 2
Track 201. Deliver The Word 14:08
Track 202. Look On Yonder Wall 10:19
Track 203. Slippin’ Into Darkness 12:20
Track 204. The Cisco Kid 7:29
Track 205. Why Can’t We Be Friends 11:07
56 mins
Lineup:
Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan - keyboards, lead vocals
Lee Oskar - harmonica, vocals
Howard E. Scott - guitar, vocals
Ricky Green - bass, vocals
Ronnie Hammon - drums
Thomas “Papa Dee” Allen - percussion, vocals
Click here to order War releases.