Rastus

An Interview With Bobby Jameson And Jim Cantale!

noreply@blogger.com (John Rhys) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:16:00 +0000

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench; a long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.

There's also a negative side.

-Hunter S. Thompson-
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I first met Bobby Jameson in the summer of 1964. My room mate at the time, Terry Knight, who was a DJ at CKLW in Windsor, Ontario invited me to a show on an island off the coast of Canada. There were several major acts as well as Bobby Jameson who was riding his ascending star with his hit, "I'm So Lonely."

When Terry introduced me to Bobby we talked briefly and I found him to be a charming and intelligent young man without an ounce of guile. In essence, he wasn't one of the jive talkers with whom I was used to meeting in the record business. I watched him perform and told Terry I thought he (Bobby) was headed straight for stardom.

The second time I ran into Bobby was in the offices of GRT Records and to be honest, I didn't recognize him as the same, gentle young man I had met six years earlier. To put it mildly, he was angry. I was angry too as GRT owed both of us a considerable amount and didn't want to pay.

He was stand-offish at first but soon we became reacquainted and I then heard the horror stories that had happened to him since we had last seen each other. Since many of the same instances had happened to me during that time, I believed every word. However, I was much more fortunate than he. I had one record company pay me accurately.... Impact Records of Detroit, Michigan whose owner, Harry Balk, is one of the most gifted and honorable men I ever had the pleasure of doing business with in the music industry.

Bobby Jameson is also one of the most brutally honest people I have had the good fortune to confront. The world would be a better place if everyone adhered to such a straightforward approach. Many people in the record business do not agree with such honesty. They just can't play the game that way.

Bobby was with me as I mixed the first Rastus LP at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys. When I offered him the opportunity to go to Ohio and work with Rastus writing songs, he jumped at the opportunity.

This is how Bobby Jameson came into our fold....the Rastus group.... and the stories that stem from this association are many. Here....directly from Bobby Jameson's lips, are true stories of the music business and some inside stories about Rastus....one of the best bands you never heard.

This audio clip is approximately fifty-two minutes long. It has not been altered or edited and there is some explicit language. It was recorded at Bobby's home in San Luis Obispo on August 9th in the afternoon. The speakers are myself, Bobby Jameson and Jim Cantale.

John Rhys/BluePower.com

Click here to listen to....An Interview With Bobby Jameson And Jim Cantale!

Click here to go to Bobby Jameson's blog.

Click here to go to Bobby Jameson's My Space page.

Click here to go to Bobby Jameson's YouTube page.

Click here to go to Jim Cantale's web site.

Rastus....The Ann Arbor Sessions!

noreply@blogger.com (John Rhys) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:52:00 +0000

It was early in the morning when we (Rastus) arrived at the SRC Studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The band had come from Cleveland, Ohio in several different cars with Jim Cantale driving the van with most of the equipment. I drove in from Detroit.

The summer of 1968 proved to be a scorcher as the band selected the various rooms which would be their home for the next ten days.

Angelo Crimi and Mike Geraci selected the drum room as it was the only room in the house which had air-conditioning. The rest of the band found rooms upstairs and began to make themselves comfortable.

"I'm going to Piggly Wiggly."

As this process was occurring, Bocky decided that it was time to get some groceries from across the street at the supermarket. This was a venture which I will not describe due to it's heinous nature but I will say that this was one of the most outrageous acts I have ever witnessed. Unfortunately I saw what poverty will reap in situations such as these. At the time this act was quite humorous. Bocky had a gift....a gift which would eventually cause him to be dismissed from the band.

Rastus was, even in the early stages, running on empty and had to rely on chicanery just to survive. All the members of Rastus were survivors and had resigned themselves to the fact that they would do anything to continue playing music together.

The tape starts rolling.

As we settled into the recording process, we established the living room as the horn room (Mike Geraci, Vic Walkuski and John Taylor and Don Nagy on trumpet) since it was the largest. Don Nagy (bass) was allocated a small room off the living room and Tony Corrao (guitar) was placed in an opposing room also off the living room. Smoky set up the drums in the "all black" drum room that was nearly sound-proof and....as I mentioned earlier....air-conditioned. He would certainly need it for those ten days.

The only connections for the group were headphones and the talk-back system which I used to communicate with the band.

We ran through the songs for the first two days while, at the same time, getting levels set to the recorder which was a four-track Crown. We had very little EQ and for echo, a spring reverb unit which worked quite well. On the third day we began to record. The demos presented here are off the original 2 track mixes I made after we were finished recording, so the quality is superb.

On the fourth or fifth day of recording, I was over-dubbing Tony Corrao on guitar when I heard strange noises coming through Tony's mic. I stopped the tape and asked Tony what he was doing to make those "scratching" sounds. He answered saying he wasn't doing anything and that the noise was coming from the wall. We all went to look at the wall from where the noises were emitting. The noises were loud enough to be picked up by the mic some ten feet away. After careful examination, we discovered a mother Raccoon and five babies living in the wall of the old farmhouse. Tony was freaked! Being a city boy, he had never witnessed a live Raccoon before. We made sure we recorded in that room after the mother and babies had gone out for their meals. No sense in upsetting the family with a lot of loud music.

It was in this setting we recorded Rastus' first efforts. All these demos are now available for sale on the Rastus' Ann Arbor Sessions sales page. We will be posting much more material in the following weeks so stay tuned. Please let us know what you think of the site and give us suggestions on how we may improve.

This "is" the official Rastus site! Accept no substitutes.

Rastus....The Legend Lives!

John Rhys

Click here to listen to....Rastus....The Ann Arbor Sessions!

Click here to go to the Rastus download page!

Rastus....The Legend Lives!

noreply@blogger.com (John Rhys) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:37:00 +0000

It all began in the winter of 1968. I received a phone call from the manager of a group from Cleveland, which had just been formed and who wanted to meet with me to see if I was into producing the band. We met on that cold winter day and the rest is history. The first meeting is a story in itself.

Our account is a long and winding road which, in itself, is fascinating. Rastus made two LPs which were preceded and followed by immense hardship and suffering with several good souls lost along the way. But the music was well worth the effort, revealing some of the best players of that time. As a unit, Rastus could not be denied.

Here begins the story of Rastus....and some of the best music you've never heard.

Please bear in mind, this site is under construction but will soon have all Rastus' material plus demos, songs and pictures never before released. We are now mastering several live concerts which are phenomenal.

Please write us and let us know who you are so that we may keep you up to date on all additions to this site. Email us at the "Contact John" button on the sidebar.

See you soon!

John Rhys
Rastus.us.com