The Blues Project

For a band that has been so widely praised back in their heyday, The Blues Project didn't leave many albums behind and their reputation became more than the sum of their parts.  Not exactly a blues band they also took their inspiration from jazz, and folk rock along with their Chuck Berry numbers. And every album always featured a different lineup it seems, Tommy Flanders was on for the Live at Cafe Au Go Go and would disappear till their forgotten Capitol S/T.  Even their so called classic album Projections is hampered by a slow moving Two Trains Running that you're about ready to give up on them.  But at their best Al Kooper would lead them to many different styles of music from the garage rock of No Time Like The Right Time or I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, to the jammy Wake Me Shake Me and to the jazz flirtations of Flute Thing or covering the Donovan folk Catch The Wind, Projections will forever remain their claim to fame and one of the essential albums of the 1960s.  Live At Cafe Au Go Go is a curio first album which shows them running through the Chess catalog with their versions of You Can't Catch Me, Going To Lousiana and a few others. Not needed in your collection but it's not bad either

Projections is everything Blues Project, the combination of Kooper, Steve Katz, Roy Blumenthal, Andy Kulberg and especially Danny Kalb on a wicked Caress Me Baby is their finest hour although I'm surprised that Fly Away didn't make the pop charts (They would try it again with another single in 1973).  The recording is not exactly all that great, it sounds distorted but Sundazed reissued it with better sound.  With Al Kooper and Steve Katz leaving to form Blood Sweat And Tears, Verve scraped the bottom of the barrel for Live At Town Hall which adds No Time Like The Right Time (with canned applause) and Electric Flute Thing adding more shock value to the LP (zzzzzz).  Pressing on, Planned Obsolescence starts out with a nice cover of If You Gotta Make A Fool Out Of Somebody but the majority of songs were boring.  Only decent thing about the album was the cover picture  Andy Kulberg would form the minor all star band Seatrain with Peter Rowan and made three uneven albums for Capitol and Warner Brothers which had a underground classic with 13 Questions (Produced by George Martin of The Beatles fame). The Blues Project would solder on with the heavier Lazarus and Tommy Flanders returned for the S/T album which was so so.

For some reason Al Kooper decided to reunite the original Blues Project for one last show in Central Park in 1973 and it turned out to be a fine end to a band who never really got off the ground.  Actually better than Cafe Au Go Go, Reunion In Central Park at least made a fine final statement that when the Blues Project put aside their egos and conflicts of interest, they were a damn good band.

Albums:

Live At Cafe Au Go Go-Verve Folkways 1966 B
Projections-Verve Forecast 1967 A-
Live At Town Hall-Verve Forecast 1968 B
Planned Obsolescence-Verve Forecast 1969 C
Lazarus-Capitol 1971 C+
Blues Project-Capitol 1972 C+
Reunion Live At Central Park-MCA 1973 B+