Jaded with your current tunes? Saxophonist and composer Cannonball Adderley’s Soul Zodiac and the follow-up Love, Sex, and the Zodiac are sensational. They both blend psychedelic jive with smooth patter Seventies (Neptune in Sagittarius) astro-talk but the second album has the hilarious song titles: Examples: Aries: Damn Right, Taurus: Wampus Cat and Pisces: Allison’s Trip.
They’re voiced by Rick Holmes, a Los Angeles Dj and astro-obsessive whose hot takes on people’s signs and proclivities won him a cult audience. A bit player in Valley of the Dolls and The Bill Cosby Show, he went on the record about his bad vibes on Bill decades before he was sprung. He had Sun, Mercury, Mars, and Uranus conjunct in Taurus, the ultimate line up for a psychedelic radio personality and voice-over artist.
“You Don’t Decide You’re Hip, It Just Happens That Way”
The spoken-word component of Soul Zodiac was Grammy award-nominated, pretty good going for an album with lines like “Beware of Gemini, beware of Gemini,” repeated over and over. Some of the lines are hokie or nuts – “Pisces can never be by themselves, because of their dreams…they are chickens of the sea…” but the narration is so cool and the music? Amazing.
Cannonball Adderley was an influential musician, a pioneer of “soul-jazz and hard bop” and contemporary of Miles Davis. Mercy, Mercy Mercy was his biggest hit – it was used to brilliant effect in the soundtrack for Wolf of Wall Street.
He was a Mars in Gemini guy, with that mercurial Mars exact square his Virgo Sun. Each sign gets a different style of music to back the talking. It’s genius. I could see it as the sonic styling for a fantastic fashion show. But only Soul Zodiac is available! I want to hear Love, Sex, and the Zodiac – see below for the tracklists. Has anyone got this?
Thoughts?
I used to have a radio show and did an hour long soundscape (a random mash up of music and spoken excerpts) for each sign, and including tracks from this album. Another little treasure from the late 60s era is the way out-there Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac featuring Mort Garson. From these shows, I recall the vibe of the Gemini one being most trippy while Virgo had a higher number of sassy rnb and hip hop releases. I think the Scorpio one that was most like a seance (of course). There was another really weird release by a woman called Elizabeth – it is very DIY but I only found the Gemini and Aries songs (I figure she was a geography teacher as she seemed to be very fond of topographical metaphors such a hills and valleys).
I didn’t find it amusing at all- a superficial definition of the signs- and the music didn’t vibe with me at all🤗
There’s something about Libra season that enhances one’s radar for the music of the ether. I read yesterday about a church in San Francisco that was started after a couple had a religious experience at a John Coltrane concert. So rad.
I’m dying from the album art alone!
Thank you for turning me on to this album. It’s fantastic. Available free on spotify (at least in the USA)
Oooh yeah, spent many a high afternoon listening to Rick Holmes’ euphonious voice.
A Saggo flatmate & uni lecturer in cross-cultural studies (late 1970s) was a big fan of Cannonball Adderly & seduced all the chics with Love, Sex & The Zodiac.
I think that was a thing in the Anthropology department at uni, coz another lecturer there tried to seduce me with it too.
Hopefully the regulator will allow me to post link, but it is on youtube.
I love the music of that time. My most recent rediscovery is the group Sly and the Family Stone. So pure in style and intention.
From Rolling Stone ..
Sly Stone (né Sylvester Stewart) explained the concept behind he and the Family Stone: “If there was anything to be happy about, then everybody’d be happy about it. If there were a lot of songs to sing, then everybody got to sing. If we have something to suffer or a cross to bear – we bear it together.” Those words – a rare, lucid moment for Stone in that era – encapsulated the group’s arc up until that point: from the rosy optimism of their Summer of Love debut through their hit song era and into the cynicism of that early Seventies moment.
Their song Everyday People is on loop.
Love the graphics
Way-hey am a be-bop fan and love Cannonball. Thanks, i need this musical attitude back in my life and energy! Remember, myself, remember.