THE DEVIL'S ANVIl "Hard Rock From The Middle East" promo psych/prog/rock 1967
$
35
Favourite Auctions
To save auctions to your favourites, please login
If you don't have an account, please register
Description
THE DEVIL’S ANVIL
“HARD ROCK FROM THE MIDDLE EAST”
Columbia CL 2664 (mono pressing)
1967
VG+ / VG+
FIRST PRESSING
Promo copy with timing slick
BEST PRICED COPY ON EBAY AS OF 3-5-2017. One other copy is sitting at $84 (VG+/VG+), incl. post.
Very unusual LP for several reasons. The band featured unusual instrumentation for a rock band (oud, tamboura, bourzouki, accordion, durbeki). For a major label (Columbia was considered the major of major labels at the time), the distribution of this LP was nil. I was collecting heavily in 1969 and I NEVER saw this for sale in a retail or a used record shop. Ever.
From the fine ALLMUSIC web site: “The Devil's Anvil is one of those groups that could only have been signed to a label like Columbia Records in the late 1960s. At that point, the record company was desperately trying to make up for the ground and market share that it had lost during the years 1964-1966, when -- with a few notable exceptions -- it had avoided rock & roll. Enter folkie-turned-rock musician/producer Felix Pappalardi, who brought the Devil's Anvil to Columbia and got them a contract to record one album.
Pappalardi was born in the Bronx in 1939, and eventually joined burgeoning folk music community in Greenwich Village. He later worked as a backup musician and arranger with Tim Hardin, the Youngbloods, Ian and Sylvia, the Mugwumps (The Mamas & Papas) , and Tom Rush. It was in 1966 while hanging out in the Village that he chanced upon a group of Middle Eastern-born or -descended musicians playing at a coffee house called Feejon. Pappalardi began playing with them, and eventually they became the unofficial house band at Feejon -- the core members of the group, which took the name the Devil's Anvil, were Steve Knight (rhythm guitar, bass, bouzouki), Jerry Satpir (lead guitar, vocals), Eliezer Adoram (accordion), and Kareem Issaq (oud, vocals). Knight and Pappalardi developed a good working relationship, trading the bass and guitar spots during the recording of the group's one album, Hard Rock from the Middle East, which set the stage for their subsequent team-up together along with guitarist Leslie West in Mountain.
The Devil's Anvil never caught on as a recording act, in part because of the timing of their debut album's release. The very same day that Hard Rock from the Middle East hit the stores, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War broke out, and not a single radio station anywhere in New York (where the group was based and, thus, had its best shot at airplay) would go near the album. The members eventually went their separate ways, Knight to join Mountain, and the rest out of the pop music industry.”
Stored vertically in a smoke free environment going on 49 years.
price rating
