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Recorded at CBGB and The Cutting Room in NY on May 20, 2005 this absolutely rockin' record is now ready for sale. Genya takes it to the streets with all the coolest tunes she has recorded in the studio and now they all appear on this one LIVE album. Way to go Genya! Play Pedal to the Metal Play Shadowboxing Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: 1. Back IN My Arms Again 2. Pedal To The Metal 3. Sweetest One 4. I Won't Sleep On The Wet Spot Again 5. Aye Colorado 6. Love Is A Fire 7. Flying 8. Eye Of The Needle 9. Do It Just For Me 10. Are You Lonely For Me Baby 11. The Knight Ain't Long Enough 12. Shadowboxing 13. Jerry's Pigeons 14. When I'm Not At Home  | | "And I Mean It" is the work of a gifted woman making a rock and roll statement on her terms. The world has yet to realize what a truly polished diamond this album is. It is an amalgam of girl group, new wave, blues, pop and folk/rock by Genya Ravan. To hear her exquisite voice on Night Owl soaring above her own backing vocals is intense, imagine Etta James backed by The Sex Pistols doing a rock version of Earth Angel. Of all Genya Ravan's work, "And I Mean It" is possibly the most concise and picture perfect statement of what the woman is musically about. Play I Won't Sleep on the Wet Spot Play Stubborn Kinda Girl Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: Pedal To The Metal I Won’t Sleep On The Wet Spot No More Steve... Stubborn Kinda Girl It’s Me Junkman Love Isn’t Love I’m Wired, Wired, Wired Roto Root Her Night Owl
Also available as a numbered series of only 5,000 CD copies in a single fold cardboard sleeve from Hip-O-Select (Genya's Label) - for $17.49 - just Click Here |
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Urban Desire is Genya Ravan creating music on her terms after artistically successful work with producers Richard Perry, Jimmy Miller and Jim Price, along with the three strong albums she recorded with Ten Wheel Drive. As producer of the prototype punk band The Dead Boys and their classic single Sonic Reducer, Ravan was an essential part of the "New Wave" explosion of the 70's, which was a blend of punk rock and power pop. Urban Desire is the quintessential "New Wave" album, and though it caused a stir, it has never fully been recognized as the groundbreaking work it is. A driving cover of The Supremes hit Back In My Arms Again has guitarists Conrad Taylorand Ritchie Fliegler fragmenting Deep Purple's My Woman From Tokyo riff under Ravan's brilliant New York party atmosphere. That comes right after her duet with Lou Reed, a tune called Aye Co'Lorado, one of the album's highlights written by Ravan and keyboard player Charlie Giordano. Play Do It Just For Me Play Back in My Arms Again Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: Jerry’s Pigeons The Knight Ain’t Long Enough Do It Just For Me Shot In The Heart Aye Co’lorado Back In My Arms Again Cornered The Sweetest One Darling, I Need You Messin Around Shadowboxing
Also available as a numbered series of only 5,000 CD copies in a single fold cardboard sleeve from Hip-O-Select (Genya's Label) - for $17.49 - just Click Here | | For Fans Only shows the many sides of Ravan on one disc, from the soulful music of her They Love Me/They Love Me Not and Goldie Zelkowitz projects to the street smarts of Urban Desire. She starts the CD off with a beautiful and interesting "Fly Me to the Moon," the Bart Howard composition which was released in 1954 by Kaye Ballard under the title "In Other Words." Mike Thorne suggested Ravan cover the Beatles, and they recorded about five Fab Four tunes. "Don't Let Me Down" is here on For Fans Only and it is brilliant, one of the highlights of the disc. Those eerie "How Do You Sleep" riffs that back up John Lennon when he sings the chorus of that classic song from the Imagine LP are lifted and transplanted onto this Beatles cover. Play Fly Me To The Moon Plat Rattle Snake Shake Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: 1. Fly Me To The Moon 2. 202 Rivington Street-Live 3. Don't Let Me Down 4. Rattle Snake Shake 5. To Keep You Satisfied 6. Anyway That You Want Me 7. Something's Got a Hold On Me 8. Two Steps From the Blues 9. Easy Evil 10. Night Flight 11. Carry Me Carrie 12. Reconsider 13. Take Me For a Little While |
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Genya Ravan, her first solo disc which Columbia released after she left Ten Wheel Drive, was the catalyst for Ravan producing herself. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the record is that it is the only one she recorded for Columbia, a place that seemed like the perfect home for a woman with so many talents. Clive Davis originally wanted Richard Perry to produce, and it wasn't the fact that he was Ravan's first boyfriend that the idea was nixed, his pop work with Carly Simon was not what this artist is about. Larry Fallon former partner of producer Jimmy Miller and the guy behind "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)"for The Looking Glass (he had also put strings on an unreleased version of "Wild Horses" for Jimmy Miller and the Rolling Stones ) was brought in. But "Brandy" was more pop than "You're So Vain" if you think about it. To feel comfortable, Ravan asked for, and got, her original partners in Ten Wheel Drive, Aram Schefrin, and Michael Zager, and with the band Baby behind her, Goldie Zelkowitz made the first album of her career beyond Goldie & the Gingerbreads and Ten Wheel Drive. It is a pure document of her transition. Play Sit Yourself Down Play I Hate Myself Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: What Kind Of Man Are You Sit Yourself Down I Hate Myself (For Loving You) I’m In The Mood For Love Takuta Kalaba/Turn On Your Lovelight Lonely Lonely Flying Every Little Bit Hurts Bird On a Wire I Can’t Stand It
Please allow one week for CD delivery. | | When you hear the great blues singer Genya Ravan totally capture Gregg Allman's "Whipping Post," you realize that his melody needed a vocal that could bring the song way over the bar. Ravan's voice does just that, hits the home run while gliding through the dense production of Gabriel Mekler, the man who produced Janis Joplin's I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama. It's the combination of Mekler's guidance and Ravan's musical instincts that give immense power to this 1974 release titled after Ravan's birth name, Goldie Zelkowitz. Song streams coming soon Songs on this album are: My Oh My My Mama Whipping Post Get It Back Hold On I'm Coming Little By Little Breadline Walkin, Walkin Need Your Lovin Peeping And Hiding Coming Soon for download. Please allow one week for CD delivery. |
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When the late Jimmy Miller was on the top of the world with the Rolling Stones, he was given a ten-album deal with ABC Records resulting in various releases, including a B.B. King album produced by the late Joe Zagarino, material by Bobby Whitlock, and this extraordinary record by the lead singer of Ten Wheel Drive, Genya Ravan. Jim Price and Joe Zagarino produced the album for Jimmy Miller Productions, with Miller producing only two of the 12 titles, the Stones-ish "Southern Celebration" and Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock's "Keep on Growing." This is a great setting for Ravan, her impeccable vocals a perfect fit for an album rife with pop and Southern rock. The majority of this album is a testament to Ravan's vocal genius. Play When You Got Trouble Play Under Control Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: 1. Gotta Tell Somebody ('Bout My Baby) 2. When You Got Trouble 3. You Got the Blues 4. Under Control 5. I'll Be With You 6. Southern Celebration 7. Missy (Mister) 8. That Cryin' Rain 9. Keep on Growing 10. Don't Press Me 11. Roll and Roll and Roll 12. Swan Blues | | Play Tightrope Play Come Live With Me Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: Tightrope Lapidary Eye Of The Needle Candy Man Blues Ain’t Gonna Happen House In Central Park Morning Much Better Brief Replies Come Live With Me Stay With Me How Long Before I’m Gone Last Of The Line The Night I Got Out of Jail Shootin’ The Breeze Love Me I Had Him Down |
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This exemplary recording by songwriters Aram Schefrin, Mike Zager and singer Genya Ravan was highly experimental in ways that Chicago, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Traffic and other of their contemporaries wanted to be. Imagine Ronnie Spector leaving The Ronettes to join Blood Sweat & Tears, and realize the sweet Goldie Zelkowitz from Goldie & The Gingerbreads did just that by reinventing herself here as the great Genya Ravan. The Ravan co-write Tightrope is five minutes and ten seconds of psychedelic blues/jass/funk. This is the sound Janis Joplin would refine for her Kozmic Blues experience, and while Janis Joplin and Kozmic Blues performed at Woodstock, Ten Wheel Drive were getting such a buzz they turned Woodstock down. History would, indeed, have been different had they played I Am A Want Ad at that event, but with Sid Bernstein as co-manager, and songs like Lapidary, the band had a lot going for it. Lapidary is a complete about face, Traffic's John Barleycorn with a female vocalist. Eye Of The Needle on the other hand, was an eight minute plus show stopper of horns and guitars that come in like some country's national anthem. Play Lapidary Play I Am A Want Ad Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: Tightrope Lapidary Eye Of The Needle Candy Man Blues Ain’t Gonna Happen Polar Bear Rug House In Central Park I Am A Want Ad | | Genya Ravan started as one of the pioneers of the girl group sound in the sixties, reinvented herself in this experimental pop/jazz unit, and went on to put out solid rock & roll solo albums in the 1980's. Had the songwriting duo of Michael Zager and Aram Schefrin continued working with Genya Ravan, we would have a body of work that would be impressive, and they would no doubt be household names. There is every indication of that here, especially on "Last of the Line," perhaps the most commercial of Zager & Schefrin's tunes. A classy hook about a ramblin' gal..."the last branch of the tree/which will die with me/I'm the last of the line." The instrumental "Interlude: A View of Soft" concludes this special album with Ravan's voice used as an instrument, as accurate as Dave Leibman's flute and sax. Powerful music that should have been stretched out over 25 or so albums. Play Morning Much Better Play Come Live With Me Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: Morning Much Better Brief Replies Pulse Come Live With Me Stay With Me Baby How Long Before I’m Gone Last Of The Line Interlude:A View Of Soft |
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Ravan is in total control from the very slick "Shootin' The Breeze," which is one of the most magnificent songs they ever put on plastic, to "Fourteenth Street (I Can't Get Together)." The textures Schefrin and Zager build are the perfect complement to Genya, and they should have kept this unit together at all costs. The title track is a mere 19 seconds of silliness while "The Night I Got Out Of Jail" takes a Beatles riff and tucks it inside an Ike & Tina Turner rave up. The nine tracks here hardly satisfy fans of early adult rock who would demand more. What they got was "No Next Time," the closest thing to a duet on this album, and a wonderful excercise in stretching the boundaries of pop. This is tough stuff that didn't lend itself to early seventies radio, but had the potential to move the music from this time period to another, higher level. "The Pickpocket" fuses the hard rock of early Deep Purple from their keyboard heavy Tetragrammaton Days with contemporary jazz. The arrangements and performance here are top notch, so good that the fact there would be no more is the most disappointing aspect of "Peculiar Friends." Play The Night I Got Out Of Jail Play The Pickpocket Play Samples of the entire album Songs on this album are: Peculiar Friends The Night I Got Out Of Jail Shootin’ The Breeze The Pickpocket No Next Time Love Me Fourteenth Street (I can’t Get Together) I Had Him Down Down In The Cold | ||
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| The Legend of Genya Ravan
Genya Ravan released an album a year starting in 1969 with Ten Wheel Drive's Construction #1 on Polydor, up to the 1974 release of Goldie Zelkowitz on Janus, but created her most popular recordings on 20th Century Fox in 1978 and 1979 when she released the self-produced ...And I Mean It / Urban Desire one-two punch. Genya Ravan, her first solo disc which Columbia released after she left Ten Wheel Drive, was the catalyst for Ravan producing herself. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the record is that it is the only one she recorded for Columbia, a place that seemed like the perfect home for a woman with so many talents. Clive Davis originally wanted Richard Perry to produce, and it wasn't the fact that he was Ravan's first boyfriend that the idea was nixed, his pop work with Carly Simon was not what this artist is about. Larry Fallon former partner of producer Jimmy Miller and the guy behind "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)"for The Looking Glass (he had also put strings on an unreleased version of "Wild Horses" for Jimmy Miller and the Rolling Stones ) was brought in. But "Brandy" was more pop than "You're So Vain" if you think about it. To feel comfortable, Ravan asked for, and got, her original partners in Ten Wheel Drive, Aram Schefrin, and Michael Zager, and with the band Baby behind her, Goldie Zelkowitz made the first album of her career beyond Goldie & the Gingerbreads and Ten Wheel Drive. It is a pure document of her transition. This is the shift between the sounds of Ten Wheel Drive and what would follow on 1973's They Love Me, They Love Me Not and 1974's Goldie Zelkowitz. She takes Rod Stewart and the Faces superb and little recognized "Flying" and makes it her own, a tune she would continue to perform live in concert. Stephen Stills' "Sit Yourself Down" gets a total reworking, just as Gabriel Mekler would revamp Whipping Post with her in 1974, when Ten Wheel Drive was re-forming with Annie Sutton. It is an amazing thread of events, with players from both the Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin filtering through her recorded work, and where this album could have been Columbia Records replacing Janis Joplin with Genya Ravan, the singer opted to take her music into a realm where Diane Schuur would feel at home, rock influenced by jazz rather than high-powered blues rock. Indeed, the final track on side one, "Takuta Kalaba," is blended into "Turn on Your Love Lights," a song Janis Joplin did with the Grateful Dead if memory serves on one of the live tapes of theirs that has circulated over the years, so there was this thread, though the result is 180 degrees from where Joplin took it. Genya Ravan did not want to fill the Janis Joplin void for Mr. Davis — she wanted to be herself. Clive told her, "You are either a rock singer or you're a jazz singer, but you cannot do both," and maybe for short-term marketing he had a point, but for longevity and vision, the Larry Fallon-produced "I'm in the Mood For Love" is exquisite. Fallon had come from a jazz band with Jimmy Miller, who coincidentally produced Genya Ravan's next album for his production company, released on ABC Dunhill. James Moody's saxophone solo is thrilling, and a real touch of class. The cabaret atmosphere seguing into the African drum sound of Michael Olatunji and his "Takuta Kalaba," which was released as a single in Europe. Brilliant material which would certainly stifle the Janis Joplin comparisons. The soulful rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire" was tracked long before Cohen was considered chic. Columbia released "What Kind of Man Are You" from this album on a 45 rpm with the non-LP A side of "Morning Glory," written by Michael Holmes, and produced by he and Dixon Van Winkle, making for five producers during these sessions! The single was the idea of Clive Davis, and it is beautiful, the style of music that Bette Midler was having success with at this point in time. Midler eventually covered Genya Ravan's "Stay With Me" for The Rose film and soundtrack, bringing things full circle. Genya Ravan is an album brimming with this creative woman's personality, talent, and amazing vocal prowess. "Morning Glory" should eventually find itself on a Sony/Legacy re-release of Genya Ravan, important music that is continuously contemporary because of the long-range vision of the artist. The Legend of Ten Wheel Drive Ten Wheel Drive was a highly influential rock/jazz group not afraid to push the envelope while exploring various musical styles. Though musicians came and went, including the original lead vocalist, by the time the fourth album was released, the records have stood the test of time, influencing the successful Bette Midler breakthrough film The Rose, inspiring women with the drive and ambition to front their own group in a once male-dominated industry, getting sold on auction sites like Ebay to be discovered by new generations of music lovers. The original lead vocalist and founding member, Genya Ravan, spoke with AMG concerning how she formed the band: "I went to see Billy Fields, he was going to manage me. He had a friend in New Jersey that befriended two guys that were writers and they were looking for someone to sing their songs. Billy asked me if I wanted to hear them, I said 'OK' since I was always looking for material, so I met with Mike Zager and Aram Schefrin at a dinky little piano studio in Times Square. They played "Polar Bear Rug" and "I Am a Want Ad" and got me interested even though I thought they sounded more like show tunes, I was also an actress, so I liked it. At this time, I had an R&B band and they came to hear me in some sleazy bar and they liked what they heard and saw. They did not have a band nor musicians in mind, I knew some good jazz players, so (we) got the musicians and started to audition and rehearse." When asked how the idea took shape, Ravan replied: "When I heard Blood, Sweat & Tears — (the) first record with Al Kooper ( Child Is Father to the Man), my fave. I said, oh I want a horn band. It was 1969, we started to rehearse at the Bitter End, Sid Bernstein joined in the management with Billy Fields. It was a very exciting time, we played the Atlanta Pop Fest. Every great band that lived played that gig, that gig is what broke our band (and) we were an instant success." On the material, Ravan said she "seldom wrote with Ten Wheel Drive...Aram was a brilliant lyricist, Mike and Aram were easy to work with, so I wrote some, it made me feel good, because the ones I wrote turned out to be the most soulful, like "Pulse," "Tightrope." I came into my writing more during the Urban Desire and ...and I Mean It! recordings." Those were the albums that came out on 20th Century Records at the end of the '80s, apart from Ten Wheel Drive. The group signed with Polydor when Sid Bernstein brought Jerry Schoenbaum to the band's rehearsal and to one of their gigs at the Bitter End. The vocalist noted: "Jerry flipped. Signed us immediately." There were artistic consequences to having phenoms like bassist Bill Takas and drummer Leon Rix moving on to LaBelle and Buzzy Linhart, Rix recording with Bette Midler as well. Over the span of four albums, guitarist Aram Schefrin and keyboard player Mike Zager (no relation to Zager & Evans of "In the Year 2525" fame, though because of the point in time, there was some confusion in rock circles) worked with more than a dozen and a half different players. When Ravan was asked about this, she replied: "It turned out to be good for us, fresh blood, it was creative, I love changes like that. I did not like the canning of musicians, but I was the one that had to do it. New blood is always exciting, You know how laid-back jazzers can be, they get excited for the first five minutes." The band played Carnegie Hall on Ravan's birthday and she cites the Central Park gig for WNEW when the Nightbird disc jockey Allison Steele hosted it, as well as the Atlanta Pop Festival as just two of the highlights of their brief but important career. Steele would later co-write the liner notes to Bill Levenson's 1995 16-track compilation on Polygram, The Best of Ten Wheel Drive With Genya Ravan. With all the excitement the band generated live, there was, unfortunately, no full concert performance on video or record. "One of the last gigs we did was a show at Carnegie Hall with a symphony," Ravan said. "Mike and Aram were geniuses. This was their forte — they wrote this rock opera of "Little Big Horn" and it was brilliant, Polydor did not want to record it, I swear 'til this day, had it been recorded, Ten Wheel Drive would have gone down in history, it was one of the reasons I was disillusioned into leaving the label, it made me want to quit the business." There were no unreleased gems recorded and left in the vaults, Ravan stating that everything happened all too fast. And then she left the group she founded: "Things started to get complicated. The music was not the main thing anymore, it was too expensive to have that many people involved. We had accountants, lawyers, roadies, and of course the group, we could not tour Europe because it was to expensive to get there and stay there. I just felt like there would be no future for me with the band anymore, also some personal stuff went down, that made it awkward. It just felt like it had hit the end for me." Ravan recorded a solo album in 1972 for Columbia Records with Schefrin and Zager co-producing. They enlisted the Rascals vocalist Annie Sutton to sing on the self-titled 1974 Capitol release that featured Hall & Oates on backing vocals, but it wasn't the same. The band created essential music and has a revered place in rock history. Schefrin practices law in Rhode Island, having produced other records after the final breakup of Ten Wheel Drive; Zager does soundtrack work; and Ravan continues to record. Visit Genya's Web Site |