Lovely Is Today
Eddie Harris
Plug Me In, 1968
This is early electronic music…son! Kraftwerk be damned! And by early, I mean early - back when Atlantic had the funky blue and green labels. “Eddie Harris and His Electric Saxophone” must have been risque for 1968, there’s even the nervous sounding marketing sentence on the back: “The wide public acceptance of the previous album demonstrates that an electronically aided instrument, when placed with a talent such as Eddie Harris, can find a proper niche in today’s ever evolving music.”
Truth be told, it’s hard to really tell the difference between this “electronically amplified” tenor sax and a normal one, other than that his tone is a little unruly. Bill Cerri, our genteel liner note writer, says that without Eddie’s skills, the amplified sax would sound like a kazoo. They probably could have come up with a more descriptive term for it then, as “electronically amplified” sounds like he’s just playing into a mic.
This song actually has the “live horns in a room” sound that I search for on old records. Obviously all of the backing horns are live but its still ironic that they are basically apologizing for it’s avant garde sound and 38 years later, the difference is hardly discernible.
As you might guess this track was sampled (on Gang Starr’s “2 Deep”) a long time ago.
>> songs are available for two weeks [6.1 MB]
May 4th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
I have this record
and i thought the same thing
where are the electronics?
I personally think you can hear more electronics on miles davis records and don ellis records
dont leave it to a sax player to do a trumpet players job!
The device his is displaying on the cover does do some very ill stuff
Its a Maestro g2 rhythm and sound for woodwinds
the sax player from traffic uses one too
If i can ever get my hands on one
i will do a answer to plug me in
called no really plug me in
May 4th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
i can’t believe you know the actual name for that thing…i’m impressed.