War slippin into darkness album
Other than Lee Oskar (who is from Denmark and joined the band when they teamed up with Eric Burdon), every one of War’s original members are black men who grew up in working-class neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles and San Diego. Dickerson (bass), Papa Dee Allen (percussion) and Charles Miller (sax). But the ‘classic’ War lineup (meaning the cats responsible for 99% of what we love about the band) is: Howard Scott (guitar), Harold Brown (drums), Lonnie Jordan (keyboards), Lee Oskar (harmonica), B.B. Hell, two of their biggest hits give a nod to SoCal Chicano culture (“Cisco Kid” and “Lowrider”) and the vocals of another of my favorite War tunes (“Hey Señorita”) is entirely in Spanish.
I’m not saying there’s no multiculturalism in War’s sound. Instead, War sounds like a classic soul/funk band of the Seventies, a time when damn near every soul/funk band had guitarists and percussionists and the like. I have to admit that I neither see nor hear anything of the sort. That’s pretty much the standard line on War and after reading descriptions such as Wikipedia’s, one expects to hear in War’s music, oh, I don’t know, a mix of rock, funk, jazz, Latin music, R&B and reggae. The band's diverse musical influences have made it an enduring influence…. The band also transcended racial and cultural barriers with a multi-ethnic line-up. War was a multiracial, multicultural American funk band of the 1970s from Southern California, known for the hit song "Low Rider.” Formed in 1969, War was the first and most successful musical crossover, fusing elements of rock, funk, jazz, Latin music, R&B, and even reggae. For example, this is the intro paragraph to Wikipedia’s extensive entry on the band: Much is made of War’s multi-racial and multi-cultural mix, both musically and in terms of personnel. If I’d been born as music instead of a man, I like to think that “Get Down” or “Nappy Head” is what I would’ve sounded like. (An eponymously-titled album that I enjoy a lot but would recommend for hardcore fans only.) Seven months later, I was born a month or so after that, so was All Day Music. In February of 1971-when I was about the size of a pea, I suppose-War released their first ‘solo’ album. The members of War-all of whom were considerably younger than Burdon-finished the tour without him, came home to Los Angeles and started recording. Eventually though, the hard pace got to Burdon and one day somewhere in Europe, he quit. Sources agree that ‘Eric Burdon & War’ were considerably better live than on record and, to whit, they toured relentlessly. A year before the first Burdon/War album came out in 1970, neither party had heard of the other. (Think “Spill The Wine,” except separated into parts and extended so that it runs fifteen minutes long.) The lack of coherence in the band’s sound shouldn’t have been a surprise. The music can range from good to great to embarrassingly awful…and during the same song, no less. The albums that Burdon and War recorded together are a schizophrenic, rambling mess. Their ‘debut’ self-titled album-which had been released earlier in ‘71-followed two albums that they recorded with Eric Burdon of the English rock band the Animals. That same year, War dropped All Day Music, which is either their second or fourth full-length album, depending on how you do your counting.