Various Artists

The early '70s were a golden age for the Bay Area music scene. Artists like Sly & the Family Stone, the Grateful Dead, Santana, and Joy of Cooking enjoyed tremendous critical and/or commercial success by blending disparate musical styles in new ways. Meanwhile, the area's vibrant club and recording scenes overflowed with countless bands that went largely unnoticed.

Related Content

• Live Review, 1/25/12: Bob Weir Reunites with RatDog at Tamalpais Research Institute
  January 26, 2012
• S.F. Trumpeter Bill Ortiz on Playing with Souls of Mischief, Covering Gil Scott-Heron, and Touring with Sheila E.
  January 26, 2012
• Berkeley's Sgt. Mary Kusmiss Regrets Stoking High School Prostitution Hype
  December 22, 2011
• Grateful Dead Videogame Comes with Rock 'n' Roll, Lacks Sex and Drugs
  December 16, 2011
• Reports of Prostitution Referrals from Berkeley High School Hyped - But By Whom?
  December 12, 2011

More About

• Berkeley
• Santana (Band)
• Sheila E.
• Ray Obiedo
• Lonnie Hewitt

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

The Welcome to the Newsroom compilation, released by Berkeley's 7 Bridges label, taps this latter wellspring, collecting 13 unreleased soul and funk tracks recorded locally between 1970 and 1976. There are a few name players on the album -- a pre-Prince Sheila E. on percussion, a pre-smooth jazz Ray Obiedo on guitar, Cal Tjader sideman Lonnie Hewitt on keys, and '60s soul man Freddie Hughes on several vocals -- but the main attraction is the music itself, a uniquely bay-ish amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, and blues.

Electric Church, a horn-driven band that sounds like it could have put a scare into Tower of Power, offers four songs, while a group called Plight checks in with three minutes of lo-fi funk mayhem ("Soul Duck"). The remainder of the tracks are by Paul Tillman Smith, a singer/songwriter who later made his mark as the leader of the obscure local acts Vitamin E and the Bridge, and more recently helped spearhead Berkeley's annual Juneteenth festival. Here, Smith's numbers range from "Country Flower," a Latin-tinged ballad reminiscent of War, to the primitive and aptly titled "Ready to Live Raw Funk."

Audiophiles may want to avoid Welcome to the Newsroom, as the master tapes were forgotten in a backpack in a garage for 25 years. Having grown moldy and weak, some of the reels deteriorated upon transfer, with the resulting tracks sounding muddy at times. Still, the songs and the performances shine through, leading to heightened speculation as to what other treasures might be buried in Bay Area garages amongst old magazines and abandoned tricycles.