Canadian Gino Vanelli in 7 from the beginning 1973 to 1981

A note on the page for his first, brief album Crazy Life (1973) (less than half an hour of music):

After a stint in New York City, Vannelli and his brother Joe went to Los Angeles in a financially distraught and desperate state to wait outside trumpeter Herb Alpert's locked gate for an audition. Alpert was Vannelli's last hope prior to heading back to Montreal the next day. Alpert liked what he heard and two days later signed Vannelli with A&M Records, releasing his first album in 1973. Vannelli's brother, Joe, served as arranger and keyboardist for most of his recording career. At a time when polyphonic synthesizers were non-existent, Joe overdubbed multiple parts to create a texture of sound that was progressive for the early 1970s. It is not widely known, but Vannelli played drums on the entire Crazy Life album. In fact, Gino and Joe performed all of the instruments except for flute and marimba.

You can see from the album covers that right from the beginning he instituted the decollete album cover which carried through all the way into the late seventies and "Saturday Night Fever" days when it was adopted by the mainstream for a brief unlucky period.  This nor his ridiculously good looking face should not detract from the fact that the music is incredibly interesting with influences from the great Stevie W. and also George Duke in the keyboard arrangements and progressive fusionary noodling with tons of thick (thicc as the kids say?) synthesizer patterns.  He did become super-famous by the end too with some AM radio hits, which also shouldn't be a distraction (like his hairy chest and powerfully Samson-like hair.)  His collaboration with brother Joe continued right through to the end of the LP days, and I wonder if today they are ready to kill each other, since such a thing is sure to be destroyed by the music industry. 

Actually he went on to make albums all the way through the eighties, the nineties, the 'aughts' or the millenial years (referencing those people we love to make fun of) all the way until a CD that came out 2 years ago.  I'm not going to even bother checking those out, because I'm only concerned with the progressive material that came out especially in the mid-70s albums like Sunup (1975), and Gemini (1976).

The two Vanellis together are very accomplished musicians and I'll confess even Gino's singing, although so poppy by the end, is extraordinary, with the range an impressive few octaves and the skill at soul singing blues notes and pentatonic scales undeniable, kind of like a Canuck Mariah Carey.  They took a bit to get started, the first album in addition to being too brief is too juvenilia-like to be of interest, echoing the old restaurant joke that not only was the food terrible, the portions of it were too small.  In these early albums you can detect a lot of Stevie Wonder influence especially with the electric organ wah-wah sound accentuated with synthesizers and the DIY qualities of the brothers playing a lot of extra instruments not necessarily as successfully/independently as one would like (e.g. the drumming).  I guess the first great song for us, from our progressive perspective, is the title track of the second album called Powerful People:

It's the kind of song that has to grow on you a little, plus, you have to look past the lyrics, unfortunately, which are a little bit trite, to get the passion of the songwriting (the arrangements I mean).   The middle passage features two instrumentals, one classical, the second a walking bass line with jazz improvisations on top.  So not at all the usual kind of pop song.  You could also argue it's a little bit mixed up, though that can be a good thing, being an adjectival description of some Genesis too.

Then you have the title track of Storm at Sunup, which really hits it out of the ballpark, nailing the soul (George Duke)-fusion-progressive synths bit perfectly in addition to showing off his immense vocal range:

Then on Gist of the Gemini (1975) the song called Omens of Love which was stolen by famed Argentinian Luis Alberto Spinetta (Jade) for his record called Only Love Can Sustain (1980) kills me, not only due to its lush romanticism which is like the heaviest emotional resonance I can imagine musically, but it just mystifies me that any human being can be so gifted as to write music that is so full of beauty and depth of feeling:

Here it's the chord changes that amplify his emotion with the always unusual resolutions from what are ordinary enough at 1st sight (the usual Stairway to Heaven descending chromatic minor key pattern, and in 'the usual' A minor to boot). I would go so far as to say this approaches the depth of progressive of the great C. Nieman, the Polish genius we all know so well.  As I understand it the A minor (lacking the third or 'c' note at first) pattern resolves into B major, truly a shocking transition, moving via B7 to E minor for the space of a chorus, which somehow goes back to the original A.  It's the mix of the melody with the chords that makes it successful, the two together perfectly complementing each other along with above-average lyrics (especially for these guys).

I'm going to sidetrack here to mention that Spinetta's Love album is for me his greatest masterpiece, really unheralded and underappreciated especially since it's like a concept album.  

Still more surprising is the instrumental suite "Prelude to War" which follows shortly after and to me reminds of the Warship Suite from Swiss artist Busser posted here long ago.  Incredible to come upon this in the middle of all the progressive soul/fusion vocalizing.  Not clear to me which war they're referring to here, in 1976.

But it gets even more surprising, by the next album (Pauper in Paradise, 1977) the title track features a full-blown progressive classical composition like Chicago in their early days, for example in Chicago (1970)'s Mourning Suite, or Harmonium's fifth season epic instrumental followed by some nice electric keyboard noodling around, again, cross between ELP and George Duke:

Sadly the remainder of this one turned out to be quite ordinary pop.  

But these albums as a whole are full of surprises for sure.  It goes without saying that by Brother to Brother (1978) we have almost completely lost the progressive element, though bits of it still remain for example in original chord changes.  So we are left with some really gorgeous fusion and progressive soul-fusion and even some out-right prog in some tracks from the mid-seventies albums, Sunup, Gemini, Pauper.

Aussie fusionary band Crossfire, 1975 to 1991

Crossfire number 9 in discogs.  Obviously a very popular band but some of their material is less accessible and I collected all their albums here in one spot, 7 in total spanning from 1975's ST to 1983's Live Montreaux (where else?) in the early days and the outlier the 1991 Tension Release.  There are a couple I admit I had never heard before including obviously that last one.

From humble beginnings, sounding very much like old and somewhat funky Nucleus, they got very commercialistic & smoothly professional in their later days. From the first and ST album, the Perverted Pavane with its just wonderful chordal intro:

The awkwardly named albatrocity from the second album is nonetheless beautiful, certainly musically better than its title:

That pun of hysterical rochords has got to be one of the worst in that joke category I've ever been witness to. Never mind that this is not rock and neither hysterical nor chordal. It's like what they say about AI: it's neither artificial, nor intelligent (in the human sense).  I think that references that famous statement by Churchill: I am neither Winston, nor am I Churchillian.  Or something like that.  Anyways we can apply the LPDP (Law of postseventies declining progressiveness) for sure to this band, and even, start it a little earlier in the late 70s to boot, lucky for us.  Moreover, the vocal album with Michael Franks is terrible, being smooth vocal jazz.  

Sukellusvene from 1979 with bonus single

Wow, gotta love that cover drawing for the single just above!

From discogs:

Sukellusvene was founded in Lappeenranta, Finland, in the early 1970s and released a single and LP in the late of the same decade. Sukellusvene's music was a mixture of pop, jazz and funk, but the band's debut LP was released in the middle of new wave era in 1979 and it did not succeed.  The band quit soon after the release of the album.

Name of the band means submarine in Finnish.   I've known this LP for a while, lucky you if you've never heard it before because I find it to be a perfect mixture of Finnish-style fusion (cf. Finnforest or the great Pekka Pohjola of course) so I got really excited when I heard they had released a single as bonus tracks to the CD as you can see here.  The Moon Funk:

The last track reminds me so much of Carpe Diem, but could it really be an influence here, or more likely, some other progressive rock intermediary? Have a listen, really stunning stuff with all the hallmarks of the European tendency for fusion to be more composed, emotional and intricate:

Jeannine Otis and Heikki Sarmanto in Magic Song (Hi-Hat),1980

Some will love this and some abhor it but I thought I should get it to complete the artist (I mean Sarmanto), who we've featured multiple times before but mostly in connection with other artists, see here.

The information can be found here.  A typical and quite lovely track called Flowers in the Water gives you an indication of the smoothness and professionalism of this jazz, with some interesting songwriting, led by vocalist Jeannine Otis:

Bobby Lyle in 5 albums 1973 to 1985 (Electone, The Genie, New Warrior, Night Fire, Night Breeze)

I think it goes without saying that we all love George Duke.  I'm going to stop right now and let that sink in, because it must be oh so true for anyone reading this.  So much so in fact that I am still amazed at how I was corrected when I posted that Dustar track I was so enamoured of, which was, as it happens, ripped off a Duke composition called "Love Reborn" which you might recall happened way way back here, back in Nov. 2019, back when viruses were nothing to be afraid of and masks were something reserved for, like, Februaries or something like that, for carnivals and such (the kind of thing that's terrifying in the current environment.)  I see that in that earlier post I got a little carried away discussing the records bought in various countries...  But back to the topic at hand, this was a request, and thanks to the emailer for requesting this, I love it when people mention things I was never aware of that turn out to be just wonderful, and there's still lots of that around. Luckily for me.

The first album is very much in the electronic keyboards vein, similar to the Don Muro stuff I posted a long time ago (even longer ago, when video games were played with broken sticks coincidentally also used to probe termites out of mounds).  I can't say I have much of a taste for electronica without percussion because it tends to get a little lost with the artificial sounds and to my ears requires some kind of acoustic or electric guitar to bring it back to earth a bit, a good example of the former tendency being Walter/Wendy Carlos.

The 1973 album suffers a little (for me) from being loaded with cover versions including the dreaded Shaft, hard to really improve on the original there, and By the Time I get to Phoenix, same criticism but different style.  On the other hand Jobin's Wave song really needs to be retired or needed to be retired by that year, preferably exiled to Devil's Island from which no one could ever escape.  As an example I uploaded The Dance of Love and Peace, which is really more David Sancious (brilliant in his own right) in my opinion (or imho as the kids say-- and by kids I mean anyone under the age of 40):

1978's New Warrior's Title Track intro is so very George Dukish, I mean, the riffing around is so beautiful it's almost miraculous to hear for these tired ears, starting with that orchestral drum intro, the synth squeaking, the electric piano unisoned with bass & later with grand piano:

And that whole album is quite remarkable and remarkably beholden to George Duke, incl. a track called Inner Space.

As we get further and further into the late seventies of course the music gets more and more commercial, just what you'd expect, this is not the great Robert Fripp making Discipline in 1981.  As usual, entering into the territory of the 80s without an insane asylum pass means you're going to be reverting back to acoustic jazz and giving up on the electric energy of fusion as on the album Night Breeze, which is not recommended listening at this time.  Nor will it ever be for the most of us.

PS the Electone (electric organ made by Yamaha) can be read about here on the great wikipedia.