Jim Burdine: My Musical History

"Things are Gonna Be Different (from now on)"

Some of the tracks rely heavily on “Wrecking Crew” members, but also some of our band playing parts as well. For example in this tune, “Things are Gonna Be Different (from now on)” has Odom and Bunnell playing brass along with Wally and a professional brass section. Howard Lane plays the lead guitar parts. Oh, sorry for the "skip" near the beginning - told you these were copies of old 45's!

"Marjorie"

“Marjorie” was a song we recorded several times in different styles. This version features the typical complex harmonies of Jim Bunnell, Jim Odom and me plus we played all the instruments (really nice flute work by Faulkner). This was recorded at Wally Heider Studios on Fairfax. Towards the end you’ll hear some chimes come in – your’s truly playing. Heider’s studio in those days was pretty small and because you have to hit chimes pretty hard to get a full tone, I had to be in a separate recording “room” (think closet). Problem was they couldn’t get the headphones loud enough for me to hear the band over the chimes, so Wally (Holmes) had to direct me through a little window to be able to play along in synch.

"Hold the High Ground"

“Hold the High Ground” sort of typifies the mix of pop-sounding vocals with a “psychedelic” interlude and a spoken versus by Jim Bunnell. This was "all InRhodes" musically. At the very end Jim Odom goes off the deep end with a falsetto part. A lot of Holmes/Bunnell lyrics are well worth listening to carefully.

"Happy Clothes"

“Happy Clothes” is also a reflection of the times with references to “getting off the ground,” “spinning all around” and generally having a groovy time.

"Walking Down the Avenue"

“Walking Down the Avenue” comes from the love song side of our material. Has a few “psychedelic” references but the chorus has almost an “Onward Christian Soldiers” feel to it – at least in my brain.

"Get Back to the Earth"

“Get Back to the Earth” is a song about loving mother earth (I guess – song never really made any sense to me!) This song has a New Orlean’s style “dirge” as a bridge – found an old huge bass drum to play. That’s Wally Holmes on the trumpet solo. This one definitely had the record company executives scratching their heads!

"Try and Stop Me"

“Try and Stop Me” is also a tune we recorded in different styles. This was the last and I think most interesting version. Starts with a “bounce-the-needle-off-the-record” bass guitar and brass intro. I think I told the story about splitting the signal for a bass part so we could add a fuzz tone sound on another page, but anyway, that was this song. Norm Ratner, our producer loved it so much he kept asking the engineer to cut the master track “hotter” and “hotter” – that is setting the volume higher and higher so that the final copy was actually fairly distorted – the whole record, not just the bass part. Anyway we didn’t like it, but that's the version that ended up as the one record company released. This version of “Try” also has some great sax work by Mike Faulkner, in addition to the bass parts. It's another good example of our “power brass” and thick vocals that was a hallmark of much of our music.

"Lookin Around"

“Lookin Around” is the quintessential InRhodes song. Has a recurring organ riff (the famous Farfisa sound) and four-part harmonies over a bouncy, pop tune and lyric. Good time feeling unless you listen to the lyrics about being confused in relationships – "am I in love?", not wanting to be “tied down” but not wanting to be alon?e – typical teen angst music! That’s the tune we played on Pat Boone’s show and probably at 90% of the gigs we ever played. Also recorded a couple of different ways but this is the only one I have a record of.

"Rhodes Island"

Here is an all instrumental piece called "Rhodes Island" - pretty poor sound quality but a fun listen nonetheless.

Jim Burdine

The InRhodes Singles