Forgotten pearl No. 2

ZZEBRA - Zzebra

Zzebra in its original incarnation was an amalgamation of two brilliant bands. Terry Smith and Dave Quincey from If and Lasissi (Loughty) Amao from Osibisa. Liam Genockey and John McCoy were brought in on drums and bass, and Gus Yeadon on keyboards and vocals. Ken Burgess produced and Tony Taverner engineered.
Gus Yeadon was not happy in the band and when Ken's old friend and partner, Tommy Eyre, returned from recording in the USA with Mark-Almond, he was invited to see them play at London's Marquee club with a view to joining.
Eyre recalls, "The band was absolutely electric. The combination of jazz, serious heavy rock and Nigerian folk music was incredible. The highlight of the evening though was an unaccompanied guitar section in the middle of "Hungry Horse" Terry Smith attempted an incredibly speedy rising line that ended up in a mis-fretting. He grunted and tried again. Still missed the last couple of notes. As hot as the Marquee club was, Terry was wearing a thick heavy woolen overcoat. He took a huge slug from it, laid it on the ground and then played the line perfectly and at double the speed! That's when I knew I wanted to play with that band!"
Zzebra was a hard-working road band and its improvisational nature coupled with the sheer power of the rhythm section allowed it to constantly experiment without losing the audience. Many new songs were composed this way...

Personnel:

Loughty Amao - percussion, sax, flute, vocals

Liam Genockey - drums, vocals

Dave Quincey - sax

Terry Smith - guitar

Gus Yeadon - piano, guitar, vocals

Steve Byrd - guitar

Tommy Eyre - keyboards, flute, vocals

Alan Marshall - vocals

John McCoy - bass

Tracks

1 Cobra Woman 6:16

2 Mr J. 4:20

3 Mah Jong 5:13

4 Ife 6:23

5 Spanish Fly 4:21

6 Amuso Fi 5:19

7 Rainbow Train 5:08

8 Hungry Horse 6:46

LINK:

h!!p://www.megaupload.com/?d=ES1SA030

Please leave a comment