Galaxy Records was the black music division of the San Francisco-based Fantasy label, but while the parent company enjoyed hit after hit with flagship act Creedence Clearwater Revival, Galaxy languished in commercial limbo -- equally influenced by A&R chief Ray Shanklin's predilection for traditional blues and the psychedelia bubbling up from the Haight-Ashbury scene, Galaxy's homegrown soul was probably just too expansive and eccentric for the charts, but decades after the fact the label's output sounds amazing. Charting ...
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Galaxy Records was the black music division of the San Francisco-based Fantasy label, but while the parent company enjoyed hit after hit with flagship act Creedence Clearwater Revival, Galaxy languished in commercial limbo -- equally influenced by A&R chief Ray Shanklin's predilection for traditional blues and the psychedelia bubbling up from the Haight-Ashbury scene, Galaxy's homegrown soul was probably just too expansive and eccentric for the charts, but decades after the fact the label's output sounds amazing. Charting Galaxy's output from 1967 to 1972, Get Your Lie Straight assembles 22 slabs of Technicolor funk in the best post-Sly Bay Area tradition: Rodger Collins' "Foxy Girls to Oakland," an homage to the "true, fine mamas in the East Bay...strutting down East 14th" is alone worth the price of admission, but there's much here worth investigating, most notably "I Love Her Too" and "Feelin' Blue" -- a pair of cuts from future Tower of Power vocalist Lenny Williams -- and "Chicken Heads," a truly singular folk-funk freak-out courtesy of Bobby Rush. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
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