The 24th Street Band -- Shoppin' 'Round Again

 

Earlier in the year, I'd been helping out Rocket Brown translate some liner notes for a number of City Pop albums, and in turn, I was getting some valuable insight into the singers and bands in terms of their philosophies and origins. One of those bands was The 24th Street Band. I've actually included them onto the blog already since they backed up heartthrob singer Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）on his December 1979 album "Super Drive".

The 24th Street Band consisted of guitarist Hiram Bullock, keyboardist Clifford Carter, bassist Will Lee and drummer Steve Jordan, some of whom would go on to play for the house band on the long-running NBC comedy-variety show "Saturday Night Live", and I believe as well, the band for "The David Letterman Show". Since I was once an avid viewer of both shows, I probably did already hear these guys in action when I was a teenager. But what I found out from the liner notes for The 24th Street Band's debut self-titled album from 1979 was that the guys first got together because of legendary saxophonist David Sanborn when he needed an opening act lickety-split back in 1977, and Bullock took charge and got this initially ragtag group together to become a successful act.

Another thing that I discovered from my translation work was that, true to that Big in Japan phenomenon, The 24th Street Band, though they may have been born in New York City, was more than happily adopted by the Japanese. In fact, the author for the liner notes in "The 24th Street Band" cheekily declared that they should have been called Ni-juu-yon-chome Band（24丁目バンド...and indeed that's how they are titled on J-Wiki） instead due to their rampant popularity in the nation, and it was the time when City Pop and West Coast AOR were beginning to get their dues on either side of the Pacific Ocean.

In any case, here is one of the tracks from the album "Shoppin' Round Again" by the Osaka-born Bullock, and I'm assuming that it is indeed Bullock singing the song. This is alternately propulsive and floating fusion-funk going on here, and I couldn't help but think of some of that TOTO music when listening to "Shoppin' Round Again", but at the same time, I can hear Gino Vannelli in Bullock's vocals and the arrangement. 

Along with that debut album, The 24th Street Band would release two more albums in 1980 and 1981 before calling it a day. Of course, the individual members weren't lacking for work after that.