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| "Inspiration Information is a record for people that have heard a lot of music, maybe too much, and are looking for a new musical romance." --Steven Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide Imagine how it must have felt. Three years of your life spent obsessively working your ideas out, stretching and revising and perfecting them until finally you're ready to set them down. In the studio you experience the magic of complete artistic control, handling almost all of the instrumentation, production and arrangements, fully realizing every bit of your uniquely inspired musical vision. It comes out exactly like it sounded in your head. Your record hits the streets--an album of nine songs--and you think to yourself that one of them might even be a hit. Then you wait...and wait...and nothing happens. Your record label drops you, and you wake up to find that your once promising musical career is dead at the age of 21. Then one day, 27 years later, you receive a phone call from some small record label intent on reissuing your long forgotten work. "Why not," you think. What else have you got to lose? The album is given a contemporary-retro repackaging makeover, and released with a nice media push. A sticker on the reissue features none other than David Byrne boldly declaring your music to be "...equal to Marvin's and Curtis'," and the critics buy it all the way. Rolling Stone, who originally ignored your release in 1974, now sings its praises, claiming that your record "reveals an expansive creativity that appeared unlimited – maybe even a Prince-size talent in the making." Your records are selling. You turn on the radio and hear your songs. You're invited to perform on David Letterman. Hip New York audiences turn out in droves to see you headline one of your first shows in decades, enthusiastically bringing you back on stage with an encore. Imagine how it must have felt. As if to undo the collective guilt that comes when the public realizes it has neglected a great artist in its midst, Shuggie Otis' Inspiration Information has suddenly become a strong selling phenomenon. The album was recently ranked among Amazon.com's Top 100 selling records. The 48-year old Otis has officially been "rediscovered," with a several city tour already in progress (I'm seeing him at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles on July 5, 2001). A funky miracle, this is some sort of rags-to-riches Horatio Alger bit of American lore that makes you want to both wave the flag and burn it. On the one hand, Inspiration Information was criminally neglected when it was originally released, a victim of an excessively corporatized American music industry that failed to get behind it and has long kept a lot of the best music off the shelves and the airwaves. On the other hand, its rediscovery can be credited to a contingent of musically attuned Americans obsessed with searching out the rarest of vintage grooves to sample and share. While not quite as revolutionary as the contemporary plaudits insist, Inspiration Information was definitely an idiosyncratic album. Otis put it all together on his own, playing all the instruments (and programming the drum machine) with the kind of mastery that would later be associated with Prince. Like Nick Drake, the guitar work is so perfect that it doesn't distract your attention away from the songs. But when you focus in on his playing, you hear the magic of a young style-fusing prodigy ready to take on the world. The guitar break on "Island Letter" is deliciously luxuriant, gently washing over you like a warm tropical wave. The funky bass line that closes out "Sparkle City" struts along side any groove laid down by Sly & The Family Stone's Larry Graham. With songs like "Sparkle City," it's easy to understand why guitarist George Johnson of the Brothers Johnson considers the album to be "right up there for me with (Sly's) There's A Riot Going On." When I listen to the elegant funk of the phonetically spelled "Aht Uh Mi Hed," I can't help but wonder how big of a hit this song might have become had it been half decently promoted in 1974. It's the catchy and accessible standout track on the album, the one that will surely be found on countless DJ set lists and mixed CD-Rs in years to come. In the world of #1 R&B singles, this was the one that got away. Today's critics claim that Inspiration Information was simply too far ahead of its time to be understood. I disagree. There is much on this record that makes sense in an early '70s experimental context. There were other innovators such as Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott-Heron, and Stevie Wonder who pushed the envelope to the extreme. Sure, none of them put out an album with a full side of trippy instrumentals, and none of them used drum machines to the same extent as Shuggie. But they all were funky futurists, making music that was often way off the map, waiting for the public to catch on and catch up. The only difference is that while they succeeded in their time, Shuggie was left to wait, almost in vain. The bottom line is that buying Inspiration Information now offers us all some kind of shot at redemption. We kept a good man down for too long, turning a deaf ear on his magnificent musical gift, offering him nothing but our silence in return. A friend of mine in Oakland who used to go to the same guitar shop as Shuggie, told me that for years the man was known to be down and out. Perhaps as his reputation is rehabilitated, so too will Shuggie pick up the pieces and start over where he left off. In buying his record, you take a stake in the resurrection of Shuggie's musical career, and who knows what that might bring? ---John Ballon (email)
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