Howard Roberts - Antelope Freeway

What a fantastic weird record is this one? I knew the name and I knew he was some jazz studio cat that had his own model of Gibson guitar as Alex Lifeson played one of those at one point, but I did not know much about him.

This album came up listening to other things and I got to say, it is a pretty worthy listen if you are into old weird fusion soundtrack music. If you did not know, there are points that would not sound all that out of place on some old German Komsische records of the same era.

I dug it, it is like listening to some old 1970 lost scifi doomy soundtrack. I got to think parts of this record have been sampled for atmosphere if nothing else.

It's kinda like a Thrill Jockey record made in 1970 kinda. Parts are not totally dissimilar to some early ECM jazz.

(did not search...so maybe this is widely discussed record before, don't remember it ever coming up and I'm a regular on the fusion and that era music of that type.)

One reporters opinion...

dude earl i saw this the other day and had no clue what to say. i'll do my best, but i will state my thesis right off: cool howard roberts topic you got there, friend!🙂👍🏻

as far as antelope freeway, i know it but hadn't heard it in over a decade. a revisit reminds me that howard could play just about anything convincingly. his impulse era in general is pretty good smooth jazz, and muzak-y/library-adjacent sounds. the big thing that i remember about antelope freeway was that it was one of the furst music albums i recalled hearing that incorporated longform environmental interludes (in this case, the sounds of a freeway roadside). howard's playing has always been a little hazy and greyed out to me; probably why i like him so much. agree that antelope is a wild cacophony of sounds, definitely one of the more fun gimmicky impulse albums.

I've kept checking out some other Howard Roberts recordings and did a bit of reading up on him. The guy seems like he was a pretty interesting cat, kinda beat in attitude perhaps. Seems like the guy played A LOT of music and you really cannot fake time in the game. He's definitely got a sense of humor in his music too, which for someone that had massive amounts of musical technique is cool. Seems to have been inspiring to those that he taught or many he played with as a musician.

This I thought was a pretty good read.

https://www.vintageguitar.com/9525/howard-roberts-2/

Ok, so far on other records. I've checked out a couple and have given them a good listen.

"WANTED" is a fun record. Good part of his music after he became a studio musician was cutting tight jazz numbers not unlike some of Wes Montgomery's stuff when he was on Verve. They are not with strings, but they are setup to be pop songs perhaps for the juke box market as I know those type of jazz 45s would do well there (in the 50s and early 60s) and later on he was doing more swinging bachelor playboy lifestyle jazz.

https://i.discogs.com/E_JUJavCbn-OHzjQwuUXtQd8jt_Mvq26t1xNN4ZRVrQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:447/w:509/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI4NjA3/MDctMTMwNDQwNTQw/Ni5qcGVn.jpeg

The artwork can be filed in the newspaper cover like Heart Attack and Vine and Thick as a Brick. I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of what a "Dirty, Funky, Swamp Bossa Nova Player" might all entail. The idea of dirty and funky guitar in 68 I'm sure is different as so much funk is future to come.

I dug it. My favorite track "Up, Up and Away" as I have loved that tune since I was a very little boy. It's all pretty good and is a chilled out sound, excellent production - Capital records in LA with a bunch of studio ringers.

HR was involved a bit in one of Phil Spector shooting off a gun in a session too. Don't know how often that happened in the offices, but it did happen once...well.

yeah, hey earl! i know a bit about howard's la session dude time via his connection to david axelrod. the earlier small group-led sessions on capitol are all good smooth jazz for their time; that stuff reminds me of the jukebox 45s blue note would sometimes do. he was definitely a man about town. thanks for that link, too!

antelope freeway was the one with all the firesign theater stuff on it, right?

Yes