Rastus....The Best Music You Never Heard! (Pt. 3)

In Part Three of Rastus....The Best Music You Never Heard, Jim and I discuss the demise of the band and the reasons therefore. The death of Smokey Smelko, one of the finest drummers I ever had the opportunity with which to work and why such a great band just coudn't get the break they needed to survive.

Everything that Mr. Cantale and I speak of is the absolute truth and any band in it's formative stages should pay heed to all the parts. There are huge landmines in the entertainment business. Things you need to know such as publishing, copyright and distribution.

Should anyone have a question regarding any of the above items, please feel free to write BluePower and ask questions. We will send an answer if at all possible. We will always answer no matter what.

Thanks for tuning in. (93,310 listeners served last month)

John Rhys-Eddins/BluePower.com

Here's The Music:

1)...."I-94 Riff"....John Rhys
2)...."Good Night Nelda Greb"....Tracy Nelson
3)...."Lazy Kind Of Day"....Rastus
4)...."Big City Letdown Blues"....John Rhys
5)...."Woman In White"....Rastus

Click here to listen to....Rastus....The Best Music You Never Heard! (Pt. 3)

Rastus....The Best Music You Never Heard! (Pt. 2)

As I mentioned earlier....Rastus was one helluva band. No one wanted to open for them because they performed so well that they made the opening act look bad and vice versa.

After the Ike and Tina Turner Review debacle, the band sat with very few gigs for almost two months. Try feeding thirteen people with no money. Times were decidedly tough for this great band.

In Part Two of this interview between Jim Cantale and myself, we discuss those times when tempers were starting to flare and the band was threatened with dissolvement. External management came into being when the management company of Three Dog Night expressed an interest in managing Rastus. More problems came about because of this.

Most of the cuts from Part Two come from the Steamin' LP which was rehearsed completely by myself and the band prior to them jettisoning me in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hell! The band had been playing these songs for nearly eight months before they went into a studio in Chicago to produce themselves. After they had laid all the tracks and over-dubs, I received a call from Angelo Crimi, (the band's manager) while I was home in Detroit asking that I come back to the band as the mixes they were getting from the studio in Chicago (Paragon) did not sound the way the band expected. I knew the band and what they wanted their sound to be. So, reluctantly, I went to Chicago and spent several days there mixing and editing Steamin'. I couldn't let this marvelous group down no matter how badly I had been hurt by our disassociation.

John Rhys-Eddins/BluePower.com

The music for Part Two:

1)...."Lucy Bluebird"....Rastus/B. Jameson
2)...."Keep On Pushin' "....Rastus
3)...."Up/Down"....Rastus
4)...."Tryin' To Find Her"....Rastus
5)...."Sinnin' For You"....Keef Hartley
6)...."Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends"....Ann Arbor Demo Sessions

Click here to listen to....Rastus....The Best Music You Never Heard (Pt. 2)!