Saturday, March 17, 2007













The Professionals: A part of being with you [1980]

I am not sure about the year. Numero Group, easily one of my favorite music publishers, had this track on one of their compilations. Emmett and I listened to it one night and had a good laugh over the bass sound that's scattered throughout the second half of the song. The guitar solo brings me back to a time when all I wanted to do was sit in front of my stereo and just listen. I wish the song was ten minutes longer.

Does anyone know about The Professionals? I've tried without success to find anything about them on the Internet. I am desperate to hear an album. Any help at all, or even further information, would be appreciated.

But this album and others directly from the Numero Group. They really are the bomb.

12 comments:

david said...

I thought it was The Professionals...Cook and Jones from the Pistols, but it weren't.

Mike said...

Those Professionals are on tap actually... sometime in the next week or two.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant. Like David, i immediately thought of Dave Goodman's cash-in with Cook and Jones, but clearly this Belizean group is in a different league.

Sounds like it was recorded round about 1968/9, but i can't find anything on them either outside of a footnote on Amazon that confirms they did have at least one album out.

I was wondering whether they had anything to do with the later reggae dub incarnation of Joe Gibbs & the Professionals, but it's one of those names that has probably been used by a million bands specialising in everything from weddings to bar mitzvahs.

If you find out anything more about them, Mike, please let us know. Are their other cuts on the Numero compilations anywhere as good as this ?

davyh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
davyh said...

GREAT track Mike.

Thought I had found another compilation with stuff by them on it, but turns out it's the one you have - hence my deletion. And I was SO excited...

Woud LOVE to hear more from these guys.

Mike said...

Here's what Numero writes in their liner notes:

"The inexplicably brilliant "A Part of Being With You" has one foot in deep soul and the other in sunshine pop. It closes with several minutes of breathtaking legato with psychedelic leanings that would seem shockingly out of place anywhere else in the Caribbean, Central, or South America."

I hear you ib on th 1968 / 69 thing. The guitar definitley has that late '60s San Francisco beauty to it. Garcia mimicking Coltrane kind of stuff. But I think it originates from a year closer to 1980 than 1970.

The Belize Boil Up compilation is indeed brilliant and should be purchased. There is another track on it that sounds exactly like Trey Anastasio wanted to sound like when he took on his larger horn section for a couple of years. He never really got there though.

I have about 8 of Numero's releases and they are all brilliant with the exception of Yellow Pills or something like that. I can't get into that release.

Anonymous said...

You're absolutely on the money regards the Garcia/Coltrane thing, Mike, but there's something too about the vocal which reminds me of an English (i think) group from the same period... it's on the tip of my tongue...

Is there absolutely nothing in the sleevenotes to narrow down the date ? The cover shot certainly looks to me to be from a much earlier period than 1980 or thereabouts.

Mike said...

Sorry that's not a cover shot... That's just some back-alley in Belize...

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Duh, mike. I meant the cover for the comp album that's up on Amazon - the one with the sharp looking black dude on drums with the pelican motif on the club walls - not the back-alley shot from the actual post.

Anonymous said...

The year is 1972.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, anonymous.