In Praise of... The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic

I own this on LP (which means I have the bombass die-cut album cover) and I should probably throw it on later tonight.

keyboard-slash-lathe sounding thing

Yeah, I love that. Seems to me there's a bit of that circa Spirit of Eden/Laughing Stock Talk Talk, no?

should I definitely pick up the album, then, on the strength of the title cut?

I'd be very curious to hear that, actually.

Jump aboard!

Can't get much groovier than that I reckon.

I've searched out this thread two dozen times since it first appeared, basically anytime I listen to "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys". What I think keeps me coming back is Alex's "the gentle, somnambulistic lope of the sprawling title track" line.

This song hangs in the rafters of my head alongside "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell, memories of touring health food stores and possible head shops as a child, smelling incense and reading Ziggy paperbacks.

I was trying to work out that simple four-note riff (A-B E..D,D?) on the organ tonight, and my daughter just looked at me and said "you're done."

One of the few rock tracks that manages to capture the cold swing of "So What" and make it work as rock. That big refrain should sound grafted on, a sugar coating to make it a crowd pleaser, but it's a fusion that works.

^^

both posts otm.

mostly agree with alex's op, though i think "rock 'n' roll stew" really fits in fine with the overall vibe. and "rainmaker" gets practically dubby in its awesome latter half. mostly, this is the kind of thing that puts modern jam bands to shame. why can't they be this loose, funky, tuneful, imaginative?

oh man, "help me" completely evokes a specific period of time for me, some sort of half-imaginary upscale hippie world of the early/mid-70s that i was only vaguely aware of back then as a kid

as to the thread topic, traffic is dope imo

"Hole In My Shoe", one of the best singles of the entire 60s.
-Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, November 3, 2003 4:44 AM (5 years ago)

Hate to rise to the bait but that is just a ridiculous comment.

For a long time I associated them with overly hippie/jammy blooze stuff like Ten Years After and avoided Traffic. Finally picked up the Island remasters of the S/T '68, John Barleycorn and Low Spark. The latter is definitely my favorite, sounded awesome on last weekend's road trip. I picked up all the Free albums too, pretty much all are great. What else could scratch that vibe, Procol Harum? Maybe I need to go back and listen to Ten Years After?

new Chris Wood box has a good amount of awesomeness. Lots of slow drifty early Lonnie Liston Smith type stuff.

Put the best tracks on vinyl and it'd be a perfect beach bum beardo reissue thing

This song hangs in the rafters of my head alongside "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell, memories of touring health food stores and possible head shops as a child, smelling incense and reading Ziggy paperbacks.

This album sounds like a Dead show at the Renaissance Faire, which is really scratching an itch I didn't know I had.

Where to go next for more like the title track and "Hidden Treasure"?

The studio Traffic albums on either side of this one are worth checking out (John Barleycorn and Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory)

Bassist (for this record only) Rik Grech was previously in Family, and some of their folkier songs like "Anyway" or "Spanish Tide" might fit.

I love the slow, slow fade in on the title track. "No, we're not in any hurry". [hits vibraslap]

Traffic and Family have a lot of similarities - without necessarily sounding similar. If that makes any sense.

It amuses me how, over the course of just seven albums, Family went through about five different genres, but always sounded like themselves.

At the very end of "Low Spark", when they play that horrific sounding, dissonant chord - that's probably one of the first times I remember really loving something that sounded "ugly". It was like a big "fuck you" to all the classic rock loving morons who got to be happy the other 99.9% of the time listening to the radio, and it really gave an edge to the long solo in that song. This may be that "keyboard-slash-lathe" thing talked about earlier in the thread.
― dleone (dleone), Monday, November 3, 2003 7:47 AM (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I must have listened to this song a hundred times but I never noticed this crazy chord until I read this thread and played it again

Anyway, song perfect in every respect, for reasons mentioned above

I'd like to stand up for the unloved "Roll Right Stones" on Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory, even the original 14 minute version.

winwood has a much cooler career than I was aware of for years, probably just from knowing him from my parents buying his post-boomercore stuff in the late 80s/earlys 90s...

Traffic is mostly amazing, he somehow made Clapton sound non-shit on the Blind Faith lp, played on Lou's Berlin, with Sandy Denny, and on feckin Colour Of Spring.

also popped up when i saw Steely Dan a few years back and jammed on Pretzel Logic.

yeah the first two winwood solo albums are sweet

love when the eagles flies too

I gotta check out some more Traffic. Gotta couple of tunes in a rando Spotify playlist and got weirdly obsessed w the live )and the studio!) versions of “Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave” a while back

Seems to me there's a bit of that circa Spirit of Eden/Laughing Stock Talk Talk, no?

many years late to respond to this, but Winwood did play on Colour of Spring.

read a few posts up

Traffic didn't really sustain a fanbase outside of the seventies did they? Not American enough to be jamrock, not glam or heavy enough to keep a punk or buttrock profile. Monthly plays on Spotify are on the order of Ten Years After or Uriah Heep, not The Faces or Free or even Procul Harum.

That is interesting. Traffic only reunited once although they did do a tour with the Dead. This album and John Barleycorn were popular like with also with Tull with Deadheads I knew in college in the late 80s/early 90s.

I'd figure streaming numbers, Traffic doesn't have a huge tune like 'Whiter Shade of Pale' or 'All Right Now' that have remained very popular songs over the decades. I'd guess 'Mr. Fantasy' might be Traffic's most popular tune streaming...

Faces have had a couple numbers like 'Debris', 'Maybe I'm Amazed' and 'Ooh La La' that I think have gotten much better known in the streaming era than they were in the classic rock era.

It's because younger people think 80s sax is now cool but 70s sax is still lame.
Also, among music-savvy Gen Xers, they probably still have the stigma of being hippie self-indulgence, like the Spin Alternative Guide that went out of their way to put them down in a Ramones writeup.

low spark, mr fantasy, feelin alright… they had a few radio mainstays in the Bay Area throughout the 90s at least ime

I swear kfog in sf would play all 11 minutes of low spark, probably misremembering.

Winwood is on John Martyn’s One World too.

winwood has a much cooler career than I was aware of for years

Arc of a Diver us solid imo. I think of "The Finer Things" as basically a rewrite of "While You See a Chance."

*is solid

Definitely heard a lot of Traffic on Chicago FM radio in the ‘80s, the songs brimstead mentioned plus “Freedom Rider,” and “John Barleycorn.” Also heard this one a few times, which Paul Weller apparently based all of his ‘90s solo records on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB9CQVzSV3o

he somehow made Clapton sound non-shit on the Blind Faith lp

Talking of which, how much better is Jim Gordon's drumming on this album than Ginger Baker's thumping and thrashing on the Blind Faith album?