Michaelangelo “One Voice Many”

The use of the humble autoharp in rock may come as a surprise. Isn’t that the triangular doodad your elementary school teacher used to pull out of the cupboard to strum along to class sing-a-longs of Go Tell Aunt Rhody? And why take an instrument specifically designed for simplicity and bust a gut to play complicated stuff on it? Nevertheless, several intriguing instances of its use have come to light on rare albums from the late sixties and early seventies.

A zither is a small harp with its strings stretched across its soundbox; it has a beautiful, ethereal ringing sound, but is fiendishly difficult to play. To simplify matters, someone came up with the idea of spring-loaded bars that could be pressed down on to the strings so that felt pads under each bar deadened all the strings except those needed to sound a certain chord. Thus the auto-harp was born, and bingo “ a simple rhythm instrument with from 3 to 21 chords, each available at the press of a button. Almost immediately other folks started working out how to put all the complexity back into the autoharp by using it for playing melodies, and some of those Appalachian guys got pretty good at this despite the instrument’s patent unsuitability for this purpose. Then a genial sixties folksinger called John Sebastian customised his harp with an electric pickup, and rock autoharp was born. Sebastian’s playing was fairly limited, but a certain Billy Miller developed an astonishing electric autoharp technique with his late sixties Texas psych outfit, Cold Sun.

Classically-trained pianist and autoharp enthusiast Angel Petersen probably never heard of Billy Miller, but she certainly caught John Sebastian toting his harp around the Village and forthwith obtained a similar electric 15-bar model, making it the centrepiece of the mildly psychedelic folk-rock combo she christened Michaelangelo, after the name she’d already given her harp. In 1971 Michaelangelo (the group) came to the notice of Columbia Records through a fortuitous meeting with electronic music producer Rachel Elkind and her partner, the synthesiser genius Wendy Carlos of Switched-On Bach fame. An album, One Voice Many, was cut in New York with Elkind and Carlos producing, and the band’s major label future should have been assured. However, the story goes that Columbia president Clive Davis was perpetually at loggerheads with Elkind and conspired to have the album suppressed. It was released but received absolutely no record label backup and quickly disappeared. Dispirited, the band dissolved soon afterwards and the album became a collector’s rarity until reissued on CD almost forty years later.

Although likely to be described in current-day reviews as Acid Folk, One Voice Many’s signature sound is predominantly folk-Baroque, with the autoharp frequently sounding more like a harpsichord than the Fender Rhodes-like tone of Billy Miller, particularly on the Bach-influenced instrumentals Take It Bach and 300 Watt Music Box. Elsewhere, it sounds not unlike a Farfisa organ. Either way, there’s nothing remotely schoolmarmish about Petersen’s virtuoso playing. The picture of the band on the cover shows an earnest, studious-looking quartet, and the carefully-arranged music within generally bears this out, though it’s by no means sombre and there are some rocking and even exhilarating touches. The autoharp’s main foil is Steve Bohn’s clean, countrified electric guitar, and the two frontline players interweave their lines exquisitely within the four instrumental numbers. On the six songs, Petersen’s and Bohn’s respective lead vocals are workmanlike rather than attention-grabbing, but when harmonised and multi-tracked they produce a breezy, floating Harpers Bizarre-style texture. The highlights for me are the opening funky country-rocker West, the tinkling, twinkling 300 Watt Music Box, the pulsating generation-gap rocker Son (We’ve Kept The Room Just The Way You Left It) and the shameless sunshine pop of Okay with its whistled accompaniment. Avoid the 2007 Fallout bootleg and go for the 2009 Rev-Ola licensed pressing.

“Son (We’ve Kept the Room Just the Way You Left It)”

:D CD Reissue | 2009 | Revola | buy here ]
:) Original Vinyl | 1971 | Columbia | search ebay ]


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8 Comments.

  • That’s brilliant, I’ve just gone and bought it. Thanks for the nod.

  • Len Liechti

    My thanks to Jason for giving me the heads-up on this one – I’d never heard of it before. My fascination with the autoharp continues, and if anyone else out there in Stormland knows of any other lost albums featuring the instrument I’d love to hear from you.

    If you’d like to experience what “those Appalachian guys” did with the instrument, there’s a 32-track CD called “Masters Of Old-Time Country Autoharp”, being an expanded edition of a collection originally compiled by Mike Seeger and issued on vinyl in 1962, when most of the players themselves were already pretty old. “John Henry”, “Wildwood Flower”, “Bonaparte’s Retreat”, “Chicken Reel”, “Marching Thru Georgia” and other trad chestnuts like you’ve never heard them before, plus a bunch of less familiar tunes similarly treated, and a superb insert booklet documenting the history of the instrument and of its players. Look for Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40115.

  • Scott0317

    Wonderful piece. I’ve listened to this song probably 30 times in the past 3 days and I never do that. It’s a shame that talented people like this do not find a larger audience. This music has heart, which I prefer to soul anyway.

  • Mitch

    I first heard this from my friend, who picked it up at a garage sale in 1984. “Son” is a great song but I don’t remember the rest. http://westcoastfog.podomatic.com/ is playing the entire LP in its entirety on its podcast show.

  • JB

    Hi –

    Nice review.

    I bought the LP after hearing a couple of the instrumental tracks on the local “underground” station way back then. And when the group came to town, I convinced my wife and another couple to go see them at a hotel lounge in Bloomington, Minnesota, close to where the Vikings and Twins first played. But by the time they toured, they had added a new lead singer. A voice that, in my opinion, did not blend well with the original members. It wasn’t terrible, but not what I had expected.

    I would have sworn that they actually cut a second LP with said lead singer. Needless to say, I didn’t buy it. Now I can find no evidence of that LP’s existence anywhere. I thought it had a blue cover. Maybe just another symptom of my aging brain, alas.

    As you might imagine, when I first saw that the CD existed a few years ago, I snapped up a copy.

    JB

  • none

    I recently pulled out my old LP of this because it was on my mind. I heard “Son (We’ve Kept the Room Just the Way You Left It)” on the radio when I was in high school (1971 – 1974) in Minneapolis and I went out and bought the album the next day. They must have been playing it a lot on the radio in Minneapolis because I’ve seen two other people from there post about hearing it on the radio. What a great song. It just blew me away when I first heard it.

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