Gone Digital: Help Yourself, Rasputin’s Stash, Macondo, Danny O’Keefe, and The Section

If it’s Tuesday, then it must be time for Gone Digital, our weekly look at five albums in Rhino’s digital catalog that you may not even realize were out there for your listening enjoyment. As ever, the types of music we’ll be covering will be all over the place, but that’s Rhino for you: we’re all about variety!

•    Help Yourself, HELP YOURSELF (1971): This British band formed in London in 1970 and recorded their debut album before ever having played a gig, but they soon began making a bit of headway thanks to landing on a tour with Brinsley Schwarz and Ernie Graham, and by the summer of ’71 they were playing the Glastonbury Festival. While the band’s self-titled album wasn’t a smash, Help Yourself did get some attention from tunes like “Running Down Deep” and “Street Songs.”

•    Rasputin’s Stash, RASPUTIN’S STASH (1971): Led by Paul Coleman, these funksters came out of Chicago in the early ‘70s and built a cult following that never really translated into major sales figures. As Coleman told the website Wax Poetics, however, “No matter how rough things were, we would always get into it, no matter how tired or sick, we manage to feel it and make it happen. We loved what we did, living for the next gig.”

•    Macondo, MACONDO (1972): Originally recorded as a demo for Sergio Mendes, this self-titled album was predominantly the work of Max Uballez, who – as a producer – helmed Cannibal and the Headhunters’ cover of “Land of 1,000 Dances,” a track that Nuggets fans will recognize immediately. Although the songs were mostly recorded in a single take or two at the most, the album offers a great combination of rock ‘n’ roll with a Spanish flair.

•    Danny O’Keefe, O’KEEFE (1972): If you know O’Keefe at all, then you’ll know the first song on his Atlantic Records debut, since it was a top-10 hit, but you may also be aware that O’Keefe wrote “The Road” (Jackson Browne), “Magdalena” (Donny Hathaway), and other tunes that are part of the Rhino catalog.

•    The Section, THE SECTION (1972): They were often called “The Mellow Mafia,” and not unreasonably, since members Danny Kortchmar, Craig Doerge, Leland Sklar, and Russ Kunkel have played on albums by Carole King, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and others. This was their debut album, and it’s definitely mellow at times, but the material can also rock and even get a little funky, so don’t dismiss it until you’ve heard it for yourself.