Back Door : Catcote

I first heard of Back Door while researching a sample from a Beastie Boys record. They had a song called "Stand Together" on their 1992 LP, Check Your Head, that sampled a Back Door track called "Slivadiv". If you know the song you'd instantly recognize the crazed honking sax riff they borrowed.

Anyway, we tracked the record down in the hallowed annals of WRUW and gave it a listen. I thought it interesting, but not spectacular. Years later, I ran across it on some sort of P2P network and pulled it down because I wanted to hear the sample in context again.  But I listened to the whole album a couple of times and it grew on me.

Back Door is a bass-drums-sax trio that plays music along the lines of progressive rock or jazz-rock fusion like Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever.  This particular song starts off with a bang, rocking hard from the get-go, hammering a staccato jazz riff a couple of times to make sure you really get it.  Then they toss in a quick variation or two and head right into the solo.  I love when the sax player first takes a breath and someone in the background yells "Yeah!"  They're absolutely right.  The sax wails through the solo over a furiously funky backbeat and the band finishes off by beating on the riff one more time.  This whirlwind of a song is a concise chunk of rock that never lets up on the energy.  It reminds me a little of the highly engineered rock of the Ruins.

"Catcote" is from Back Door's self-titled debut from 1973.  The whole album is great, especially if you like jazz-rock fusion.  The band was notable for using the bass as a lead instrument along with sax and for being one of the first groups to use chords on the bass.  The songs range from soft ballads to full-on riff-rockers like this one, but they're all pretty good.

[You can listen to Back Door's "Catcote" by navigating to the post "Song078" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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