Jobriath\/Sevendys – Split

With Eschatone’s release of long-lost Jobriath material in the form of critically-hailed LP As The River Flows, 2014 has been a year of reckoning for rock’s first openly gay majorlabel artist, a glam-era victim of overhype and prejudice in spite of his brilliant songwriting and virtuoso piano chops. Broken out from As The River Flows, the three tracks on the primer Amazing Dope Tales EP were culled from a 1971 session at Electric Lady Studios. While elements of the glam persona Jobriath would later assume bubbled beneath, the emphasis here was on rollicking live-in-the-studio hippie grooves (guest-starring some of his fellow Hair cast members!). The flip side of this split EP features three bombastic tracks from Sevendys, a spectacular multi-generational supergroup featuring Collider’s Jed Davis, Avi Buffalo’s Avi Zahner-Isenberg and Sheridan Riley, and the legendary combo of bassist Chuck Rainey and percussionist Jerry Marotta. Classic, heartbreaking songwriting and thunderous rhythms erupting from clouds of guitar and keyboards. This limited-edition (500) split 10″ vinyl EP features two front covers, each watermarked, and a numbered lyric insert with download code.