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PLEASURE
Dust Yourself Off/Accept No Substitutes (Fantasy)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
My first exposure to this Portland, Oregon funk band came when they opened for Tower Of Power back in the late 70s. The guitarist, Marlon "The Magician" McClain, looked for all the world like Jimi Hendrix but played like funk incarnate, and bassist Nathanial Phillips had chops that probably had Tower Of Power's Rocco Prestia sitting on a road case in the wings watching with interest. It was obvious from the lack of enthusiasm when the band was introduced that nobody in the crowd of 7,000 knew who Pleasure were, but by the end of "Plastic People" the enthusiasm was unanimous, the cheers between songs at least as loud as the songs we were cheering for. Tower Of Power was awesome, needless to say, but after the concert, at the traditional gathering at the local record store, there was actually a fight over the last Pleasure LP. I was too late. I got one the next day at another store. Dust Yourself Off, Accept No Substitutes, Joyous, Get To The Feeling, Pleasure, Future Now, Special Things... These are all funk LPs still in my vinyl collection, and they still get dumb stares from most funk fans because somehow or another Pleasure never got the recognition they deserved.
Like Mandrill, Pleasure has been a band that's hard to collect, poorly represented on CD despite having some of the most deserving funk ever recorded. Unless you wanted to pay through the nose for a bootleg that I don't recommend. Now you can get the first two albums on one CD. If you're looking for the band's only top-ten single, "Glide," it's not here. That was on Future Now in 1979. These two albums are from 1975 and '76 and feature no hits, but one hell of a lot of tasty soul, R&B and deep-grooved funk. The only other CD available at the moment is a greatest hits disc that does include "Glide," but if you really love funk, get this as well.
There are many, many good reasons to do so.
Pleasure was obviously not a singles-oriented band. They paid attention to the flow of their albums and it paid off for the listener. The songs on Dust Yourself Off sounded different from one another, but it was almost like the groove kept moving all the way through, never stopping for the kind of sappy ballads that, in my opinion, kept so many other funk albums from becoming classics. Both of these albums were produced - but not overproduced - by The Crusaders' trombonist Wayne Henderson, who did an outstanding job of letting Pleasure be Pleasure, working with their eccentricities and finding their strengths. And being flexible! The difference between the two albums is a bit of a jolt. Dust Yourself Off is pure funk, with nasty bass lines and raw Fender chops surrounded by tight horns, while Accept No Substitutes finds the band indulging their jazzier leanings while keeping the funky grooves intact. It's a smoother album that bears little resemblance to its predecessor, with one of those aforementioned ballads and an instrumental approximation of same leading up to the finale, "2 For 1," a Latin flavored percussion-led piece that makes up for the previous two nicely.
Not enough people know about Pleasure to make this a marketing move, so it can only be assumed that Fantasy is just finally putting a great set of records on CD. Maybe that means we'll see some or all of the other four Pleasure titles from this label soon. It's on my wish list, anyway.
© 2002 - DJ Johnson