Thursday, March 6, 2014

SWEET LINDA DIVINE

Regulars on the sixties San Francisco live circuit The Loading Zone were essentially a rhythm & blues band with a horn section. Whilst gaining a regular local following the band never ventured far from their home town and never made a national breakthrough. They remained relatively unknown to the outside world.
The Loading Zone was one of many big ensemble San Francisco bands to break out of the Summer of Love in 1967. Along with contemporaries such as It's A Beautiful Day, Tower of Power, Cold Blood and others, The Loading Zone wanted to play it all: R&B, jazz, funk, rock, psychedelic, and blues. And like the other aforementioned bands, they were spearheaded by a charismatic lead vocalist: Linda Tillery. The Loading Zone also had great musicianship and a director/leader in keyboardist/founder Paul Fauerso.

What The Loading Zone didn't have was songs. Because of the response the band received at its live shows in the Frisco area, they did land a deal with RCA Records, but they could never capture the energy of the band's live show on the record. The result was a greatly overproduced debut album. The record contained too many over-arranged Motown covers, and upon the release, it was grilled by most critics. Furthermore, the band failed to gain the support of radio programmers at the time. In the end the criticism and lack of radio support was too much for the band, which dissolved in 1969. Fauerso and Tillery revived the group with new members in 1970 before breaking it up once again less than a year later.

Their two albums are in the blues/jazz style and never troubled the charts. Their most distinctive feature was the grating vocal style of Linda Tillery.( Sweet Linda Divine)

Following their split in 1970 Tillery joined Cesar a San Francisco based jazz fusion outfit who's career was brief before embarking on a solo career.

LOADING ZONE
Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA 1968 10 02

Excellent SBD

Time: 49:54

01 Got My Mojo Working
02 Summertime
03 Danger Heartbreaker Dead Ahead
04 No More Tears
05 Shop Around
06 Cold Sweat
07 Try A Little Tenderness

Line-up
Linda Tillery - vocals
Paul Fauerso - keyboards, vocals
Pete Shapiro - guitar
Steve Dowler - guitar
Bob Kridle - bass
George Newcom - drums
Todd Anderson - saxophone
Pat O'Hara - trombone

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw the Loading Zone quite a few times. They were enjoyable, but never a band I went out of my way to see. They were not memorable enough for me to even get their albums.

Bob W.

Anonymous said...

I hope I didn't scare anyone away from downloading and listening to the Loading Zone. Remember they were playing on bills with the cream of the crop of S.F. bands (Dead, Airplane, Moby Grape, Big Brother, etc.), so it was hard for them to breakthrough to the top tier. Like I said always an enjoyable opening act.

Bob W.

Anonymous said...

Another Missing Link for S.F.Sound Followers,
Thanks says Pnoom

24HOURDEJAVU said...

The links seem to work fine I downloaded it from the zippyshare with success

dugg said...

Linda Tillery is still very active in music- for many years, she's led a group called the Cultural Heritage Choir, a very tight acapella unit doing everything from traditional African-American music to contemporary topical songs- check'em out!
respect,
d

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