Aztec Two-Step
"Naked"
AztecTwoStep.com
Amazon.com
CD review by Roger Zee (10/30/20)
I first met Aztec Two-Step (Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman) in the early 70's when they played Cholmondeley's Coffee House at my college, Brandeis University. Carol Sarshik, the then "Love of My Life," got me heavily into Folk music. ATS' first album,"Step," served as the soundtrack to our love affair. All the top level Folk acts passing through Cambridge, MA would play Passims and then stop at Cholmondeley's on their way out of town. I next ran into Fowler and Shulman in the 80's hanging out at Kenny's Castaways and The Bitter End on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, NY. Years later, after publishing an interview with them on 06/20/17, I booked the group to appear on my Cable/Internet Show, "The Working Musician," in White Plains, NY on 08/16/17.
That show proved the climax of my television career. Aztec Two-Step had just released "Naked" that July and worked eagerly to promote it. Shulman came in from Manhattan and Fowler drove up from his beach home on the Delaware shore. They arrived bearing gifts -- their new CDs and "Naked" t-shirts. Frankly, I wore that shirt out over the next few years. I loved practicing bass in it because of the super soft, light material and I had no AC in my living room. My bass and I ended up stretching the neck down to my belly button, LOL! ATS also gave autographed CDs to my friends I invited to sit in the audience -- Larry, a huge, longtime fan, and Elena.
See the shows at TheWorkingMusician.com.
Unfortunately, about that time my health decided to jump off a cliff! I suffered a five-day heart attack on Halloween 2016 fixed by a bypass and aortic valve replacement operation. The following year, doctors diagnosed me with aggressive Prostate Cancer and started me on equally aggressive radiation and chemo. Yeah, I glow in the dark now, LOL! But maybe that's from my swimming and sailing in the Long Island sound off the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant and WestBrook Laboratories. God, please don't Dan Fogelberg me!
No wonder I burned out on writing CD reviews. With my time maybe looming short, I started feeling like an underpaid shill! So I switched to interviewing musicians and bands on the local Tri-State area scene. That worked fine until the advent of Covid-19 and the NYS Lockdown.
I played my last bass gig on Saturday 03/14/20 and spent the next eight months in strict Covid-19 isolation refining my music skills and working on my memoirs,
"Life and Times of a Pandemic Musician." As a change of pace, I recently began writing CD reviews and interviews again. So I reach into my stack of CDs that scream for my attention and attack "Naked" with a vengeance.
My daily "Lockdown" routine finds me waking up to snuggle with my cat Zoe. Then crawling out of bed to feed her as well as my two parakeets, Eli and Nyssa while "Naked" plays on the boombox. Next, I put the CD on in the bathroom while I hot shower Yoga. I continue listening while I finish working out in my bedroom. Finally, I put the album on in the living room where I polish up all the bass lines.
Great record! Well produced, genuine, simple, hook-laden songs with lovable characters that you dig. Aztec Two-Step's all about the gang hang. You in or you out? I'm in! Let's play "In the Rain," shouts the opening track. "Hurry, change in your rain cloths, go outside run a-round... When you’ve soaked through your rain clothes, well take ’em all off, run around." Then go hang with your "Family." "Maggie’s in the kitchen. So is Barbara and Mali. With Ming and Margarita swapping recipes. Dinner’s almost ready. who could ask for more now that Cousin John just walked through your door." A real cool vibe.
Fowler and Shulman wax reminiscent on their final record, their denouement together. Going "Out on the Road Again," just makes Fowler miss and love his lady even more. On "One Hundred Thousand Bands," Shulman recounts the epic 60s kick-off of Rock 'n Roll. " One hundred thousand bands all dreaming of paradise. Records of gold if you can just grab hold and so they just jump in. You know they don’t think twice."
Then there's the "Era of Discontent" tunes. On the folky, singalong, title track, Fowler laments, "So deeply saddened by this disconnect. Blame our politicians, blame the internet. Our morning papers, our nightly news. 'What the world needs now, is love sweet love' has never been more true." Then there's the Jazz-Blues of "A World Without Walls." "This world has open arms to hold you, embolden your hoorays. When someone’s arms want to control you, enfold you, love is just a spin away."
Sometimes the men just get plain sentimental. They gently massage the heart with "A Lover's Lullaby" and gently sends it home with sweet chromatic harp. "Catch a firefly. Careful now oh my. Hold it in your hands.
When it flies away, will she want to stay? Wouldn’t that be so romantic?" Shulman's "Down in New Orleans" uses second-line rhythm to lawd all the charms Louisiana can lay on ya. The deep R&B Soul of "Never Say Never"drives the point home with a slow, relentless groove. "Like your favorite old sweater, it only gets better in Never Never Land" Ooh if only you’d love me."
The guys close the album with two songs that pay homage to the Fifties. "Tough and Tender (Gender Bending Man)" describes the incredible sexual breakout of Little Richard and Elvis Presley in 1950's Memphis." Finally, Shulman's "Long Black Lincoln" wistfully casts a lens on modern day Manhattan life. "These are the streets of the doublewide stroller. The kind with the canopy that blocks out the sun. Pretty black lady pushing little white babies. A women’s work, never done."
And so Aztec Two-Step, Fowler and Shulman, gently lands on the tarmac at the end of their years on the road. After Shulman's wife passing, he chooses to peacefully transition out of the duo. And in drops Dodie Pettit, a former Principal Dancer for the American Repertory Dance Company which led to a distinguished 15-year career on Broadway as an original cast member of The Phantom of the Opera, as well as appearing in Tony Awarding winning musicals CATS and Titanic. Dodie and Rex married in August 2018 and continue the legacy as ATS 2.0. PS: I remember talking to Fowler on the phone about what they should call the next version of the band. If I remember correctly, as a former computer programmer, I suggested Aztec Two-Step 2.0. ;)
YouTube - In the Rain - Aztec Two-Step
©2020 Roger Zee
