Thursday, January 30, 2014

Brent Steeper Audience Brent Streeper Productions

Brent Steeper Audience Brent Streeper Productions 1980 CAT#38376

First, this guy isn't a Kansas City, guy.  He's from Oklahoma Montana.  The production and recording were all done in Kansas City and I picked it up thinking it was completely local.  When I discovered it wasn't, I tried to pawn it off on eBay, it was sealed and is private press, so I figured why not.  I had a reasonable price on it, left it up for 60 days.  No one so much as sniffed at the thing and I finally gave up.

Thought I'd make the best of it and talk about it here.  Streeper did surround himself with Kansas City guys that showed up a lot in local music in the late 70's and 80's.  Namely Ron Ubel, who did a lot of engineering work around town.

I'm not sure why the LP exists, though.  It's a private press through and through, doesn't even attempt to hide it and make up a fake label name.  It had to cost a good amount of change to put it out, pay the production team, rent the studio, but, I don' think the artwork set him back much.  That is a hefty investment for a piano lounge set of all cover tunes.  But, for all I know, the guy could have been a huge draw back home in Oklahoma Montana and sold out of the few hundred that were pressed.

The music isn't cheese ball lounge like it appears to be, it's literally just Streeper singing and playing piano.  Everything sounds fine, in fact it sounds live and Streeper's Facebook page confirms he just sat down and played live in studio.  That's tough to do; props to that.  But still, it's just a guy rattling off pop covers on a piano.  He's no Billy Joel, because Billy Joel wrote songs.  He also does stuff like "The Rose", that's just something dudes don't need to touch.

Streeper Doing Sinatra Modern Day
A Facebook Page for this album

7 comments:

  1. Brent isn't an "Oklahoma guy". He's from Havre, Montana.

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    1. Phil, you're absolutely right...Now, I'm not sure where I got hung up on Oklahoma. Thanks for the correction.

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    2. Phil Young was one of the best known and followed radio hosts in Kansas City and the Midwest. Also the radio personality and voice of the Kansas City Kings for many years at Kemper Arena I'm proud to call him my friend, as well. We enjoyed a mutual "audience" for many years

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  2. Gee... thanks for the scathing, uninformed review. I worked in KC for many years as , yes, a lounge musician doing covers and some originals. My covers weren't always typical, as demonstrated by the beautiful Peter Allen tunes.
    The selections on the album were carefully selected by my live "AUDIENCE", hence the title.

    I worked closely with many of the top names in music in Kansas City in the time I was there and if I don't meet your criteria for acknowledgement in your little blog, why did you even bother?

    I could name drop for your benefit I suppose, just to validate for you... but won't bother. I am proud to have maintained my humble legacy in the Kansas City music scene and am still in constant contact with my heros there... and still fondly reminisce with the survivors of those local giants who have passed.

    I have never heard of you, either... I'll ask around my circle of friends and my still loyal KC audience to see if I might validate you... simply to give credibility to your reviewing expertise.

    FYI A well know and much respected Kansas City musician brought this to my attention. And if you put it back up on eBay, I'll buy it. I sill get requests for. Fred Everett of KMBR co produced it and it got substantial airplay on that station for many years... and we sold several thousand copies. Over the piano

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. If my lame blog post offended you, my bad. I said it wasn't cheese ball which more than I say for most lounge acts. And, of course it's uninformed, the whole blog is based on only what's available to me online, which usually isn't much...that's pretty clear when I couldn't even figure out you were from Montana.

      Anyway, I'll apologize again, but this isn't a well read blog by any means, so you're legacy is still fine, I'm sure...it's a blog, for me, to chronicle odd local releases that I come into.

      Although, I'd like to hold onto it due to the local connection, I'm happy to send this to you. You can email me at kclawrencevinyl@gmail.com and I'll ship it, free to you, because I wouldn't feel right taking money from the guy who made it.

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    3. Brent, Toni and I were remembering how much we enjoyed listening to you in KC in the 80's. How are you doing and were are you? We are in Madison, So. It would be fun to see you and hear you again, All the best, Jeff

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