#Cold Blood #Lydia Pense #blue-eyed soul #funk rock #R&B #East Bay grease #1960s #1970s
Cold Blood is a long-standing soul-rock-jazz band founded by Larry Field in 1968 and originally based in the San Francisco East Bay area. They have also gone by the name "Lydia Pense and Cold Blood" due to the popularity of their lead singer, Lydia Pense. The band first came to prominence in 1969 when rock impresario Bill Graham signed them after an audition and they played the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Pense has been compared to Janis Joplin, and it was Joplin who recommended the audition to Graham. The band has often been compared to another long-standing popular Northern California group, "Tower of Power", and like "Tower of Power" they were rare in that they featured a horn section in addition to guitar, bass and drums. The "Tower of Power" horn players have performed with "Cold Blood" on a regular basis since the early 1970s. Skip Mesquite and Mic Gillette have been members of both "Tower Of Power" and "Cold Blood".Their fan base also overlaps with the "Sons of Champlin", although their musical styles are quite different. Their initial four albums, "Cold Blood", "Sisyphus", "First Taste of Sin" (produced by Donny Hathaway), and "Thriller" remain their best known work. The band disbanded in the late 1970s, reformed in the 1980s and stabilized with its current membership in the 1990s. Cold Blood continues to record and perform today, and some former band members such as Raul Matute (and some from "Tower of Power") appear on its most recent album. From: https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/3705807
Along with Tower of Power, Cold Blood pioneered the Bay Area's brass heavy funk-rock sound, which came to be known as "East Bay Grease." After debuting at the Fillmore in 1969 and initially signing to Bill Graham's San Francisco Records label, they developed into one of the most popular high-energy bands in the Bay Area. Fronted by the proverbial little girl with a huge voice, Lydia Pense's powerful vocal chops were impossible to ignore, and despite frequent personnel changes within the band, Cold Blood always attracted inspired and creative musicians and remained a crack unit.
Cold Blood seemed to be overshadowed by Chicago, Blood Sweat And Tears, Tower Of Power, and other more commercially successful horn-fueled bands of the era, but their biggest curse was the critics and reviewers who were relentlessly comparing Lydia to Janis Joplin (who, in reality praised Lydia and the band, including their blistering cover of "Piece Of My Heart"). This, combined with questionable management, frequent personnel changes, and weak album distribution relegated the group to limited success. Cold Blood appeared at the Fillmores often and at many major concerts and festivals but remained most popular in the Bay Area.
Cold Blood's sixth album, Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, released during the bicentennial year of 1976, would be the group's last studio effort of the 1970s. Lydia settled into seclusion on the outskirts of Sonora for most of the 1980s, raising her daughter Danielle. As her daughter approached adulthood, Lydia again began pursuing music and by 1988 had recruited the musicians who would begin a new phase of Cold Blood's horn-driven rock and soul-drenched sound.
A live album titled Live Blood was issued in 2008, proving Cold Blood's appeal had not diminished. Featuring classic older songs as well as new material, this album proved to be what Cold Blood fans had long been waiting for: a sizzling live set that remained true to the pulsating horn-laced sound that defined the band, fronted by an incomparable singer with an astonishingly powerful voice. From: https://yoshis.com/events/buy-tickets/lydia-pense-cold-blood-1/detail
