KASHMERE STAGE BAND “Out Of Gas But Still Burning” CD

More people should know that such a wild high school brass band existed! The title and cover show a fearless sense that makes it hard to believe they were a high school band, and this is the seventh album released in 1974 by the "Funky" Brass Band from Cashmere High School in Houston, Texas. It includes the killer funk "$$ Kash Register $$" by the elite group of the band, "COLD FIRE"!

Kashmere High School was located in the black residential area of Houston, Texas. In the late 1960s, when black power was raging and funk music was gaining momentum, teacher Conrad O. Johnson was appointed to the school and transformed the brass band into a funk band with his keen sense of the times and leadership. This unique funky brass band was a big success, winning consecutive national contests, but it didn't stop there, releasing eight albums from 1969 to 1975 and touring Europe and Japan (!). Their recordings are a storm of funk and jazz funk, worthy of the name rare groove, with amazing performances that you wouldn't expect from high school students! However, since it is a student band record, naturally the number of copies pressed was less than 1,000... Due to the funk content and rarity, all the original LPs were coveted by collectors. The eight albums left by the Cashmere Stage Band are released for the first time in the world! All at once in paper jacket CDs!

■"Rhapsody In Blue" is an arrangement of a Gershwin standard with a fat funk rhythm, which is a typical KSB song that fuses big band and funk in a sense! Conrad's original "The Zero Point" is also a hard-boiled jazz-funk masterpiece that shows the perfect combination of big band brass thickness and funky beat! Also worth mentioning is the killer funk "$$ Kash Register$$" by "COLD FIRE", a band-within-a-band, a group of elite members in the later period of KSB, who released their work on the label of Conrad Johnson's student Bubba Thomas after graduating from Cashmere High School!