When it comes to eclectic taste in music (a penchant I wholly appreciate) you can’t really go wrong with the song choices of Now-Again’s Egon! I can’t profess to loving everything he shares and reissues, but I am always more than willing to listen to what he has to play and love how a lot of music I have stumbled upon over the years often crops up in his playlist!
Today’s song appeared in an old playlist of his that I found and comes courtesy of Al Manfredi and his band, The Lost And Found. Real name, Albert T. Manfredi, this artist was recording music whilst still in his teenage years, but a fateful event changed his whole musical career..
A few years back Now-Again reissued Al Manfredi’s self-titled 1973 album, together with the write-up I have pasted below. The album contained some unreleased material, including both sides of the only 45 The Lost And Found recorded in 1966 entitled, Don’t Move Girl/To Catch The Sun. Today’s song is that B-side to this single and if I’m completely honest, these are the only two songs I really like – perhaps this is because it was issued in the mid-1960’s and not the mid-1970’s like the LP?
See what you think and read all about Al Manfredi below and listen to To Catch The Sun above….
“Al Manfredi, born to a musical family of Italian immigrants in the small SoCal beach town of San Clemente, found regional success with his garage rock band Lost & Found while he was still a teenager. The tragic deaths of two of the band’s members in the late 60s shook Manfredi to his core, and he gave up on the band scene completely, retreating to his family’s music store, and working on music in private, multi-tracking demos of growing prowess on primitive recording equipment.
In 1973 he chose six of his favorite songs and exactingly produced and recorded an album, which he custom-pressed in minute quantities. His dreams of securing a record deal faded, but he spent the rest of his life recording music, surfing, bringing children into the world, and battling alcohol and drug abuse. This little-known West Coast rock masterpiece was rediscovered celebrated by Acid Archives founder Patrick Lundborg and others around the time that Manfredi died in 1995. This version of the album, overseen by Manfredi’s son, the hip hop producer Exile, and with Manfredi’s story told by Ugly Things’ founder Mike Stax, presents the complete package of an incredible lost and found artist…
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