Fat Larry’s Band – Off The Wall
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | FLAC | 300 dpi scans | Funk, Soul, Disco
1977 Stax Records STX-41303
Two words: Peaceful Journey… I mean, the lead-off song Sparkle is fantastic: it’s about getting it on with an alien, so how could it not be? I like to imagine it as an alternative version of the film of the same name with the Aretha Franklin / Curtis Mayfield soundtrack. But Peaceful Journey, that’s where it’s at. The group must have thought so too since it was the first single off the album, though it barely registered on the R&B charts, reaching No.98. Still, you know you have a first-rate start-to-finish funk and soul album when even the slow tunes burn with a tight, smokey groove. That rock solid beat just kills: founder and bandleader Fat Larry, aka Larry James , was a drummer. This is definitely a classic highlight from Fat Larry’s Band’s brief catalog. And, like another classic highlight, Soul Makossa, it contains an idea that Quincy and Michael J would rip off a few years later.
Tracklist
A1 – Sparkle (06:12)
A2 – Peaceful Journey (05:17)
A3 – Castle Of Joy (03:00)
A4 – Passing Time (04:18)
B1 – Easy (04:08)
B2 – Don’t You Worry About Tomorrow (03:50)
B3 – Time (03:25)
B4 – I Love You So (02:50)
B5 – In The Pocket (04:30)
LINEAGE: 2021 Stax STX-4103 vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica Signet TK7E cartridge; Speedbox power supply; Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest Black Mamba and Pangea Premier interconnect cables; RME Babyface Pro interface ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed manually with Adobe Audition 3.0; ClickRepair used on tracks 3 & 7 with output monitored manually; resampled and dithered using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.
password: vibes
Looking forward to hearing this. Thank you Dr. V!
I’m having problems downloading the 192 files – im using vibes as password
Yes, I’m having issues with this as well. I only get the first 5 tracks when unpacking the files. There appears to be something going wrong when it tries to process the second file (2496-FLBOTW77.part2.rar) because if I isolate the part1 in a folder and unpack it, it does ask me for the password and finishes without an error, resulting in the first 5 tracks being unpacked. If I do the same with part2 only, it gives me an error. Not sure where to go at this point. Also, there is no FLAC16 file, which I would settle for and could probably get in one file I assume. Hmm.
That post was from me (Kovina Kris). I hit post before putting in the name.
I should add that when I try to unpack part 2 only, it does say that the password is incorrect. I suspect this may be the issue. Part1 “knows” the password but Part2 doesn’t?
Hi Kovina and anyone else having issues: you need to have all the parts residing in the same directory, and when you go to extract one set (part 1), it should automatically pull all the other files along with it. It is better if you *don’t* drill down into the directory to where the original tracks are, just to extract the main directory and it will find Parts 2 (and 3 etc) without you needing to patch it together.
Regarding 16/44, I thought I had put those there but now see that I did not. Fixing it as I write this.
These things can be a basket of snakes with tons of variables from user to user. I do just click on part1 with both files in the same directory with The Unarchiver and it then asks me for password. It finishes without error but the folder that results from the unpacking process only contains the files from part1. This may be very difficult to figure out what’s happening. No worries. I’m always good with FLAC16 anyway so I’ll just go with that. Thank you for working on those. I certainly don’t expect you to troubleshoot all of these things and very much appreciate all the time, energy, and passion that you put into your excellent blog.
No worries, I appreciate knowing about these things. For MacOS I used to recommend UnRARX, and had a link to it — which I just discovered is dead so the software may no longer be supported. I don’t know how Unarchiver deals with multi-part files. You could look for a legacy version of UnRARX or else try this RAR program for Mac/Linux: https://www.win-rar.com/rar-linux-mac.html?&L=0
…and should also add that I didn’t have any trouble unpacking any of the single file stuff I’ve gotten recently like the Joe Bataan Gypsy Woman FLAC offering. Also, I use The Unarchiver to do the unpacking just for the record. Not sure anything can really be done but just giving the 411, not complaining.
Happy new year! The MP3 link has a lot of HTML bleed so it’s not working. Thanks for all your good finds!
oh gosh, you weren’t kidding. Fixed!
Just got a chance to hear this and I love this album. So damn good and your rip is awesome. This band deserved to be better known for sure. I would assume this is a damn collectible album. Thank you very much Dr. V!
Hi, many thanks, got the std. FLAC, will try for the higher res (my location and FF don’t like each other so often disagree and end their connection LOL)
thank you