★★★

1. Boss City: 👍🏻
2. Burning Spear: 🤷‍♂️
3. Take Five: 👍🏻
4. Super Bad: 🤷‍♂️
5. Keep Doing It: 👍🏻
6. Thunder Soul: 👍🏻
7. Do You Dig It, Man?: 👍🏻
8. Headwiggle: 👍🏻
9. Do Your Thing: 🤷‍♂️
10. Scorpio: 👍🏻
11. Thank You: 🤷‍♂️
12. Al’s Tune: 👍🏻
13. All Praises: 👍🏻
14. Shaft: 👍🏻
15. Kashmere: 👍🏻
16. $$ Kash Register $$: 👍🏻
17. Zero Point: 🤷‍♂️
18. Getting It Out of My System: 🤷‍♂️
19. Intro: 👎🏻
20. Zero Point: 👎🏻
21. All Praises: 🤷‍♂️
22. Intro: 👎🏻
23. Do You Dig It, Man?: 👍🏻
24. Don’t Mean a Thing: 👍🏻
25. Thank You: 👍🏻
26. Ain’t No Sunshine: 👍🏻
27. Do You Dig It, Man?: 🤷‍♂️
28. All Praises: 🤷‍♂️
29. Thank You: 🤷‍♂️
30. Zero Point: 🤷‍♂️
31. Do Your Thing: 👍🏻
32. Getting It Out of My System: 👍🏻

---

Earlier today I tweeted this:

guys i’m gonna do it.
i’m gonna listen to Texas Thunder Soul today

— Ch@rlesThom.as (@crthomas42) March 30, 2017

I intended to listen to it way back day seven of the project (and the year), but I saw 32 tracks and a 2 hour plus run time and I listened to Baby Huey instead. First I want to start with the positives: That this album exists at all is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, even though it was released in 2006, the recordings were from at least as far back as 1974 (hence the timeline in the title). That’s a long time for recordings to sit around before being released. Second, Kashmere Stage Band is a high school band from Texas. It’s amazing that recordings of a Houston high school band still existed to put the album out. And finally Kashmere Stage band is a high school band. They have no business being this good! The album was definitely worth listening to all the way through once. When they’re on, the songs are great.

Now for the negatives: some songs have lyrics where they definitely aren’t needed. What’s more, they’re usually just chants by band members. Totally unnecessary and definitely takes away from the songs where it happens more than it ever adds to them. Worse than that, though, is the second disc of the album (starting at track 19). The first 18 tracks were all studio recordings, and for the most part, they sound pretty good. But the second half is a mish-mash of random live recordings, some of pretty bad quality. Why are there two intros?!

I definitely won’t ever listen to this whole thing all the way through again. But I’d consider buying the album just to have the first half of it to revisit.