Here ye, brethren and cistern! What you hold in your frayed mittens is the first recorded testament of Harold Ray Live, the groover, the midday mover, the theorem prover, with his special brand of ass-funky rock’n’soul. But not merely Harold Ray Live, but Harold Ray Live RECORDED LIVE in front of a specially invited audience bussed in from Bay Area retirement homes for Mother’s Day.

You can practically smell the simoleons this baby will generate! I’ll never forget my first encounter with the legendary Harold Ray Live, Miami’s answer to Little Joe (and at least half one-third of the Latinaires). It was at the Farraz Club on Second Street…no, I think it was at a tailgate party outside the Tijuana Jai Alai Arena, though it might have been (just maybe) at some hipster shithouse with a bunch of goofs wearing striped tights and polyester baseball caps.

Anyway, some drunk ofay kept screaming, “Harold! My Man!” until Harold, in a fine display of his famed wit, finally yelled, “Will you shut the fuck up?” Ah, golden memories.

And let’s not forget the boys in the backroom band: the boss honk of the squawnk, the whack crack of the rum-tee-tee-tum, the smooth move of the bu-bu-bu-ba-da, the castrato demidivinity of the ree-ree da-dahhh, the roller coaster ride of the piree-eep-eep (and let’s not forget what sound the mooly-cow makes!). They’re the ones who stretch the canvas, who stuff the rabbits into the the secret compartments of the tophats, to wit: the stooges who make the magic possible.

Getdown music for the strutting beast within? Absitively! Background music for some action in your sin-bin? You bet! Foreplay, I mean Foreground music for pure listening enjoyment? Fuquez oui! Guaranteed better than a poke in your eardrums with an icepick! If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin” (“Zeus gives no aid to liars,” as Homer put it)!