Uploaded August 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Joy of Cooking were one of the earliest [some say THE earliest] female-led rock bands. Formed in Berkeley in 1967 by pianist and main songwriter Toni Brown, along with folk-singing guitarist Terry Garthwaite (also known as Ruby Green), their music was an ear-catching polyrhythmic amalgam of folk, rock, jazz, blues and gospel elements driven by the duo's interweaving vocal verve atop a freewheeling, innovative three-man rhythms section. The rest of the band consisted of bass guitarist David Garthwaite (Terry's brother), drummer Fritz Kasten and percussion player Ron Wilson. Keyboard player Stevie Roseman replaced Toni Brown for a time and bass players Happy Smith and eventually Jeff Neighbor replaced David Garthwaite on bass guitar. The music was a mix of "hippy"(sic) sensibility on blues and folk roots, and the lyrics often reflected feminist or environmental themes.
Joy of Cooking recorded three albums with Capitol Records. Brown and Garthwaite had solo careers afterwards and also released albums as a duo, mostly notably "Cross Country." The San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll described the band as "a remarkable rock and roll band, half ballads and half boogie, with a driving rhythm section fronted by two swell women, Toni Brown (a smart, crafty songwriter who could evoke sentiment without sentimentality) and Terry Garthwaite (who sings like an angel with dirty wings.)"
Rather unusually (especially for the time) the members of the band were all over thirty when they cut their first record. According to some, it is for this reason that they and Frank Sinatra veteran John Palladino to produce their first record.
"Sometimes Like a River (Loving You)" is perhaps The Joy of Cooking's finest studio outing. The backup vocals by the guys in the group on this track strike is as being quite effective. We mention this because this is one of the very few Joy cuts where male backup vocals were employed.
If you like this cut, we strongly encourage you to buy The Joy of Cooking's 2007 CD "Back To Your Heart," and also the other Joy albums. To the best of our knowledge Toni and Terry's solo CD, and their very good duet effort "Cross Country," have not been re-released, so we may try to follow up with a few cuts from these. This upload is from an LP with no further processing. That was the original sound, after all, occasional clicks and all.
Even though the lyrics of this song have nothing to do with us, we like it, for some reason.
Joy of Cooking were one of the earliest [some say THE earliest] female-led rock bands. Formed in Berkeley in 1967 by pianist and main songwriter Toni Brown, along with folk-singing guitarist Terry Garthwaite (also known as Ruby Green), their music was an ear-catching polyrhythmic amalgam of folk, rock, jazz, blues and gospel elements driven by the duo's interweaving vocal verve atop a freewheeling, innovative three-man rhythms section. The rest of the band consisted of bass guitarist David Garthwaite (Terry's brother), drummer Fritz Kasten and percussion player Ron Wilson. Keyboard player Stevie Roseman replaced Toni Brown for a time and bass players Happy Smith and eventually Jeff Neighbor replaced David Garthwaite on bass guitar. The music was a mix of "hippy"(sic) sensibility on blues and folk roots, and the lyrics often reflected feminist or environmental themes.
Joy of Cooking recorded three albums with Capitol Records. Brown and Garthwaite had solo careers afterwards and also released albums as a duo, mostly notably "Cross Country." The San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll described the band as "a remarkable rock and roll band, half ballads and half boogie, with a driving rhythm section fronted by two swell women, Toni Brown (a smart, crafty songwriter who could evoke sentiment without sentimentality) and Terry Garthwaite (who sings like an angel with dirty wings.)"
Rather unusually (especially for the time) the members of the band were all over thirty when they cut their first record. According to some, it is for this reason that they and Frank Sinatra veteran John Palladino to produce their first record.
"Sometimes Like a River (Loving You)" is perhaps The Joy of Cooking's finest studio outing. The backup vocals by the guys in the group on this track strike is as being quite effective. We mention this because this is one of the very few Joy cuts where male backup vocals were employed.
If you like this cut, we strongly encourage you to buy The Joy of Cooking's 2007 CD "Back To Your Heart," and also the other Joy albums. To the best of our knowledge Toni and Terry's solo CD, and their very good duet effort "Cross Country," have not been re-released, so we may try to follow up with a few cuts from these. This upload is from an LP with no further processing. That was the original sound, after all, occasional clicks and all.
Even though the lyrics of this song have nothing to do with us, we like it, for some reason.
![Jörg Herchet, Komposition 1 für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncello [1980] - ii.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EJ3Ezo_1GYs/mqdefault.jpg "Jörg Herchet, Komposition 1 für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncello [1980] - ii.
The subject of Jörg Herchets thesis while studying in East Berlin was The Theoretical Writings of Arnold Schönberg and Their Significance for the Teaching of Composition. Herchet argued the need for a teaching method setting out from Schönberg and leading to Pierre Boulez. This line of thought was anathema to the school administrators, who felt that the teaching of composition should lead to Hanns Eisler [ironically, a student of Schönberg, and a fine composer in our opinion]. After failing to complete his degree Herchet worked for a year in Dresden as a temporary employee in the bookdealers trade. In 1970 Paul Dessau was able to have the young composer accepted as his special pupil at the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin even though he lacked a degree. In Dessau, Herchet found a teacher who could accept and further his own approach to composition.
Jörg Herchets Composition 1 for Two Violins, Viola and Violoncello was written in 1980 and is dedicated to Paul Dessau in veneration and gratitude. Herchets two-movement string quartet is based on a specific dramaturgical conception. The second movement starts out with scraps of material and motifs from the preceding movement. The texture becomes more compressed, and for a moment we hear once again the arpeggiated passage of chromatic saturation, this time built of all-interval chords. Then, in rigid and regular repetition, all-interval chords march past en masse in a wide variety of transpositions. The motor-like thrust of the rhythm, however, soon dissolves once again into a dense polyphony in which striking particles of melody occasionally rise to the surface. At the very end, clearly divided into dynamically activated chordal blocks, we hear mirror-reflections and inversions of the pure all-interval chord vanishing in pianissimo. A state of stability seems to have been reached.
The only supra-musical dimension that Herchet allows his works to assume is expressed in the phrased soli Deo gloria [to the glory of Gold alone] found at the end of each of his compositions since 1984. Herchet sees himself entirely as a composer of religious and sacred music. His understanding of religion, however, cannot be easily conveyed on words. Parts of it are alluded to in such concepts as veneration of the all-encompassing, the holistic, the common substance of man. He regards his music to as a yearning for God. The important thing for me is first to unify all the different areas and then the most important thing in all of my music to proceed from that unity.")
