November 10th
Novem-Eyes of a Child-Novem
Novem, or more
properly spelled, NOVEM, never really existed as a band. They were a group of
nine students from Harrison State University; four of which who were music
majors, and the other five who all had strong musical talents and interests. In
early 1973 these nine friends, at the behest of their erstwhile, unofficial
leader, Austin Rowles, started to encourage them all to jam together after
classes. It quickly became clear that they had a special chemistry as a group
of musicians.They started playing for free at parties across their campus and
went down a treat. Unusually, they only performed original material that they’d
written themselves.
In May 1973,
they were offered free studio time to record some of their music and jumped at
the chance. Mark Winstead (lead vocalist, piano, guitar, keyboards) asked all
the band members to write a couple of songs about something they felt strongly
about, and armed with this, he arranged for them to record at a studio his
uncle owned in Franklin, Tennessee. They piled into Tom Lewdowski’s (guitar and
lead vocals), VW camper van and drove to Dark Horse Studios in deepest rural
Tennessee. It was there that they spent a week hanging out and recording some
fantastic music. it was also there that they were sort of given the name, NOVEM
,by the studio engineer, who for the want of any actual band name, scribbled
the Latin for nine on the master tapes. (There were nine members in the group,
the three I’ve already mentioned, plus Denis Clark, Peter Shipley, Alan
Levinly, Chris Doyle, Dana Taylor and Jaslyn Walker). I’m surprised that a
studio engineer in a little rural studio was conversant in Latin, but maybe
that’s just my ignorance about the U.S. education system in the mid-1970’s. The
partially christened band packed up their gear on the morning of May 19th and
left the studio, no doubt triumphant about what they had accomplished, and
headed off back to college.
Sadly, they
never made it back. At the intersection of a traffic junction in Kentucky,
their van went straight through a red light and was hit sideways by a large
truck. The van flipped over a number of times, careered off the road and burst
into flames. Seven of the band died at the scene and the other two died shortly
afterwards, without regaining consciousness. The road conditions were perfect
and no reason was ever found for the accident. Police thought that maybe
whoever was driving their van had fallen asleep at the wheel, but that was pure
conjecture. Afterwards, the master tapes they’d recorded were lost for years.
They weren’t left in the studio and no eveidence was found of them at the crash
site. NOVEM’s music would just be a distant memory.
However, in 2004,
the tapes and some film reels of NOVEM recording at Dark Horse studios were
discovered in a garage sale in Brentwood, Tennessee. It seems that on the way
back from the studio all those years ago, Mark Winstead dropped the tapes and
films off at his parents’ house and placed these recordings, unbeknownst to
them, in the basement of their house. This marvellous music had remained
unheard and gathered dust for over thirty years. It’s curious and quite sad to
wonder what may have become of these musicians if they hadn’t had that accident
that fateful day. All that there’s left are the songs on this album and a film
that was pulled together from that week in the studio.
Get/read/see Totally Shuffled here
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