This 7" is a re-recording of two of the Original Caste's biggest hits, produced by Bruce Innes with engineering help from Richard Harrow after the band had come back to Calgary (and gone through a few membership changes). [center][img width=345]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1717280097914x665123482257830300/richtext_content.jpeg[/img][/center] [center][/center] Original Caste is cast right By Brian Brennan (Herald staff writer) The new edition of the Original Caste made its performing debut Saturday night at the Pleiades Theatre. The performance, which was taped before an audience (why are they always called "live" audiences?) for an album, yielded an eclectic mixture of original country tunes, blues, Caribbean-flavored ballads, West Coast rock and electric folk music. The original Original Caste was a pop group that started out in Calgary under another name and had a U.S. chart success in 1970 with a song called One Tin Soldier. The current lineup includes Dixie Lee Innes, who sang lead vocal on that hit, husband Bruce Innes, singer-songwriters Richard Harrow and Glen Mundy who collaborated on the Alberta rock musical Potts - bassist Julian Kerr and drummer John Dunn. It's a fruitful aggregation. This group is just bursting with musical talent, with fine original songs by Harrow and Innes, strong vocals all round, good harmonies and workmanlike instrumental playing. It was a useful idea for the group to make its first public appearance in a concert setting because, as Innes himself observed, talent like this could easily be engulfed in the quicksand of the bar circuit. That's not to say, of course, that the new Original Caste is without flaws. But the weaknesses are mostly presentational, something to be expected in a young band. It will take a little time yet before the individual talents fuse into a strong collective whole. When this happens, audiences can expect a lot more of the excitement that was heard a couple of times during Saturday's concert most notably during Innes' version of the bluesy rocker, Stealin', and again during the closing version of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, when even a lost thumb-pick and broken bass string could not dampen the enthusiasm. Appearing with the group Saturday night was the elusive Gaye Delorme, a musician of erratic brilliance, who offers an unlikely combination of stand-up comedy and classical guitar playing. Delorme opened the show with a series of classically-based improvisations on nylon-stringed acoustic guitar, switched to steel-stringed guitar for some fractured versions of Freight Train, Swedish Rhapsody and the Third Man Theme, diverted with a little mock ventriloquism and parody singing and finished with another classical piece.
