You do get a good number of tracks which showcase Country Comfort’s music from the ’70s on “The Very Best of Country Comfort & Billy Kaui”, but you also get the comeback of Billy Kaui. But if anything, you do get something a bit different that other bands who were part of the Second Hawaiian Renaissance and it’s homegrown folk rock music. An album worth recommending!
Click here to purchase Country Comfort – The Very Best of Country Comfort & Billy Kaui
BAND: Country Comfort
ALBUM: The Very Best of Country Comfort & Billy Kaui
DURATION: 14 Songs (48 Minutes)
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1996
- Hello Waimanalo
- We Are The Children
- Honky Tonk Wines
- Sun Lite, Moon Lite
- Asking For A Night
- Mr. Reggae
- Mama
- Pretty Girl
- Sunny
- Close To You
- Waimanalo Blues
- Rainy Day Song
- Closer, Closer
- Manha De Carnaval
If Hawaii had a band that literally lived the rock n’ roll lifestyle, it would be Country Comfort.
The band would perform on stage and pass out, they would become reckless with equipment and it’s not that they were a hard rock bad, a punk band or even a metal band. Country Comfort was a folk rock band.
So, hard to manage that it drove the late radio DJ and concert promoter Tom Moffatt (the band’s manager) to never ever manage a band again. So, bad that he could only write a bit about it in his book, “The Showman of the Pacific – 50 Years of Radio and Rock Stars”.
But it was the ’70s and not just Hawaii, but bands all over the world were experiencing a lot of drugs, sex and rock n’ roll. Those were the times.
These guys would during afternoon, nights, weekends, weekdays spending time at a Waimanalo back yard drinking beer, doing drugs, and playing down-home Hawaiian stuyle music with neighbors and friends.
Vocalist Billy Kaui told Honolulu Star, “A lot of things got out of hand. If you never been there (on top) you never know what it’s like. When we were hot, we were hot. But when were not, we were not. You can really blow it easy. I think we did blow it on account of the drugs”.
But when you look back at it, look at the positives, you to start to see the influences. As Velvet Underground influenced a lot of post punk and rock bands from England, in Hawaii, Country Comfort was a band that paved the ways for bands such as Kalapana, Keola and Kapono Beamer, Olomana, to name a few with their “homegrown” sound.
And while the band’s music will be remembered, the deaths of Country Comfort’s Billy Kaui and Kalapana guitarist Mackey Feary are among the biggest music tragedies in Hawaii.
Billy Kaui who died at the age of 28 of a brain hemorrhage while performing at the Hawaii Contemporary Music Festival. After the drugs had took him away from his love of music, with the help of a friend who helped Kaui involved in a methadone program and kicking his heroin addiction, Kaui was back into making music and restarting his life as a solo artist.
While tragic, the music of Country Comfort continues to live on.
And if one would ask, what kind of music could one expect? I would say two bands that I grew up with, Bread, Crosby, Stills & Nash and it’s music that I grew up listening to and watching (my uncle was in a similar style of band during the ’70s), acoustic guitar driven folk rock music is something that I will remember of my young childhood.
Country Comfort would create two albums, with 1975’s “We Are the Children” and 1976’s album “Country Comfort II”. They would be remembered for their singles such as “Sunlight, Moonlight”, “Honky-Tonk Wines” and “Waimanalo Blues”, “We Are the Children” and “Look Into Your Eyes”.
The group would release two best albums, one from Mele Records in 1980 and in 1996, “The Very Best Of ” from HanaOla Records and Cord International.
While songs from Country Comfort would appear on “The Very Best Of”, Billy Kaui’s solo work from his 1977 self-titled album “Billy Kaui” would appear with songs such as “Mr. Reggae”, “Asking for a Night”, “Close to You” and “Sunny” on the best album.
For me, one of the songs from Country Comfort that I regard as timeless is their song “Waimanalo Blues”, which to me is a masterpiece of a song created by the band. From the guitar playing to the overall melody, the song is about property near Waimanalo beaches being sold, to build hotels.
Also, featuring “Hello Waimanalo” written by Billy Kaui and Jim Freudenberg. A song about leaving California and going back to Waimanalo. As the lyrics pretty much says it all, “Going where the weather suits my soul” and “Looking for a home, with a mountain view”.
You get their single “We Are the Children”, “Honk Tonk Wines”, “Sun Lite, Moon Lite”, “Rainy Day Song” and “Manha De Carnaval” from their debut album.
While “Hello Waimanalo”, “Mama”, Pretty Girl”, “Closer, Closer” and “Hello Waimanalo” are from “Country Comfort II”.
Now, while a balanced album featuring songs from the two albums and Billy Kaui’s solo album, you do get three extra songs versus their 1980 “Best of Country Comfort & Billy Kaui”, while I do wish they put the cover of Bread’s “Make it With You” or even to include songs such as “End of the Line” which showed another side to the band’s music. Or even “Good Weather” or “I’ll Be”.
Granted, that’s me being picky and wanting best albums to have more than an hours worth of music.
But overall, you do get a good number of tracks which showcase Country Comfort’s music from the ’70s on “The Very Best of Country Comfort & Billy Kaui”, but you also get the comeback of Billy Kaui. But if anything, you do get something a bit different that other bands who were part of the Second Hawaiian Renaissance and it’s homegrown folk rock music. An album worth recommending!
Click here to purchase Country Comfort – The Very Best of Country Comfort & Billy Kaui
