Hollis Stone - The Music of Christopher Priest

 

This is Christopher Priest, formerly known as Jim Owsley. He is a comic writer who’s been working in the comics industry for over 50 years. He’s got a lot of firsts under his belt.

He was the first mainstream African American comic writer, he was the first African American Spider-Man editor (though he seemed to regret being the editor there), the first guy to make Black Panther cool for the modern day, AND he was the first comic writer to be a reverend. As far as I know.

You wanna know another first? As far as I know, he was the first comic writer to also be a FUCKING MUSICIAN! Having produced tons of albums for himself and for others, this guy’s musical history is wild!

For one, He decided to make music undePr the name “Hollis Stone”. Secondly, he didn’t just produce music for himself, he did it for a ton of other people too. For now, I wanna talk about his album “Streetwise”.

This features vocals by one Michael Hammond, a kid who sounded like Michael Jackson did when he was in the Jackson 5. Meanwhile, there were these other musicians. Like co-producer William Wallace, who Priest says barely did anything and was only credited as co-producer cause he had a huge ego. There was also background vocalists Florence and Yanick Manigat. Yanick would later marry Priest in the 80s, make an album with him…and divorce in 1993, so fuck it.

Mansion In The Sand is a rockin and funky fuckin’ tune with Jackson 5-esque vocals, meanwhile “Daddy” is a heartwrenching and yet bumping track about how Priest’s father is a deadbeat fuck who was never there for him. Michael Hammond sang the first 2 verses cause according to Priest--

“When I was 10 years old, I used to sing a lot like young Michael Jackson, so I recruited Michael Hammond, who sounded a lot like I did at that age, to play my role in The Story, while I sang the part of the grown-up me.”

- (Quote from his Lamercie Park blog)

So that’s interesting. The rest of the album is really cool too, I highly recommend it.

Priest would later produce a fair few albums for himself and for others. Like Nita Marshal’s Stop! Look! Listen, the Yanick album, an album by a kid named Nadia that sounds like 2001, and also a live gospel album.

Due to the recording equipment actually being primitive, the mixing isn’t that great, but hey, the music is good. Did you know he had a Prince phase? The album didn’t come out, but hey we can listen to it. To be honest, my favorite album will always be Streetwise. It’s a me thing, I prefer real live instruments. Sure, I might’ve made music using mainly synths, but there’s a sort of magic to recording using real instruments.