I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if you manage your Spotify algorithm, it will steer you towards some incredible new-to-you music.
You need to train your algorithm. Make a playlist. Call it Algorithm Bait or something, fill it with songs you know you LOVE — and play the heck out of it. Nothing else. And then do it on shuffle. After a few weeks of this, check out Spotify’s Discover Weekly. This is them trying to figure you out. Listen to the whole thing and make sure to “favourite” anything you like. If you REALLY like it, add it to your Algorithm Bait playlist. This tells Spotify: “More of this, please!”
Another way to tell Spotify what floats your boat is to put your favourite songs on repeat. But you also need to tell them what you don’t like. If you make themed playlists all the time like I do, and they serve a purpose other than just being songs you love, make sure you tell the app. You do this by clicking the three dots next to the title of your playlist and selecting “exclude from your taste profile.” All of these will help you create a relationship with Spotify akin to that of a trusted record shop-owning pal. Or that friend with all the cool records you’ve never heard of.
I do this, and that’s how I got served the debut album by Patto recently while I waited in the car for the courier office to open. Holy shit. What a band. The first song that came on was The Man. It sounded like Faces meets Dirty Projectors. Honest to gawd, I had no idea if this was old or brand new because all I could see was the album cover. But it’s from 1970 — and so devoid of any musical or lyrical pretensions that it is pure song in art form. Behold:
I favourited it and dove into the rest of the record. The next few songs were pretty proggy — jazzy and explosive. I could picture my partner feeling quite harassed by this playing on our home stereo. So I was on the fence. But not for long. I got to the fourth track, Red Glow, which starts with an absolutely delicious, swampy bit of Born On The Bayou-esque Gibson SG dirt blues. Life-affirming stuff.
Right? The song takes off and gets wild, so I decided to relisten to those first four songs again. Every one of them got favourited. Then I got excited.
I went looking to see what kind of discography Patto have. It’s lean. The band put out four albums — one a year between 1970 and 1973, and then an unfinished fourth album which finally saw the light of day in 1995. I decided to see if the band filed down the rough edges and perfected their sound for the second album, 1971’s Hold Your Fire. To my absolute delight, that’s exactly what seems to have happened. Singer Mike Patto’s incredible lyrics get more creative and more grounded the same time — so real that they’re the stuff of genius. You know, like Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Nick Cave.
When I got to the eighth song Magic Door, I decided I’d finally found my favourite. I’ve played it on repeat several times, restarting it at various stages. This song resonates. It connects to me like Lego. Fits like the last piece of a jigsaw-puzzle border. Goes down like the first drag on a cigarette after a long flight. Like the first Patto song I heard, The Man, this one features virtuoso guitarist Ollie Halsall on his other instrument — vibraphone. Holy fuck, is it ever unexpectedly perfect.
Patto were an English band. A power trio and a vocalist, like Led Zeppelin and Free. Along with Patto and Halsall, you had Clive Griffiths on bass and John “Admiral” Halsey on drums.
Halsey is a sick drummer. He has all the tools — quick, powerful but wildly expressive, jazzy and creative. Weird, then, that he’s probably best known for portraying another drummer who was the poster boy for keeping in simple and steady: Ringo Starr. You see, Halsey was also “Barry Wom” — the drummer in The Rutles, Eric Idle’s ’70s Beatles parody band. It makes sense; Halsey was not only a drummer, but also (like the rest of the band) from Merseyside. It’s almost impossible you’ve never heard him, as he was also the studio drummer on Lou Reed’s legendary Transformer album in 1972. Due to a near-fatal collision, he left the music business by the 1980s and became one of those guys who sells fish from a freezer in the back of a van. Seriously. He also ran a pub for many years, and just turned 80 at the end of February.
Griffiths was also a monster musician. A bass player in the realm of Dee Murray, he was lyrical and nimble, but never too busy. It’s stunning he was never in any other bands except for Patto and their predecessor Timebox.
Perhaps even more stunning is how I never managed to hear the name Ollie Halsall before. His playing is extraordinary. He has the boundlessness of Frank Zappa, but the emotion of Paul Kossoff. Like the others, Halsall seems to have been pretty choosy about whom he played with. Besides Timebox and Patto, he was in the post-Patto band Boxer — if you were around in the ’70s, you’ll remember the infamous NSFW cover to their album Below The Belt. Halsall also worked extensively with former Soft Machine bassist / guitarist / vocalist Kevin Ayers. Like Halsey, he contributed to The Rutles’ 1978 album All You Need Is Cash, but wasn’t a member of the onscreen band. Reportedly, he was also briefly considered as a replacement when Mick Taylor quit The Rolling Stones. Although he played guitar and vibraphone, Halsall’s first instrument was actually drums. He died of a drug-induced heart attack in 1992 at age 43.
Singer Patto also fronted Timebox, Boxer and, briefly, Spooky Tooth — he sang on 1974’s The Mirror, their last album before they disbanded for 25 years. Who knows what the 1980s would have been like for Patto, who died of lymphatic leukemia in 1979 at just 36 years of age. His style is still refreshing 50 years later — like a cross between Bon Scott, Phil Lynott and Elmer Gantry. He also has too many great lyrics to mention. Practically every song has at least one or two lines that stick out. Even deep cuts like Sausages from their abandoned fourth album, Monkey’s Bum from 1973:
“I think I’ll set fire to my hotel bedroom
Just to prove that I can set fire to my hotel bedroom
And then I’ll throw all my furniture out of the window
Just to show that I can throw all my furniture out of the window, yeah
“I ain’t gonna climb no banana tree
Hold out to get my head pulled off
I don’t expect anybody to stand on me
When I’m swirling round the world
And I’m feeling so good with a stomach
Full of grey meat from the aeroplane, aeroplane
Don’t cry cos it’s all in vain
Excuse me while I go insane, while I go insane
“I think I’ll, think I’ll put on slinking gym costumes to kill the sunrise
Just to show that I know something about chemistry, how to mate
What the number 4 is and then I’ll assassinate the room service kitchen maid
Just to show what a drunken man will do if he does not get paid
“Well I can flood the basement or set fire to the hotel
And cause a new mountain of garbage
I don’t expect nobody to stand on me
When I’m swirling round the world
And I’m feeling so good with a stomach
Full of grey meat from the aeroplane, oh yeah
Don’t cry cos it’s all in vain
Excuse me while I go insane, while I go insane
“Think I’ll sell my story to the sitting nature woman
Just to show that I wouldn’t stoop too low to corrupt the youth
And then I’ll go down to the lobby and hang myself dead
Just to show that I would rather die than lose, oh this bread
“I didn’t tell the L.A. police
That everybody was smoking coke
I don’t expect nobody to stand on me
When I’m swirling round the world
Feeling so good with a stomach
Full of grey meat from the aeroplane
Don’t cry cos it’s all in vain
Excuse me while I go insane, while I go insane.”
Patto recorded four studio albums between 1970 and 1973: Patto (1970), Hold Your Fire (1971), Roll ‘Em Smoke ‘Em Put Another Line Out (1972) and Monkey’s Bum (recorded in 1973 but not released until 1995). Original copies of the first two will set you back hundreds of dollars, and there haven’t been any remastered reissues in a decade. Those go for around $50. You might want to consider trying to find a copy of their retrospective box set, Give It All Away from 2021. You can get one for around $50 + shipping.
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
