Terea Terea

In the golden days the music business was a torrid set of affairs run by hustlers, sharks and gangsters. Broken promises, deceit and corruption was the order of the day, and to be thrown out of a window was seen as a rite of passage into the business. Amongst all this hustle and bustle was the murky world of the ‘tax scam’ label. Set up for wealthy individuals to invest in as a means to take advantage of a tax loophole, labels such as Tiger Lilly, Guinness and Baby Grand (upon which Terea was released) released many hundreds of obscure titles. The records themselves never saw a proper release and were often dumped in cut-out bins – or taken straight to the dump itself. As such, many of these LPs, including this album by Californian soul outfit Terea, remain extremely scarce and are now highly-prized collectors items. In his liner notes to our reissue of the Terea album. producer Dennis Dreith lifts the lid on the shady business of the tax scam labels. Not only that but he tells us the story of Terea and the dedicated musicians who freely recorded the music they wanted to record without obligation to the record companies and A&R men. It was in these circumstances that the Terea LP was recorded, a work of art if only for the utterly joyous ‘Pretty Bird’.