Another Side of Leo Nocentelli

The long strange trip of the first solo record from the Meters guitarist

It has been a footnote and a phantom, a thing that happened during a super-busy time and then left on the shelf. Never released, it was thought lost in the floods of Hurricane Katrina. Then a safety master was found at a Los Angeles swap meet where goods from abandoned or defaulted storage units are liquidated.

Today, for the first time ever, Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli’s first solo album Another Side is available.

Anyone even casually interested in New Orleans funk and R&B and the creative cauldron that swirled around the Meters in the early ‘70s needs to hear it. Not just because it’s an exotic find, or even just because it’s an outlier – in the liner notes, Nocentelli, now 73, says that he considered it his “country and western album.”

The story of this discovery is a great one, told in meticulous detail by LA Times reporter Sam Sweet. It suggests there could be other unreleased New Orleans gems in the pipeline.

Somehow, though, the stars-aligning randomness is just the beginning. Another Side is important because its easygoing mellow-gold grooves capture a relatively undocumented dimension of Nocentelli’s musicianship. And at the same time, the work – which was recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s Jazz City Studio in New Orleans and features Allen Toussaint (keys), James Black (drums), and both George Porter Jr. (bass) and Zigaboo Modeliste (drums) of The Meters – offers enlarged perspective on the intuitive, organic music-making dynamic that defined the Meters and all the Meters-adjacent projects of the era. (I wrote about this not too long ago here.)

It’s chill, sometimes ruminative and thoroughly invigorated music, a time capsule from the early ‘70s (it was recorded between 1970 and 72) that gathers pop inspirations of the era into something that feels deep and personal. It’s got smart, tersely-sung songs that show the influence of the Beatles, and tunes that depend on a lighter, airborne notion of rhythm that’s far from the deep Meters pocket. It’s got somber gospel-tinged soul and a song called “Give Me Back My Loving” that is one sly syncopated earworm. It ends with an enchanting take on Elton John’s “Your Song.”

There are a few characteristically deft guitar breaks, and intricate chordal arpeggios that carry echoes of Stephen Stills. But what’s far more meaningful is the overall cohesion, the nothing-fancy steadiness, the sultry alchemy that can happen when musicians listen to each other while playing in close quarters. These musicians brought that to every session. Starting in 1969 and during the years Nocentelli’s solo work was an active project, the Meters recorded the foundational albums that codified modern New Orleans R&B – including  Look-Ka Py Py (1969) and Struttin' (1970). But that’s not all: During this period Nocentelli and his collaborators played key roles shaping albums by Toussaint, Dr. John and others. These caught the ears of a wide audience, and within a few years, artists from all over the world – Paul Simon, LaBelle – were seeking the spirit and spry rhythmic lock the Meters made famous.

From the recollections of Toussaint and others, music historians know that this was a busy time – a rare sustained explosion of creativity in one place, involving a relatively small group of players. Another Side tells an under-explored part of that story. It’s not earthshattering music, but it is entirely human music, a stylistic impulse Nocentelli followed for a brief time and then abandoned. It sheds light on the ethos of that scene and the sense of possibility that surrounded it.  It shows that at the same time the Meters were releasing landmarks like “Cissy Strut,” the musicians in the band were exploring beyond their wheelhouse; they were taking in the currents of California rock and pop radio, and reworking them for their own purposes. These players were not just experts in groove: Like all great musicians, they were participating in the ongoing (endless!) conversation about the art that gets embedded within the music as it travels and evolves.

You can hear that on this record.