• Steve Kimock - guitar
• Greg Anton - drums, percussion, ’64 Corvette
• Martin Fierro - soprano & tenor sax
• Banana - keyboards



• Hadi Al-Saadoon - trumpet
• John Cipollina - guitar
• John Kahn - bass
• Ana Rizzo - vocals
• Tony Saunders - bass
• Bobby Vega - bass

Zero

NOTHIN' GOES HERE from 1990 was the band's second album. By that time, John Cipollina was not a regular member of the band anymore but plays on the one featured live track ("Gregg's Egg's"). The rest of the album was recorded live in the studio in five days and nights. The Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, CA, became the place of these memorable sessions.

Zero wanted to create a new melodic rock statement for the times. Their music was beyond categorisation and it didn't cater to contemporary trends. It was organic, earthy and pretty free. The typical laidback attitude of many SF bands was also part of Zero but their musical expertise never relied on boring jams with no direction. The sound of Zero was driven by the desire to get somewhere, to get to an imaginary destination - sometimes the music sounded euphoric, sometimes lyrical, but always melodic. Zero had a positive sound and when Kimock started his solo flights - just listen to the band's version of Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers To Cross" - the Cotati studio became a magical place of musical wizardry. It was only the band's second effort, but the possibilities of Zero's laid-back and intense sound seemed endless.

But there's more to the Zero magic than Steve Kimock's guitar playing. When they were "on", the band developed a fascinating way of communication. Be it the Marvin Gaye influenced "Tongue'n'Groove", the mighty ballad "Many Rivers To Cross" or melodic fusion flights like "Tangled" - Zero always communicated on a highly musical level and contributed to the popular thesis that in the beginning of a successful jam there should always be a good song - at least sometimes.

NOTHIN' GOES HERE caught the early Zero sound in an exemplary kind of way. The "live" aura of this band was captured by state-of-the-art 24 track technology and Mobile Fidelity, a now inexistant audiophile label, was the right company to pull this off successfully. NOTHIN' GOES HERE is the long lost album from 1990. This re-release in TAXIM's "Desert Island Classics" series should give everyone a chance for re-evaluating this band - a staple of the Bay Area scene for many a year.

More about Zero...