Spontaneous Overthrow

An obscure experimental R&B duo from New Jersey, Spontaneous Overthrow issued only one album, the 1984 release All About Money, which decades later emerged as a highly coveted collector’s item. Virtually no details survive about Nathaniel Woolridge and Anthony Freeman, two friends from Newark who crafted this peculiar record of atmospheric Casio keyboards and spacy, off-key harmonies that suggested a low-budget hybrid of Shuggie Otis, Sun Ra, and Curtis Mayfield. The pair pressed the album themselves on their New-Ark Records Inc. label in 1984; at the time it attracted almost no attention, and the duo disappeared thereafter. Once filesharing and MP3 blog culture took hold in the 2000s, record collectors began circulating tracks, and the few surviving copies began changing hands for thousands of dollars. The title track was included on Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984, Chocolate Industries’ landmark 2012 compilation of private press abstract R&B. In 2018, Numero Group, known for countless reissues of unfindable rarities, delivered All About Money its first official re-release.