2003 NOVEMBER 19 #323
Found this one at a German bakery/gift shop. They had a small stack of records and I was hoping to find some more Heino to add to the collection. Instead the records all appeared to be German versions of the Crown/Design sound alike type stuff. Since I didn't have enough money to take them all, I had to pick this one. Of course, this was the only record with a song called "Shummy Poor Clessford Idea In Troody Taprest Noodles", so it was an easy choice.
I'm guessing by the ads for the other albums on the back we're talking late 60's/early 70's vintage here. (One of the albums is a "Hair" knockoff. There's also a Herb Alpert knockoff advertised I'd love to find just to see what the German take on that would have been.) Other than that, the only info I have about this is two of the tracks appear on some obscure Krautrock compilations and those folks don't seem to have any more info about this than I do.
So, what's it like? Well, aside from having some great song titles ("Swing Low, If You Like To Do" is another stunner) it's got to be the wildest "turn some stoned hippies loose in the studio" record I've ever heard. Lots of crazy distorted guitar, disjointed (and sometimes funky) rhythm, slide whistle solos, someone tapping out the opening to Beethoven's Ninth on bottles, waves of dub-like echo, and lyrics that simply boggle the mind. There is a "we've got a handful of random instruments and a tape echo" kind of vibe that runs through out. The way I describe it to people is Soft Machine without their chops, or Can on really bad drugs.
A US cheapie like this would have given us tunes similar to the hippy stuff of the day. This album, however, is a rambling jam session gone terribly wrong and unless German pop music was really out there, you weren't going to confuse this for the popular tunes of the day. The thing that really bothers me is, given the fact that many bands were sprouting up in Germany around this time that were kind of out there, I never can be too sure if my stoned hippies theory is correct, or if in fact this is an honest attempt at what would be come known as Krautrock.
All in all, it's a pretty whacked out platter. The cover and title kill me too. I can't think of an LP that would clear a party quite as fast as this one (unless you're partying in an opium den, perhaps.)
If anyone has any info on this, I'd love to hear it.
- Rob Guernsey, captainwrong@hotmail.com
TT-8:59 / 8.2MB / 128kbps 44.1khz
from the LP, "Fantastic Party" (Maritim 47 102
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(Images courtesy of Rob Guernsey)