2007 JANUARY 22 #022
The Greek Fountains - An Experimented Terror
MP3:
The Greek Fountains - An Experimented Terror (4:00)
This psyche / garage B side has been known to crop up on playlists of a few of the better informed collectors of leftfield esoterica in recent years and it was also sampled briefly by Madlib on the last Quasimoto album (damn! beat me to it). It was thrown in by the owner of a used store in New Orleans after I'd purchased a rather large haul of vinyl and was flipping through the 7"s on the counter. I looked at the title and, having never heard of the group and seeing that the label was an independant, decided to give it a go. What a treat.
Apart from the obvious drum breaks the rest of the tune is nuts, electronics, tape delays and effects and then there is the small matter of the timing. At first I thought 'wow' that time signature' is really wild, they must be incredible musicians to follow that' but on repeated listens i'm convinced that this is just a studio jam to fill a B side that the group or studio engineer were having fun with. The track starts out simply enough but suddenly the bass chimes in and the beats go awry and everything is wrongfooted, this happens repeatedly and i'll be damned if I can discern any logical pattern from it. Licks from others songs at completely the wrong tempo get thrown in the mix but the drummer keeps on hammering out his beat. Maybe they just cut the tape up, threw it in the air and glued it back together again. Whatever, it's supremely 'out there' as a result and way more interesting than the flip side. Furthermore to my theory that they could have cared less about it, check the credit under the publisher on the label, instead of having the exact time (as it does on the A side) it just says 'over 4 minutes'.
The Greek Fountains were from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and made a couple of singles and an album to my knowledge. They were popular at the time, shortly after the Beatles spearheaded the 'UK Invasion', and the bass player, Duke Bardwell, went on to tour with Elvis in the early seventies. You'll have to bare with my copy as it isn't in the best shape but i've put it through various de-click/crackle/noise programs to make it more palatable to the ear.
- Contributed by: Strictly Kev
Images: Vinyl, Photo
Media: 7" single
Label: Montel Michelle
Catalog: MX-976
Credits: C. Vetter, D.Chesson, D.Choen, T. Miceli
