Hampton Grease Band - 'Music to Eat' (Columbia)

You probably thought the last Gunter Hampel record was responsible for the months-long bottleneck here at the Underbite (if you thought anything at all) but no, that was written and just not posted for some reason, ages ago. It's the Hampton Grease Band that's kept this from going forward, and I'm not quite sure why. Music to Eat lies somewhere between 'funny thing to play people at parties' and 'something I genuinely love', but I vacillate between the two states, so maybe this is Schroedinger's LP. This is truly one of the stupidest bands to ever get a major label release, and I include the Barenaked Ladies and Green Jellö in that list. But the Hamptons fit into some sort of vision I have about late 60s/early 70s freak music, even if the music isn't particularly visionary. I love the whole lore around this band - that it was somewhere between prog-leaning bar rock and and dadist art experiment, that members of the band would invite their friends up on stage to eat breakfast in their bathrobes during live gigs, and that the drawing of the military tank on the back cover is because they forgot to send any artwork for the back cover and it was just a drawing one of the band members had lying around. But the music is a pretty intense jam. I've worn out side 1, 'Halifax', where the band teaches us all about that Canadian city and establishes their formula: jammy blues-rock, occasionally prog-leaning, and with random nonsense sung over top. Bruce Hampton's pipes are great though, a regular Robert Plant, and his cry of 'Wouldn't you like to come to Halifax?" is an all-time great album opener. Fifteen minute later they are still at it, and there are passages of this song that are totally great. The fast boogie guitar solo about halfway through sounds a bit like the Italian prog band Area if you're reaching, and I think I just always wished this band was just a tad more in the cosmic direction. But 'Halifax' and 'Herndon' (side 4) are perfect, glorious kitchen sink rock jams, embracing the absurdity of the era and probably deconstructing something at the same time. 'Maria' opens side 2, with a much more overtly novelty-learning song, drenched in sexuality and coming off as the alpha-rock counterpoint to the Holy Modal Rounders' 'Griselda', though I think this predates it. And then it goes on and on through a variety of shorter songs, and it's a maddening experience. The sheer ambition and lack of editing here are remarkable but it becomes quickly impossible to sort out the diversions and jams. The resulting mess is a bit too close to Zappa/Mothers from the same era for my tastes, though I'd by lying if I didn't admit the teenage me loved 'Billy the Mountain'. Anyway, there's a LOT of Music to Eat, and side two starts to wear out its welcome. Side three is mostly dominated by the 18 minute suite 'Evans', but there's still room for another nearly 8 minutes of 'Lawton'. Jesus Christ, is this record long. I swear I have triple LPs that feel shorter - Armand Schaubroeck's first one, for example, or that Daphne Oram set. But the endurance test is part of the charm, if ya feel it; the Hampton Grease Band, if anything, are underrated. 'Evans' feels like a blizzard of guitar solos but then the track that follows it up, 'Lawton', is probably the musically most interesting part of the record - a dark, jammy psych instrumental that sounds like the Davis Redford Triad or some murky space-rock outfit from the late 90s, only this is '71. It all builds up to 'Herndon', where Hampton sings the label from a can of spray paint, before it segues into more nonsense. It becomes increasingly hard to pay attention by the end of this record, after one has been listening to it basically all night long. The fortitude is astounding for both self and the artists themselves. Discogs shows some odd post-Hampton Grease Band paths for them. One guitarist put out a solo 7" years later on Hib-Tone, the label famous for releasing R.E.M.'s 'Radio Free Europe' single; another played with Henry Kaiser in a band called Obsequious Cheesecake. As for Colonel Bruce Hampton himself, he seems to have enjoyed quite a long career in various projects I've never heard. This is the infamous record, and maybe part of its infamy is that it's not a slam-dunk - it's no Trout Mask Replica, but it really has some pretty good parts. I feel like I've written this much about Music to Eat now and come nowhere closer to solving my 'is it actually good or is it a party record?' dilemma. But obviously I don't throw parties anymore, anyway.

Faust (Recommended)

I got into Krautrock while a sophomore in college, circa 1998-99, and at the time I devoured all the big names (or at least what was available to me in the pre-Napster days, with a limited budget). You can read already my thoughts on Agitation Free, Cosmic Jokers, and Dzyan; but the "big names" as I saw it, probably thanks to Julian Cope's privileging of them in his book, were Can, Düül and Faust. (In my mind I always grouped Neu!, Harmonia, Ash Ra Tempel and Brainticket into a 'second tier' which is pretty stupid --Brainticket were Swiss, after all -- but, hey, we take easily presented narratives and stick with them, especially when 19). My point is that Faust seemed like one of the essentials of Krautrock and to me they were the best. The absolute best. My compass is always wavering on which of the first four Faust albums I like the best, but you can make a strong case for any of them. This one tends to get overlooked, maybe because it has the least "songy" bits, and also because it probably wasn't as big of a seller. Years later, after having dug through the NWW list and all the obscure surrealist treasures that have been unearthed through blogs and reissue labels, Faust "1" (as I like to call it) stands out as something special. The overall presentation is ace - clear cover and vinyl, mysterious lack of info, creepy/scary X-ray fist - and then three stunning tracks. I first found a CD reissue of this secondhand and played it to death, but this vinyl version (a reissue from the late 70s, I think) really makes the tones pop out. This is extremely left-field when compared to a lot of the other kozmiche music happening at the time, due to the collaged nature and odd pop/folk forms that are woven throughout - but I think it actually sounds quite distinct from a lot of the less jammy, more surreal freak music of the 70s, like Mahogany Brain or Jac Berrocal too. This is 1971, and that's notable as well, because it somehow feels like a blueprint for the 70s to come, clearly built from the psychedelic times of the 60s, but completely singular as well. There's only three cuts here, and the first side is pretty iconic, with its melting marching band and 'a wonderful wooden reason'.... but it's 'Miss Fortune' that I really love to listen to. It's a beautiful composition, even when it feels discordant, and it introduces the Faust tradition of ending the albums with genteel acoustic bits. Whenever other artists are compared to Faust, it's usually because they have a short attention span or collaged together a bunch of different styles a la Tapes. But who's out there capturing the mystery, the enigma, and the spectacle? Faust in the Internet age surely couldn't happen anyway...

Bonzo Dog Band - 'Let's Make Up and Be Friendly' (United Artists)

These merry jokesters have a cult following that I have never participated in, but maybe that's just because my only recording is this uneven reunion album. Viv Stanshall is practically worshipped by a few people I know, and I do enjoy 'Sir Henry at Rawlinson End', so it's good to have a 9 minute track about this fictional madland at the beginning of side two. It's a semi-spoken piece that's a jolly bit of fun, indeed. But the music? There's a few great songs on here, but I like the Bonzo Dog Band the most when they take on a weirdo R. Stevie Moore vibe, like on 'King of Scurf'. Their whole music hall/eclecticism thing is nice - I guess it's a sort of lost art - but it's not for me. The humour (mostly) fails to tickle me - 'The Strain', a track about constipation, starts things on a juvenile level. Just because you have an English accent doesn't mean you're any more erudite than an Adam Sandler record. I think I will never be able to clearly articulate exactly where my fine line is with funny songwriting. Why is early Sparks brilliant, but I don't like Dead Milkmen? Why do I like early They Might Be Giants but hate the later stuff? Why do I love Camper Van Beethoven but hate the Barenaked Ladies? (Ok, that's an obvious answer). With the Bonzos, maybe I'm being too harsh - there are a few cuts that I enjoy here, but it feels a bit haphazard and, well, I already said 'uneven' but that's the best word I can think of. The liner notes are a marvelously automatic stream, but again, they would be better if the music wasn't so ha-ha Monty Pythonish. Neil Innes did actually write a lot of the Python's best known tunes, and I sure ate the up in my teenage years. If only I had heard the Bonzos back then! Things just weren't as easy to hear as they are now.

Kevin Ayers - 'The Confessions of Dr. Dream' (Island)

This is the definition of uneven. Pushing his tendencies to their extremes, Kev lays down some of the darkest and most twisted excursions of his career on the title track but also some of quite banal funk-rock. This record is saturated with female backing vocals, on almost every track; Lol Coxhill and Mike Oldfield turn up too, though it barely resembles the work of the Whole World. Side one is almost a total writeoff. "Day by Day" is tough to make it through, though it does make me think about why I've come to equate that sound with 'bad' music. It's not inherently any worse than half the other rock on my shelves, but I've just come to hold aesthetic biases. I guess the campy genre-hopping is less than convincing for me - Ayers' exaggerated Britishness on 'Ballbearing Blues' makes it sound like a Monty Python skit. But yeah, the title track, which fills most of side 2 in four parts -- definitely it makes this record a keeper. Hypnotic, circular guitar patterns, gurgling ARP synths and some crazy gothic freakouts put this in the Aphrodite's Child camp. There's smoother parts but they're no less exploratory - the whole thing has a compositional cohesiveness that would make a Gong member jealous. If you tacked this suite onto a CD reissue of Shooting at the Moon, you'd make a strong case for Kevin Ayers as one of psychedelic music's greatest practitioners. Instead it's a relatively forgotten album that can be found on the cheap - I know I only paid $3 for it. This was probably the first Kevin Ayers record I heard, actually, when I was just getting into the Soft Machine. Clearly it was the gateway drug that led me to buying six others, though I always forget about this one.

Daevid Allen - Bananamoon (Charly)

Source: Ross, a couple of bucks, in 2002.

There's a much better version of this album cover but sadly it's not the one I have. This is a nice-sounding pressing on Charly with gatefold cover and amusing-confusing liner notes. Side one is the 'song' side and a few of the tunes approach classic status, like 'All I Want is Out of Here', though true greatness is usually subverted by a humorous singing accent or other unchecked frivolity. Still, this record is much beloved for good reasons, though the majority of that reputation probably comes from the 'Stoned Innocent Frankenstein / and His Adventures in the Land of Flip' combo that makes up most of the second half. It's a good jam, with lots of layers (but not too many, so it doesn't sound like waxed paper) and some actual songwriting underneath to keep changing direction and prevent the adventure from being stalled. Their take on 'Memories' (with Wyatt on wah-wah guitar) is probably the definitive version that doesn't feature Whitney Houston, and I like how the locked groove at the end of side 1 is given a running time of 12:32 (I followed these instructions, with a stopwatch). There's a surprisingly funky vibe to the bass playing here. I keep imagining the rampant surrealism must have been really annoying to to whomever was in charge of actually engineering this album (Phil Dunne). I imagine Pyle and Daevid Allen giggling like children while one of them tries to play the guitar with a fish or a bowl of fruit, and the frustrated Dunne clearing his throat awkwardly. But I'm sure it was all a good bit of stoned Canterbury Jarry-lovin' reality-bending bluesy good times.