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.

Egg, Eggs - 'The Cleansing Power of Fruit' (Feeding Tube)

I'm enthusiastic for any band who features punctuation in their name. Egg, Eggs are as confusing as their name, built around free electric rock, random electronics, and babbling nonsense vocals. There's parts here that start to resemble song structures, certainly with repetition in the voice, but it beelines for absurdity as soon as it can. Recording techniques are scattered, with lots clearly sourced from practices and open jams, edited into a whole that is just as incoherent as fragments, but longer. I admit I ordered this because I was getting stuff from Feeding Tube anyway and it sounded intruiging; the first two listens did nothing for me, but this time through I'm really grooving on it. There's people from the Western Massachusetts scene all over this, though the only name I recognise is John Maloney from Sunburned Hand of the Man, whose drumming here is crisp, light and evasive. While the vocalist is chanting about feathers and seashells, you get some shit-fart bass, clattering snare, and a general discordance. If your only influence was reading old issues of Bananafish and then you decided to start a rock band, it would probably sound like this. I love most forms of absurd nonsense, and I also have a high tolerance for curious vocal techniques; singer David Russell is quite the tenor, squeaking around almost like a caricature while obsessively intoning mantras like 'My name's Mr. Eat Candy, I'm pleased to meet you mystery candy". I'll imagine that is actually Hollywood director David O. Russell, who swung by while filming The Fighter to record these sessions. If you like Starship Beer or large parts of the BUFMS box set, then this is carrying the torch. It's also endless, or feels that way; it's really long, for a single LP, and varied enough that the more driving parts ('Foul Chinese Waterfront Pig') offset the more spare elements, and it feels like a true compendium of madness. It's hard to pinpoint what Egg, Eggs are striving to express here - there's a strong sense of game-playing, of course, and a collage aesthetic throughout; but I can't help but wonder why they chose these edits over the surely hours of other sessions they had.

Eugene Chadbourne - 'Country Music in the World of Islam' (Fundamental)

This is a collaboration between Chadbourne, the Sun City Girls and Elliot Sharp -- and you could probably include Matt Groening in there too, as Akbar and Jeff are spilling all over this record. As a band, well, Chadbourne and Sun City Girls work together brilliantly. Who else is so attuned to Chadbourne's rambling sensibility? And the title is apt for describing the contents. The songs blend together into two side-long suites, much like his performance style. I saw Chadbourne live once, but on record I don't have to endure the rather brutal odor that emanated from the stage. If only I could have seen this lineup! Rick Bishops's guitar playing is great with Chadbourne's style, and the goofy songs fit right in with the Dante's Disneyland mentality. I actually rate this over all those great Shockabilly records, maybe cause I like things sharp and not so echoey. Not that this record will be that much of a departure for Shockabilly fans. This is 1990, made nine years into the Reagan revolution, and understandably the songs burst with batshit insane conspiracy theories, social commentary on 80s issues, and timeless cleverness like 'Big John Loves His Dick'. 'Castro's Surgery is a Mystery' is maybe the pinnacle of this madness, a good dose of Horse Cock Phepner-style lyrical musings overlaid with the most sinister (yet stupid) sampled voice. You can't go too far into a Chadbourne record without hearing some cover versions, so you get Gram Parsons 'Luxury Liner', 'I Wouldn't Live in New York City' by Buck Owens, and the jazz standard 'I Cover the Waterfront'. The latter is done in a dirgy 80s' indie rock way, overlaid with braying farmyard animals, obtuse keyboard interference and several overdubbed layers of Chadbourne arguing with himself. And every once in awhile a really sweet harmony is reached with Charles Gocher, and some bittersweet sentimentality leaks through (despite the radio voice talking overtop). All throughout the record, of course, there's plucking and scrambling galore - banjo in particular works well with the usual Bishopisms. Everyone has a strong free improv sensibility that's really unique when pushed against these bouncy, brightly delivered songs. The middle of the record gets into more ballady tunes, with 'I'm Not You' and 'He Was a Boy' taking the humour down a notch; the band really gets cooking at the end of 'Boy' and Gocher in particular responds well and holds things just on the verge of pure chaos. 'Hippies and Cops' has a real alternarock edge not just because of the conflict described in the lyrics, but due to the deep fuzz guitars and basses. They're mixed low but it's still pleasantly tongue in cheek - 'The List is Too Long' gets into more metal-influenced rock with noodly solos that are probably Chadbourne, but it's actually hard to tell. I'm reminded of late 80s SST experimentalists, and the rock is brought back as an intro to the last tune, 'Don't Burn the Flag, Let's Burn the Bush'. Certainly flag-burning was all the rage in 1990 and the topical nature of this is not lost on me, but who knew what would happen a decade later in American politics! I'm sorry this wasn't revived for the dark part of the 00s, because when you sing 'The president oughta be in jail' it feels even more relevant when applied to the son. Though this is an unusually straightforward tune for Chadbourne it's charming, my own political sympathies notwithstanding - you can only imagine a frustrated 80s Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg (RIP, by the way!) happy to see some flame still burning.

Camper Van Beethoven - 'II & III' (Pitch-A-Tent)

This is where early Camper peaks, as I said in the last post - the dark/psych edge is much more pronounced, but it's no less eclectic. And there's lots of short songs, the way I like it. Let's talk about the instrumentals first - 'Abundance' opens up and it's to me, the signature violin-driven Jonathan Segel piece in the CVB repetoire. I don't know why this one jumps out as me as being so much better than we heard on Telephone Free, except for maybe the weird melting violin solo/bridge. And 'Turtlehead' is a a bit of Sun City Girls-styled spazz-core with another elliptical, middle-Eastern style breakdown in the middle. '4 Year Plan' reprises the ska-style rhythm guitar heard a few times on the last album, but with a very bright crisp recording. Though this record was recorded in multiple studio sessions and with no consistent drummer, it sounds really cohesive - and I guess if Telephone Free was the culmination of a zillion early lineups with twenty different members, II & III is at least a step closer to solid. 'Dust Pan' and 'ZZ Top Goes to Egypt' are beautifully evocative for being brief rock instrumentals,and while 'Circles' may not be strictly instrumental (with backwards singing, a trick they'll employ again on the third album), it's a winner. Now, vocally, Lowery is certainly continuing the witty goofball lyrics, but there's less of a focus on taking the piss out of the punk underground and maybe he's turning his lens towards a more worldly focus. 'No More Bullshit' ends the record wryly commenting 'No more MTV/No more rock stars' before embarking on an epic instrumental jam, worthy of the greatest guitar gods. And sure, there's some chuckles throughout just about every song. I place the misanthropy of 'Don't Go To Goleta' somehow above the nonsense of 'The Day that Lassie Went to the Moon'. Few others would probably make such a distinction, but the fine line of humour in music is tred as carefully as possible to the dark side here, and it never goes over. 'Gonna dress and act like Lou Reed' (in 'Down and Out') is an astute cultural observation here. And the mock-aggression of 'We're a Bad Trip' is absolutely classic status here. (Nerd alert - this copy has the slow version of that tune, which means (I guess) that this is the first pressing, and also I think that Crispy Dersen doesn't play on my copy at all). What a great song, and I prefer it slow - you can hear the pulsing keyboards better, and the descending guitar solo has a bit more breathing room, and no one has ever put the word 'hors d'oeuvres' into a song so well (Roy Harper may have titled a song as such but balked on the actual lyrics). But let's commend the move away from the ha-ha: 'Sad Lovers Waltz' is a CVB classic, and still moving because of it's naivete and amateurishness. One step for anger and one step for pain, indeed. 'Sometimes' is the ultimate Paisley renaissance piece, buried in hesitation and honesty, and arranged with the perfect hazyness. But my absolute favourite track of this album, and probably the most underrated tune in the entire CVB canon, is 'Form Another Stone'. I think it's overlooked because it's buried at the end of this album, which is probably the least well-known of their work, and lacks the ha-ha punchline or the obvious pop hook. But this is a fireball of a track, and one that I will continually cite as inspiration for my young guitar-addled brain. Jonathan Segel's 'Chain of Circumstance' isn't half-bad either. The simple duotone cover and general low-budget feel of this record is another thing that I find amazing -- it's weird that this came after their big hit ('Skinheads') and that they self-released it, but looking at it as a finished product, it's a magnificent statement. If I had come across this LP when I was 14 (instead of a dubbed cassette version, which is what I subsisted on for years until eBay came around) I would have been blown away, because this would have represented everything I dreamt of about "the underground". Hindsight shows this to be far from obscure or difficult, but that doesn't diminish it's greatness in the slightest.

Box Codax - 'Only an Orchard Away' (Thin Man)

A strange side-project of a Franz Ferdinand guy, this record veers between goofy toy-electro ('Pollockshields Girls') to creepy, undanceable disco ('Naked Smile', 'Missed Her Kiss') to warped canyon-jams ('Like a Rock'). Does it ever stop to figure itself out? Does it have an identity? Not really, but there's some totally retarded drum programming to enjoy while you try to make sense of it. Ah, Germans. A few novelty bits like 'I Swam With the Otter' are just fucking unbearable, but then there's occasionally some goof-offs that work, like 'Do It With Charm', with European street music flair and extemporised lyrics. I mean, most of this record comes off like a total joke but one that is done quite strictly. If I'm struggling to find something kind to say, I'll comment that you can definitely hear the friendship of the participants, and the jokes are actually too strange (or too "inside") to be funny to anyone, so maybe you can reinterpret this as serious 'art' music. The voice of a new generation. What the kids are into. You know. I've been to Pollokshields and the girls aren't anything to write home about, but I'm strangely forgiving of this bit of goofing off.

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.