Atco (1969)

I'm surprised that this blog has gone on for nearly a year without someone posting any Atco labels. Just a peek of this yellow circle coming out of a sleeve sends a thrill up my leg. Probably due to my deep and abiding love of the early Dr. John records that came out on Atco, Gris-Gris up through Gumbo. But I'll give anything on Atco a spin.

Vanilla Fudge don't seem to get much respect, but I think they had something going on. The self-titled first album is great, and most all of their records are a pretty good listen, especially when they're doing covers of soul classics (You Keep Me Hangin' On) or offbeat pop tunes (Some Velvet Morning) in their slowed-down heavy psych style. I feel like there should be a renewed interest in Vanilla Fudge right now, considering how "in" and "hip" screwed stuff has become recently with the kids. Maybe being what amounts to a cover band with a garage-y psychedelic hard rock flavor was an easy way to write these guys off once they faded from popular relevance, but it seems like a pretty damn cool idea nowadays.

Design-wise, it's not really that remarkable of a label layout. The logo makes me think of a stained-glass window. But I do have to say I really love that font used for the title text. It reminds me of the font on a self-inking date stamper.

Nones

My last post is for Chicago's Nones. Full disclosure, drummer Sara Jean is a good friend and one time roommate. The label is hand printed as is the sleeve and cover. I really love all the handmade, hand-printed visuals they included in the package. Regrettably, there are too many to post here.

Big ups to Alexander, thanks it was really fun!

Destiny Records (1972)

Though Mark Toscano is a tough act to follow, I'm excited to be contributing to Alexander's excellent blog.

My initial post is one that fills me with feelings of tenderness and sunshine. It was difficult for me to pick between this Bobby Brown record and "Prayers of a One Man Band." That center label essentially recapitulates the cover art, which is not a particularly creative center label trope, but Brown is such a charming character- on the beach with his golden pageboy, surrounded by his amazing "world music" contraption- that it almost won out.

This label's cosmic line drawing ended up as my pick, however. I think it serves as a lovely visual companion to the ouroboros-like song cycle of birth, awakening, death, and rebirth contained in the grooves.

Sympathy for the Record Industry (1994)

"Stop messing with my head with your half baked ragas, dull pseudo ethnic arcana, fake folk etc don't give me 'give and take' improv, and please no 'interesting', I want full-on universal electric blood or nothing (Nothing is pretty good too)…"
— Matthew Bower, from a March 31, 2005 text for Volcanic Tongue record shop.

Happy 4th! In honor of this holiday, I offer a record under the lead of Matthew Bower, one British individual who’d be able to convert us into loyal British subjects again single-handed with just one guitar, an amp and a howl. (As he has in his bands Mirag, Pure, Total, Sunroof! and some later versions of Skullflower.) Thankfully he wasn’t around in the 18th century. We'd be eating grilled tomatoes with fish cakes for breakfast. So I offer a 7” from the first glory days of Skullflower.

I could mention I met him once at the Empty Bottle. Saw him standing alone before a show. I walked up, thanked him for the years of music and pleasure. Bower looked up at me (he's rather short), beer in hand, and replied, in a cold yet somehow not mean or condescending manner, "How do you know who I am?" Didn't have an answer. Then an hour later, electric bliss.

Back to the matter at hand. One of many of the best things about Bower, is his nonchalance about being tough. He came up with a great band name, everything else is malleable. Look at the label. Flies? Gnats? Drooling bumblebees? Ok, maybe a rabid wasp. Not too scared regardless.

And the song titles. You know you aren’t worried about image when you can use these titles for your heavy brutal stomp. If it is gonna pummel you, the title can have a little fun, no? Who needs bluster? I’m skittish just considering encountering any of the fully-grown horses of this “Ponyland.” Only Bower would dream to make a “Fake Revolt” more menacing than a real one. This is the stuff electricity was invented for, to mangle and buzz over paleolithic drums. When other opportunities fall through, sometimes to get the heart racing one must stick out your thumb and hold high that cardboard sign: “Nihilism or Bust!”

Head (1969)

Harvey Matusow's Jew's Harp Band War Between the Fats and the Thins (Head, 1969)

Head music on the Head label. A terrific humming & vibrating psychedelic logo; this visual hubba bubba could easily have been the handiwork of Wes Wilson. War Between the Fats was one of only a handful of titles issued on UK promoter John Curd's very short lived imprint and, of course, it's a cut out (what were the money handlers at Chess/GRT thinking?).

The sound of multiple zinging jew's harps hocketting amongst pixiphones, tibetan bells, mini zithers, gongs, gun shots, a toy turtle, a metronome, a toy duck and gonzo stream of consciousness narratives and slobbering buzzing vocalese makes for some wonderfully indulgent audio gluttony.

Features a young Annea Lockwood and Stan Kenton's daughter among others.

Matusow was a character- by turns a reviled turncoat to the left during the red scare, a dyed in the wool freaker and, perhaps most of all, a hustler.

I picked this up at a seriously ramshackle condemned house in Norwalk, Connecticut from a cracked junkman around '97 or so and quickly started haunting Matusow's personal website and took in acres of this obviously charismatic man's strange life through autobiographical excerpts of his unfinished book The Stringless Yo Yo. By this time, he was a Mormon in a clown suit on public access TV and making some brand of music on homemade instruments if my memory serves me right. I reached out to him about this particular zinger shortly after turning up a copy of this rec to little avail.

If you want to go down the Matusow wormhole, check out the great WFMU piece "The biggest snitch in America" and then step on over to this site to read an obituary and numerous contrabituaries by those who knew him in the flesh. The man certainly made his mark, apocryphal and otherwise.