1970s


TOM ARDOLINO Unknown Brain Mystery Train LP


mysteryentourage@yahoo.com


Drummer Tom Ardolino made several recordings in his basement in 1972, two years before going on to join that legendary band of


misfits NRBQ. Now Ardolino’s experiments with borrowed instruments, recorded on a Kenwood reel-to-reel largely for his own amusement, have been made available as Unknown Brain. These vignettes appear chaotic and unstructured, but repeated listens reveal incidental melodies and cheeky fragments of popular tunes within the improvised swamp. It’s a fascinating warped response to pop culture, with a sense of TV on all night, scratchy and skipping garage records and the white noise of the city. “I never learned how to play keyboards or guitars,” Ardolino writes in the sleeve notes. “I would kind of hear something in my head and just try to go for it.”


Be quick with this: only 500 copies have


been pressed, and if you’re a fan of the spontaneous, nutty bedroom end of psychedelia you’re not going to want to miss it.


Jeanette Leech


AX You’ve Been So Bad Rise Above Relics 10” EP www.riseaboverecords.com


Farmer Dorrian was out with his metal detector, waving the bugger over yonder ploughed field, and guess what? He only unearthed another


hard-rock treasure! Ax were four basement rockers from Kitchener, Ontario – unashamed in their love for UK heavy-rock, with nods


LOU BOND Lou Bond Light In The Attic CD/LP www.lightintheattic.net


By 1974 Stax Records was in complete turmoil. Spiralling debts, legal dramas and hostile takeover attempts placed the


company on the brink of collapse. When two of their biggest stars, Isaac Hayes and The Staple Singers, served their intentions to jump ship, the writing was well and truly on the wall. Despite all the chaos Stax remained steadfastly productive, but disputes with major distributors meant product often never made it to the stores. No surprise then that many releases


simply fell off the radar. Just like the debut release by soul-folk troubadour Lou Bond, released on the short-lived Stax offshoot, We Produce. Given the circumstances it was somewhat inevitable that this album, every bit as potent as Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, would be destined to vanish without trace. Much of the album glides at a funeral pace


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towards Tull, Humble Pie, Sabbath, SAHB, and a knack for turning out their own bastardised brand of throat grappling rawk! The title track lifts the riff from the Pie’s


‘Stone Cold Fever’, yet Sabbathised, and vocally akin to Ian Anderson (leaning towards Howard Werth). ‘Babies Falling…’ is of the Josefus school of thought, laid back, stiflingly raunchy, is heavy, is extremely welcome. OK, only three useable 1970 tracks from


the band’s recorded output make up this 10- inch EP, but the package is up to the usual RA standards with unseen photos and extensive sleeve notes. It’s an unheard of hard rock artefact and will


not disappoint. Louis Comfort-Wiggett


DEAR MR TIME Grandfather Wooden Hill CD www.tenthplanet-woodenhill.co.uk As concept albums go, Dear Mr Time’s Grandfather could be a distant relative of SF Sorrow, being a WW1- based reverie upon one man’s episodic


lifecycle. The very minute the brooding King Crimson flute and pious Moodies harmonies kick in on ‘Birth, The Beginning’, it is instantly apparent upon which side these Chelmsford challengers liked their bread buttered. Originally issued in a meagre run of 1,000


copies on the miniscule independent Square label in 1971, Grandfather may well wear its influences like peacock feathers – see also the ‘Schizoid-Man’-derived stop-time riffing of ‘Your Country Needs You’ and ‘A Distant Moonshine’, and the ardent Graeme Edge-style spoken word passages in ‘On a Lonely Night’ – but it earns its own validity thanks to guitarist Chris Baker’s propensity for penning uncommonly pretty acoustic vignettes (‘Yours Claudia’, ‘Years And Fortunes’). Besides which, you wouldn’t find the chuckling banjo and floppy boot stomp of the excellent single ‘A Prayer For


and is stretched out like those long Isaac Hayes monologues but without the seductive sexual overtones. Instead, the storybook lyrics contain more cutting socio-political statements over brilliantly cinematic and lush strings. Taking inspiration from Jimmy Webb (the album opens up with a cover of Webb’s ‘Lucky Me’) the arrangements were created by Isaac Hayes’ string section at Ardent Studios. The absorbing string arrangements create


a melancholic mood, as does the delicately plucked nylon-stringed acoustic guitar and downbeat horns. They provide a perfect marriage for Lou’s expressive and versatile vocal range which shifts effortlessly from deep country drawl to note perfect falsetto. ‘Why Must Our Eyes Be Turned Backwards’ is the centre-piece. A groovy and graceful protest song that tackles issues that still resonate loudly today: race, religion, war and social concerns. Lou Bond is a minor classic that deserves


to be talked about in the same breath as some of the finest sociological pieces produced by influences Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. Paul Ritchie


Her’ on any King Crimson album. Marco Rossi


BILLY GREEN Stone OST Finders Keepers LP www.finderskeepersrecords.com Usually it’d be xenophobic of me to comment in print on Australia’s alleged history of cultural pilfering. But in this instance, thanks to


Billy Green’s cult score for Sandy Harbutt’s 1974 biker movie Stone, I can instead make believe that imitation really is the highest form of flattery. Put it this way, if Psychomania had been


extradited down under, its pesky psychedelic frogs would have been out-progged by Stone’s psychoactive toads. Kick started here in no small part by the inclusion of the previously unavailable ‘Eco Blue/Toadstrip’, a six-minute didgeridoo/moog exploration melding aboriginal vibes with astro scratches. Elsewhere we are privy to soulfully


borrowed Americana on the country swamp of ‘Septic’ and Crazy Horse flavoured ‘Cosmic Flash’, sung by Green’s In Focus cohort Doug Parkinson. Although leading the pack by a highway mile is the cross-country funk of ‘Race’, which like all classic FK finds leaves everything to fathom. Richard S Jones


JACKSON HEIGHTS The Fifth Avenue Bus Ragamuffins Fool Bump ’N’ Grind All Esoteric CDs www.esotericrecordings.com Far from sounding like a continuation or variation on Lee Jackson’s previous work as a member of The Nice, Jackson Heights took things in


precisely the opposite direction. Not for them a


barnstorming head-on collision of rock and classical elements and influences. With Michael Giles (ex-King Crimson )


guesting on drums, the trio’s second album The Fifth Avenue Bus (1972) unveils a considerably more mellow listening experience complete with occasional echoes of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Recorded a matter of months later Ragamuffins Fool includes a re-recording of ‘Chorale’ from The Nice’s Five Bridges Suite and sees Jackson consciously stepping back from songwriting duties in favour of sharing the spotlight with his collaborators John McBurnie and Brian Chatton. With its lush sound, big production values, orchestral arrangements and guest appearances from Deep Purple’s Ian Paice and Ian Wallace (another ex-Crimson ) Bump ‘N’ Grind (’73) represents the last throw of the dice for the trio’s label Vertigo. Grahame Bent


JAN DUKES DE GREY Strange Terrain Cherry Tree CD www.cherryred.co.uk


Released as a timely follow up to last year’s reissue of Sorcerers and the extraordinary Mice And Rats In The Loft, also on Cherry Tree,


Strange Terrain is the third and hitherto unreleased album from Jan Dukes De Grey which, despite taking a year to record failed to appear at the time. Given that the time in question was 1977 – the high water mark of punk in the UK – Jan Dukes De Grey, with their rag bag of increasingly prog influences rather than their earlier folk and psych leanings, found themselves stranded high and dry as the wrong band playing the wrong music at the wrong time. Besides the complete 12 track album this


release comes with a cluster of bonus offerings including Noy’s Band recordings from ’75 and both sides of the one-off novelty single frontman Derek Noy released under the suitably punk alias of Rip Snorter in March ’79. Grahame Bent


“Sorry Lou – no hoodies allowed.”


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