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...folk weirdos from NYC playing amphetamine mountain music, a true amalgamation of yesterday meets the contemporary urban beatnik...cats who were digging the folk sound in the 50s before it became the trend with the revival taking place in lefty colleges and campus cities, had to be hip to harry smiths marvelous anthology of long forgotten folk tunes that were popular currency before the second war, then fell into obscurity overnight as the great unwashed wanted more fancy (but less fulfilling)sounds to coddle their ears...this smith anthology was like a socio-politico road map to an obscure world buried in the past on shellac and newsreels that were only shown to back up some theory that 'things sure getting better'...these two rounder disks, their first foray into a recording studio were like that roadmap with the highways coloured in, lighting the darkness from many years ago, only now the tunes were fueled by gleeful speedfreaks motoring into the future, not moonshine from some dark hollow...these cats were well flipped out grooving down their own path with the ghosts of long gone radio shows and hoedowns pushing them ever onward into the atomic age...
...all the way through the turbulent changes that marked the decade out as the most vibrant, the sixties remained at arms length when it came to the rounders, they always stood one step removed from the mainstream underground trends (surely that statement contains two words that should not stand next to each other but the capitalisation of culture determines they do, underground/mainstream are now forever locked in tandem such is the power of bad education and low esteem plus a heavy dose of globalised advertising)...the rounders were beatnix caught up on the perifery of hippy gimmicks, but never fell prey to them, they lived the boho life regardless of outside interference...continuing thier idea of folk music/rural music, enduring no unwelcomed imput from the folk rock idiom that had sprang up for a couple of years this disc is certainly one of the most intriguing folk LPs to come down the pike in the hippy years...again still bolting olde weird tymes to modern (1967) urban speedfreak madness these cats produced a sound that ain't had too many competitors jumping on board...its full of more blissed out drugged out boho layabout gaggle, screachin and scraping producing sounds of the amphetamine squark, from some dark holler, which in this case was the labs at ESP Disk...hep gonesville clatter that will settle real nice around the lobes and whittle into the direct centre of the noggin...
...heavily zoned out stone grooves from these denizens of lower east side beatnik cafes and psychedelic dungeons from the daze that most forgot...the chemicals and reefer and beer that was flowing through the neighbourhood all ended up on this wax and stayed there, it's as wig lifting right NOW as it was then in the mind-altered summer tymes...old timey weird amerikkka with coatings of amphetamines, beer and basement level acid all soaking into patterns of unreality and wandering the streets testafying to the righteous beatnik living that is the mainstay of modalness...low rent lo-fi basement recording enhances the trip to gonesville no end, it's the rustic hazy vibration from the depths of urban drugland where all the cats are flipping one way or other...plays well alongside street level weirdos like the fugs/david peel/abbie hoffman but with way more frayed 'coming apartness' than most ever handle...they made their one and only appearance to the great unwashed when they got a tune on the soundtrack to 'easy rider' which is included here, nice...
...folk weirdos from NYC playing amphetamine mountain music, a true amalgamation of yesterday meets the contemporary urban beatnik...cats who were digging the folk sound in the 50s before it became the trend with the revival taking place in lefty colleges and campus cities, had to be hip to harry smiths marvelous anthology of long forgotten folk tunes that were popular currency before the second war, then fell into obscurity overnight as the great unwashed wanted more fancy (but less fulfilling)sounds to coddle their ears...this smith anthology was like a socio-politico road map to an obscure world buried in the past on shellac and newsreels that were only shown to back up some theory that 'things sure getting better'...these two rounder disks, their first foray into a recording studio were like that roadmap with the highways coloured in, lighting the darkness from many years ago, only now the tunes were fueled by gleeful speedfreaks motoring into the future, not moonshine from some dark hollow...these cats were well flipped out grooving down their own path with the ghosts of long gone radio shows and hoedowns pushing them ever onward into the atomic age...
...all the way through the turbulent changes that marked the decade out as the most vibrant, the sixties remained at arms length when it came to the rounders, they always stood one step removed from the mainstream underground trends (surely that statement contains two words that should not stand next to each other but the capitalisation of culture determines they do, underground/mainstream are now forever locked in tandem such is the power of bad education and low esteem plus a heavy dose of globalised advertising)...the rounders were beatnix caught up on the perifery of hippy gimmicks, but never fell prey to them, they lived the boho life regardless of outside interference...continuing thier idea of folk music/rural music, enduring no unwelcomed imput from the folk rock idiom that had sprang up for a couple of years this disc is certainly one of the most intriguing folk LPs to come down the pike in the hippy years...again still bolting olde weird tymes to modern (1967) urban speedfreak madness these cats produced a sound that ain't had too many competitors jumping on board...its full of more blissed out drugged out boho layabout gaggle, screachin and scraping producing sounds of the amphetamine squark, from some dark holler, which in this case was the labs at ESP Disk...hep gonesville clatter that will settle real nice around the lobes and whittle into the direct centre of the noggin...
...heavily zoned out stone grooves from these denizens of lower east side beatnik cafes and psychedelic dungeons from the daze that most forgot...the chemicals and reefer and beer that was flowing through the neighbourhood all ended up on this wax and stayed there, it's as wig lifting right NOW as it was then in the mind-altered summer tymes...old timey weird amerikkka with coatings of amphetamines, beer and basement level acid all soaking into patterns of unreality and wandering the streets testafying to the righteous beatnik living that is the mainstay of modalness...low rent lo-fi basement recording enhances the trip to gonesville no end, it's the rustic hazy vibration from the depths of urban drugland where all the cats are flipping one way or other...plays well alongside street level weirdos like the fugs/david peel/abbie hoffman but with way more frayed 'coming apartness' than most ever handle...they made their one and only appearance to the great unwashed when they got a tune on the soundtrack to 'easy rider' which is included here, nice...
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