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...the godz came into existance sometime around early '66 as these NYC cats met up through day jobs on the perifery of the music biz (record shop) and after hanging out they decided they'd get some kind of combo going since they'd variously had band/record experience on a small local level, only this group they thought should be slightly different from the usual beat/soul covers band that was mainly what the hick new york scene consisted of at the time, they would express the way they saw the world...they opted for a primal instinctive sound hardly based on pop at all, more ideas pulled from the air or deep within the collective mind...they scored a deal with the wonderfully out there jazz label ESP-Disk (jay dillon worked there) and proceeded to knock out the tunes for this first LP in one session...like some of the other ESP disks it was released in two differing covers and had the most appropriate title of any underground rock album ever-CONTACT HIGH...as soon as a cat puts this on the deck they are going to flip immediately, nothing sounded like this in 1966 (todays avant lo-fi is only this gear worked on with hindsight)...though often referred to as some kind of compatriots in sound with the fugs this is completely wrong and muddle headed chat from lazy journos who ain't really listened to either, the fugs being folky poets from an earlier age, magazine producing beatnix caught in the dying days of the folk revival let loose in basements of desire, the godz beamed in from deep within their own psyche, the souls of collective looning manifesting destiny...fire up the bong and get ready for all preconceptions to be laid waste, this was/is the real deal...THE GODZ ARE NOT A PUT ON...
...when the time for the second album came around the vibe had changed somewhat, though this is only relative and only more pronounced through the 20/20 vision hindsight gives,they were starting to come on like a real combo with commercial tunes lurking in amongst the chanting thrash and gunk, otherworldly commercial maybe but the mersh is there (radar eyes/permanent green light could make it big on some juke box in a far away galaxy such is their insidious bent)...they were scoring gigs at local greenwich village psychedelic tourist traps and they got busy with a light show, so things were looking up with their name getting around town and records being released in europe over the course of '67/8, though the nature of their work did limit the amount of appreciation they got outside the freaks, who numbered not a lot...there's still plenty of freeform tribal bashing, the avant garde is never too far from the surface, a perfect extension of the sounds coming from the first joint, but now it came with extra texture due to more recording time being allowed at ESP laboratories, time to formulate ideas but not work them to death and become stale, it's precisely the air of amateurism, the faint design of collapse that gives them their longevity, their ability to stretch out down the decades ensnaring the willing hipster in the web of wobbliness...
...'you know something, music's sure got better', so speak the godz, the urban tribal free form beatnix who kicked up the mighty ruckus of collapsation back in the mid sixties when minds were slowly but surely opening, getting in the wind with new ideas...occasionally the godz lock into a riff that grooves along in the background as their crazy intonations and evocations spread themselves over the tunes, imparting esoteric information from higher sources, enlightenment from the spheres, elucidation from the cosmic embroiderer of culture...heads who have dug the earlier two disks might find this one a slightly slower burn, the gestation period is longer with this expedition to the outer reaches of poetic indulgence, the reason being is probably the familiar vibe that the listener has unwittingly caught on with, the godz work in mysterious ways, the supposed ugly of the godz work is just the reverse of eternal beauty, it is what it is...
...the first cut here is whiffenpoof song that was a single back in '67, but the rest was laid down five years later with one, two and sometimes three cats from the old heydays of godzness featuring on the seven tracks...sort of like those supergroups solo LPs that came out from laurel canyon and the surrounding coke jungle...some cats kind of put this wax down as being pop music but that's total rock-snobism in a revisionist way...if it was pop music it would be from a far far distant galaxy, as there ain't no pop of this description round this neck of the woods, and that's a stone fact...there's a bit of off-kilter late velvets groove on a couple of numbers and some well twisted singer/songwriter vibes popping up with the name peter laughner/rocket from the tombs written all over them giving rise to the fact that the godz are the avant/rock combo who bridge the decades of 60's/70's underground scenes and by extension 'modernmusic' from the west...what cat could have seen that coming back in the day, or any day for that matter...the godz are the pinnacle of artistic thought and endevour...the cover of jumpin' jack flash has a great lowdown sleazy beer joint barband feel and the stew also features some garagey goodtime/psych swill...this disk is the missing link that channels the last 40 years of ruckus in a cats lobes and onto the center of the noggin...
...godz by name but not necessarily by nature, with only paul thornton remaining from the original set up and he contibutes four tunes, but with three tunes the main thrust is seemingly coming from some cat named leslie fradkin whose song writing prowess is deeply in the early 70's earth shoe hippy groove...cats who dig heavily with plenty of strange folk vibrations added to the original godz might need some strong sonablist medicine to get going with this biscuit as fradkins numbers though more mellow somehow attract the listners ear (this may be some kind of brain flipout, a slip in the mindsoup due to the fact it's godz connecting)...in all honesty this wasn't connected with the godz back in the rightious latter days of the ESP vinyl blare blowout when there's absolutely no cat on the radarscope, let alone in the failing headshops across planet hippy going think this was happening...originally put on the market in about '74 it's a mellowed out urban piece of rural mellow fellow rock with some obscure references to mott the hoople and the yardbirds here and there to keep the enquiring ear on the top front of retro LSD channelling as there's some nice references to weird days gone by...track 5 got a pretty absolute happening hook slung on the hearts and flowers aggro back in the hazey weeks of late day LA strip grooving...a nice drug rock atmosphere permeates the aura in places with plenty methadone induced poetic stand-still forward motion hare krishna sitar fuzz burn...lower east side star watching layabouts need go no further than track 7 to dig some sort of wish fulfillment with david peel rocking the joint with his usual singular rooftop shouting rabble raising holler...after a batch of narcotic enhanced earfuls the best way to handle this outpouring is to gather in the time barriers and standard geography placements of godzness and take it out to the west coast and bury it in sono bonos fur vest and watch for dispacement of life particles...in many ways the unsuspected finale of NYC counter cultural grooving, lost in the californian landscape of inertia, a fullsteam voyage into media induced oblivion waiting for lester bangs to resurrect the past atrocities of rock'n'roll into zen godzhead buddha galaxy straddling beauty...dont expect the primal tribal bleat of NYC godzment but get ready for a 1974 GET BACK bob dylan chess playing store front work out....
...the godz came into existance sometime around early '66 as these NYC cats met up through day jobs on the perifery of the music biz (record shop) and after hanging out they decided they'd get some kind of combo going since they'd variously had band/record experience on a small local level, only this group they thought should be slightly different from the usual beat/soul covers band that was mainly what the hick new york scene consisted of at the time, they would express the way they saw the world...they opted for a primal instinctive sound hardly based on pop at all, more ideas pulled from the air or deep within the collective mind...they scored a deal with the wonderfully out there jazz label ESP-Disk (jay dillon worked there) and proceeded to knock out the tunes for this first LP in one session...like some of the other ESP disks it was released in two differing covers and had the most appropriate title of any underground rock album ever-CONTACT HIGH...as soon as a cat puts this on the deck they are going to flip immediately, nothing sounded like this in 1966 (todays avant lo-fi is only this gear worked on with hindsight)...though often referred to as some kind of compatriots in sound with the fugs this is completely wrong and muddle headed chat from lazy journos who ain't really listened to either, the fugs being folky poets from an earlier age, magazine producing beatnix caught in the dying days of the folk revival let loose in basements of desire, the godz beamed in from deep within their own psyche, the souls of collective looning manifesting destiny...fire up the bong and get ready for all preconceptions to be laid waste, this was/is the real deal...THE GODZ ARE NOT A PUT ON...
...when the time for the second album came around the vibe had changed somewhat, though this is only relative and only more pronounced through the 20/20 vision hindsight gives,they were starting to come on like a real combo with commercial tunes lurking in amongst the chanting thrash and gunk, otherworldly commercial maybe but the mersh is there (radar eyes/permanent green light could make it big on some juke box in a far away galaxy such is their insidious bent)...they were scoring gigs at local greenwich village psychedelic tourist traps and they got busy with a light show, so things were looking up with their name getting around town and records being released in europe over the course of '67/8, though the nature of their work did limit the amount of appreciation they got outside the freaks, who numbered not a lot...there's still plenty of freeform tribal bashing, the avant garde is never too far from the surface, a perfect extension of the sounds coming from the first joint, but now it came with extra texture due to more recording time being allowed at ESP laboratories, time to formulate ideas but not work them to death and become stale, it's precisely the air of amateurism, the faint design of collapse that gives them their longevity, their ability to stretch out down the decades ensnaring the willing hipster in the web of wobbliness...
...'you know something, music's sure got better', so speak the godz, the urban tribal free form beatnix who kicked up the mighty ruckus of collapsation back in the mid sixties when minds were slowly but surely opening, getting in the wind with new ideas...occasionally the godz lock into a riff that grooves along in the background as their crazy intonations and evocations spread themselves over the tunes, imparting esoteric information from higher sources, enlightenment from the spheres, elucidation from the cosmic embroiderer of culture...heads who have dug the earlier two disks might find this one a slightly slower burn, the gestation period is longer with this expedition to the outer reaches of poetic indulgence, the reason being is probably the familiar vibe that the listener has unwittingly caught on with, the godz work in mysterious ways, the supposed ugly of the godz work is just the reverse of eternal beauty, it is what it is...
...the first cut here is whiffenpoof song that was a single back in '67, but the rest was laid down five years later with one, two and sometimes three cats from the old heydays of godzness featuring on the seven tracks...sort of like those supergroups solo LPs that came out from laurel canyon and the surrounding coke jungle...some cats kind of put this wax down as being pop music but that's total rock-snobism in a revisionist way...if it was pop music it would be from a far far distant galaxy, as there ain't no pop of this description round this neck of the woods, and that's a stone fact...there's a bit of off-kilter late velvets groove on a couple of numbers and some well twisted singer/songwriter vibes popping up with the name peter laughner/rocket from the tombs written all over them giving rise to the fact that the godz are the avant/rock combo who bridge the decades of 60's/70's underground scenes and by extension 'modernmusic' from the west...what cat could have seen that coming back in the day, or any day for that matter...the godz are the pinnacle of artistic thought and endevour...the cover of jumpin' jack flash has a great lowdown sleazy beer joint barband feel and the stew also features some garagey goodtime/psych swill...this disk is the missing link that channels the last 40 years of ruckus in a cats lobes and onto the center of the noggin...
...godz by name but not necessarily by nature, with only paul thornton remaining from the original set up and he contibutes four tunes, but with three tunes the main thrust is seemingly coming from some cat named leslie fradkin whose song writing prowess is deeply in the early 70's earth shoe hippy groove...cats who dig heavily with plenty of strange folk vibrations added to the original godz might need some strong sonablist medicine to get going with this biscuit as fradkins numbers though more mellow somehow attract the listners ear (this may be some kind of brain flipout, a slip in the mindsoup due to the fact it's godz connecting)...in all honesty this wasn't connected with the godz back in the rightious latter days of the ESP vinyl blare blowout when there's absolutely no cat on the radarscope, let alone in the failing headshops across planet hippy going think this was happening...originally put on the market in about '74 it's a mellowed out urban piece of rural mellow fellow rock with some obscure references to mott the hoople and the yardbirds here and there to keep the enquiring ear on the top front of retro LSD channelling as there's some nice references to weird days gone by...track 5 got a pretty absolute happening hook slung on the hearts and flowers aggro back in the hazey weeks of late day LA strip grooving...a nice drug rock atmosphere permeates the aura in places with plenty methadone induced poetic stand-still forward motion hare krishna sitar fuzz burn...lower east side star watching layabouts need go no further than track 7 to dig some sort of wish fulfillment with david peel rocking the joint with his usual singular rooftop shouting rabble raising holler...after a batch of narcotic enhanced earfuls the best way to handle this outpouring is to gather in the time barriers and standard geography placements of godzness and take it out to the west coast and bury it in sono bonos fur vest and watch for dispacement of life particles...in many ways the unsuspected finale of NYC counter cultural grooving, lost in the californian landscape of inertia, a fullsteam voyage into media induced oblivion waiting for lester bangs to resurrect the past atrocities of rock'n'roll into zen godzhead buddha galaxy straddling beauty...dont expect the primal tribal bleat of NYC godzment but get ready for a 1974 GET BACK bob dylan chess playing store front work out....
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