bobby brown / bob smith / david stoughton

...righteous cosmic hippy shenanigans from bobby brown, the first of three long play joints he managed to release in the early seventies on his own label...it's kind of like a down market tim buckley, during the latters starsailing days (much less jazzy though) with an array of home made instruments and a six octave voice...carl wilson from the beach boys was heard to utter 'incredible but it wont sell' when he first came within earshot of the disk and he was right on both counts...side two is played as is, live, no overdubs, just bobby reaching out to the beyond with feet pumping the pedals and fingers all over the keyboards and shaking shakers plus anything else he can grasp...this is very much in the loner stoner vibe with bobby rambling in the sleeve notes about the religious knowledgeand understanding of future physics that at the time of writing only he had access to (as we see we're dealing with a HIGHer consciousness's unbridled ego, this is tempered somewhat by the note that he's available for parties, no doubt on other planets)...may take a few spins to get the juice out of this but one thing is certain, he's real, he had belief in himself, whether he's a rich-kid hippy or not is hard to make out (possibly is), but he does have love for the human race and round about this part of kooksville thats a fine thing...possibly one of a few select waxings that can truly be called groovy (in a non-commercial or trite way), this has good vibes pouring off, a cats just got to get receptive and the magic cloud will appear to drift away on...a definite mystical other vibe happening, a oneness with himself in a post beatnik, not new age way, this is too wobbly for new age, much more in a 'vision-from-the gone-world' style, the idea that jack kerouac might agree with this statement is open to debate, probably depended on how much beer kerouac had imbibed, but this don't deminish the fact that bobby has intimate understanding of the gone world, a tripped out cat from the furthest reaches of the ENDZONE who has the answer, at least one answer anyhow...

...operating in the same california sun baked weirdness as merrill fankhauser and bobby brown this small label double wax offering from 1970 will please cats who dig their wig lifters played by capable musos as opposed to degenerate layabouts...inflections of jazzy singer/songwriter vibes intermixed with plenty acid guitar choogle and a semi underground basement style sound help push this in the right direction and away from the bland laid back warble and strum that was creeping into west coast rock at a far too alarming rate...not exactly a swirly mind soup bubbler as some unscrupulous bread head scum try to make out to keep the collector price up, but its well cool and useful for those green lazy days when a complex but mellow flowing groove is called for...

...very interesting LP from david stoughton, released in 1968 on the then worthwhile elektra label, a sort of folkrock/avant doodle blowout...some strains of tim buckley roundabout 'hello goodbye' in the arrangements with wind instruments painting the back drop giving this a bit of musicianship as opposed to some hippy airy-fairyness that often happens with late six-oh joints in this category...there's a theatricality to some of this but ain't no way this got anything to do with the theatre (that would be enough to turn any cat off, in fact it ain't really folk rock either, that's just a lazy handle for the moment), sound collages are happening on about half the tracks which puts this into that rarefied strata, not easily catagorised and all the better for it...heads that dig the adventurous wax, but not the clever-clever overbearing type that really says nothing will get a buzz here, a friendly groove that's welcome and gives pleasure on repeated spins...