Wednesday 30 May 2012

The 20kDozen 500: #196 - Randy California, "Kapt. Kopter & The (Fabulous) Twirly Birds"

I was cracking on to myself via this blog the other day about the difference between rock and pop and techno and how rock was built on the switch between tension and release. So whither and whence acid rock?

This is some deep fried music from 1972 - the year of my birth, Cocfans - before things got rilly rilly shit, I suppose. Randy was a buddy of Hendrix's back in the day, the legend runs; he certainly has busy fingers. But the sun is in these strings. Where I was talking about the sunshine of pop music and Apollo beaming down, in that place Randy also wanders. Acid rock has the sunshine in there, the tension doesn't build: it's too much of a buzz. Instead of release there's a sweet tangy bleed.


There's a disappointingly straight cover of The Beatles' "Day Tripper". And I was hoping they might have a bit more fun with "Mother and Child Reunion" as well. "Rain" draws itself closer to the future Meat Puppets - and i love them Meat Puppets. Scrambling bass and guitar lines with a early twentieth century jazz feel before it rolls around on more predictable bluesy business, psychedelic with backwards rain whipping through the empty air. The strut is heavy with good juju on "Rainbow" as he calls out for "protection" and sounds to have amassed a squadron of Twirly Birds to watch his back and play some funky, multi-fingered music while they're at it. And they are at it.


The cover of "Walkin' The Dog" has a weirdly cloudy synth noise wandering out between the vocals and the muted cowbell-inflected band boogeying its woogie. I'm reaching the inner limits of my already very ingrown vocabulary to describe all this. "Rebel" has that SST feel again - punks in the desert, taking music to listen to drugs to. I likes it.

Rating: Tangy Bleed out of Desert Punks

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