Jotcamp is a pair of art students with some vague principles on media gluttony. We don’t want to just sit back and consume all the tasteful art we come across, so we’ve made this blog to compile and comment on that delicious media to keep our TV, music, and movies habit from becoming a one way conversation.
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21 posts tagged 1974
Stackridge - Rufus T. Firefly
Covers like this make me want to go back in time and see Italian Renaissance productions of Plautus, because I’m super nerdy. Extravaganza was the other album by Stackridge that Keith Gemmell played on. This album is super British, channelling the strange arrangements, thin distortion, and whimsical lyrics of progressive rock acts like Gentle Giant and Klaatu, but with the stronger pop sensibility found in Supertramp. This song, Benjamin’s Giant Onion, spirals out of control a bit at the end. Fair warning.
1 Plays | Download
Stackridge - The Last Plimsoll
After Audience broke up, their amazing saxophonist Keith Gemmell joined Stackridge, playing on the three albums they put out between 1974 and 1976, their best charting work. The British band played a kind of psychedelic rock that took a few queues from the Canturbury prog bands like Caravan, pairing classic song styles with a bit of wit and whimsy. This record, The Man In The Bowler Hat, was the band’s most successful, and it’s probably my favourite for the range it covers.
10 Plays
Primevil - Leavin'
I know; this record’s cover is the worst, but just try to ignore it because the music is worth it. Primevil were an American progressive rock act with a serious heavy side due to having two distortion loving guitarists. They sound a lot like early Captain Beyond and Lucifer’s Friend, so great hard rock riffing broken up with some acoustic passages to keep things interesting. They only managed to put out this one album, Smokin’ Bats At Campton’s, in 1974.
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Starfire - Many Moods Ago
Starfire, a wonderful American psychedelic group, put out their only record in 1974. Unfortunately they didn’t have much of a commercial backing and this album was originally released in a 200-or-so batch of privately pressed LPs. Luckily Radioactive Records put out a reissue of this incredibly rare album, but the more I read about that company, the less legit it seems to be…
10 Plays
McDonald & Sherby - Sharks Around Blood
I got super sick last week, and apparently that sucked the wind out of my blogging sails. The good news is I found a list of albums put out by a record company called Radioactive Records, which reissued a bunch of my all-time favourites, so it’s going to be fun to look through their catalogue.
First up from the company is a psychedelic rock duo called McDonald & Sherby and their 1969 1974 record, Catharsis. I’m pretty sure if I grew up during that time period, I would look exactly like the guy on the left. That’s kind of a scary thought, but this record is full of some great, bluesy psychedelia.
10 Plays | Download
Buffalo - Stay With Me
Buffalo’s third record suffered from album art equally as bad as its second’s dick-volcano painting. Having the hard rock talent doesn’t bring with it much business sense. It’s not like it’s all that gory or shocking, just kind of half-assed looking.
Apparently these Australians just didn’t have the heart for a shock rock career, and after this album the band splintered, losing guitarist John Baxter and pursuing a more mainstream sound. But hey, putting out three truly great fuzzed out rock records is more than a lot of 70s bands achieved.
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Yonin Bayashi - Omatsuri
A lot of people on the internet like to compare Yonin Bayashi to Pink Floyd, but those people are stupid and seem to think that Pink Floyd invented guitar chords and delay effects. This 70s prog rock band from Japan was way better than Pink Floyd. Okay, I’m troll-baiting, but I think that Yonin Bayashi has a uniquely majestic sound, and saying it (or any other non-European/American band) sounds like its country’s version of Pink Floyd or Rush robs it of making a fresh impression.
I guess saying that puts the comparison out there anyway and undermines my point. It’s hard to win a moral victory against the internet on the internet.
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Fruupp - Wise As Wisdom
Thought I’d try to get a woman wizard/witch in on this week’s theme, but I couldn’t dig anything out of my collection that was a fantastic fit. But this lady’s ink bottle floats in the air and is huge, so that’s kind of magical, right?
Fruupp was a great North Irish progressive rock act during the 70s. Their meandering take on the Canterbury sound placed them in the same circles of fame as Caravan and Camel, but they didn’t manage to burst through with equal financial success. They called it quits after putting out 4 records, each fondly remembered by collectors. This is off of their third album, Seven Secrets.
1 Plays | Download
Blue Goose - Struttin' Stuff
Blue Goose was an amazing one-record band from 70s England. They played heavy, psychedelic blues that tread the line somewhere between Toad and George Thorogood. Unfortunately, for some reason one of their guitarists, Allen Callen, didn’t own any amps, and when their lead guitarist, Eddie Clarke, said Callen couldn’t keep on sharing, the rest of the band kicked Clarke out. Still without amps and with their record deadline coming up, the band asked him to rejoin but he’d decided to move on to better things (like Motörhead, eventually).
The band managed to put the album together anyway, leaving Clarke only a single credit on an instrumental track. Then, they apparently broke up since Clarke, who formed a band called Continuous Performance before Motörhead, poached Blue Goose’s keyboard player.
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Socrates Drank The Conium - Bad Conditions
There are little shadow hands waving out to you from beyond the white archway.
Socrates Drank the Conium was an Greek psychedelic/progressive rock band that, incredibly, was active during the 70s. It’s worth noting that it’s quite hard to find recordings of 70s Greek rock. The country’s ‘67-‘74 military junta laid the censorship on thickly, so either the music wasn’t being recorded or the records weren’t being released; I don’t really know the details, but it all resulted in Greek rock getting a little buried over the years. Or at least I haven’t been able to find all that much of it.
3 Plays
