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.
Search
Site authors
Find us on...
Tag Results
33 posts tagged american
Smith - You Don't Love Me (Yes I Know)
Smith, the late-60s act featuring Gayle McCormick’s fantastic vocals, is another band whose second album I’ve only recently come across. Their debut album, A Group Called Smith, is one of my favourite psychedelic records, and this one, Minus-Plus, has already claimed a lot of my listening time. They still had this weird tendency to under-use McCormick. The guys aren’t bad singers exactly, but it just seems crazy not to sub her in on a verse occasionally.
6 Plays
Stained Glass - Piggy Back Ride and the Camel
Stained Glass started out as a Beatles cover band, and this song, Piggy Back Ride and the Camel, really drives that home with its kazoo tomfoolery.
18 Plays | Download
Stained Glass - Light Down Below
I’d been told that Stained Glass had released 2 albums, but I’d only ever come across Aurora, the follow-up record. Just before I went to Italy, I found a copy of their debut, Crazy Horse Road, and it’s most of what I listened to while away. It’s so good that I’m going to post a pair of songs off of it. This one’s called Light Down Below.
It turns out that the band put out a number of great singles, bundled onto a CD reissue of this album because none of them wound up on Stained Glass’ LPs.
16 Plays
Friendly Strangers - Bellflower
My room-mate and I have been devouring this album over the last few days. Friendly Strangers are basically what I think most indie bands ought to sound like. They’ve got a smattering of banjo, viola, and accordion on this record, set to a number of different styles. They’ve got a good sense of humour, as you’ll see in the lyrics and in the descriptions of the band that they’ve put onto their website:
Innocent bystanders have described Friendly Strangers’ music as “really pretty except for that one song” and “like that other band but not really at all.”
Pretentious folks have described Friendly Strangers songs as “modern Americana sewn to the corpse of a prominent early 20th century poet” or “a collection of spiteful hymns sprinkled with rosemary and carefully burned about the edges.”
52 Plays
Sleepy Sun - V.O.G.
Well the first Sleepy Sun record since Rachel Fannan’s departure is out, and it’s certainly a different sounding band. I think their acoustic numbers have suffered for lack of Fannan’s laid-back vocals, but the band’s guitar work is probably their best so far, opting for tight blues riffs as often as spaced-out psychedelic chords. Maybe more often.
32 Plays
Polyphony - Crimson Dagger
Polyphony’s Without Introduction is an album of pure progressive rock excess. This American group released just this one record in 1972, and it’s basically two 15-minute-long epics punctuated by pair of shorter ballads, everything being as densely written as is feasibly playable. Their songs are paced like Eloy’s and Van Der Graaf Generator’s mid-70s stuff, but the heavy guitar work sounds more like that in Birth Control. Also, this has to be one of the best prog rock record covers ever done.
0 Plays | Download
James Brown - Sho Is Funky Down Here
Well clearly after my last post I had to follow up with this psychedelic melt-down from James Brown.
30 Plays | Download
The Grodeck Whipperjenny - Sitting Here On A Tongue
The Grodeck Whipperjenny was an American psychedelic funk band. It was the band that backed James Brown on his 1971 album, Sho Is Funky Down Here. Just like that album, a heavily distorted guitarist and a keyboard maniac wade through hypnotic grooves. On this record, though, they threw some extra experimentation into some of their songs in the form of a string section. I’ve been listening to this album non-stop for the last week, and my only gripe with it is that it’s pretty short.
11 Plays
Cactus - Songs For Aries
I read too many news stories today, making myself way too stressed out and angry, so I escaped into an old favourite, Cactus’ One Way… Or Another. Apparently the band’s never made it onto this Tumblr before, which is weird.
Cactus had kind of a false start to their career. Originally, Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart were supposed to join the band with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, but Beck got into that car accident and Stewart bailed to basically start his solo career. The other two signed up Jim McCarty (guitar) and Rusty Day (vocals) and made some of the best psychedelic blues albums known to man.
When the band fell apart, Bogert and Appice joined up again with Beck to form their short-lived, eponymous group. Rusty Day was shot to death in the early 80s, so when Cactus reformed in 2006, they plugged their singer spot with Savoy Brown front-man, Jimmy Kunes.
6 Plays
Nova Local - Tobacco Road
Nova Local was a psychedelic pop band from North Carolina during the 60s. They won some airplay in that state and as a result managed to put out this album, Nova 1, through Decca in 1967. The record is mostly cover songs, and while I was intending to post one of their original numbers, which, while usually quite short, are tight psychedelic executions, the record’s 7 minute long rendition of Tobacco Road is what really sets them apart from other 60s bands of the same bouncy psychedelic breed.
If you’re a fan of other takes on Tobacco Road, you’re in for a surprise here; it’s part bubblegum pop, part organ meltdown, and part boy’s chorus.
10 Plays | Download
