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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23 posts tagged blues rock
Ramases - Life Child
As usual I didn’t post these songs in the right order. I really thought I’d done something from Ramases’ Space Hymns before, but as I haven’t, here’s the opening track, Life Child. It has about 50 seconds of ambient flute stuff, but after that, it’s one of the best psychedelic guitar pieces ever recorded, and it has one of my favourite guitar solos.
Though Ramases died in 1978, a significant fan network has built up around his two albums. If you want to read about him and his career, there’s an extremely detailed fan site here run by Brian Currin.
13 Plays | Download
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
Shocking Blue - Love Machine
Shocking Blue was a Dutch psychedelic rock band that, once they scored the vocal talents of Mariska Veres in late 1968, made a huge impact on rock music. This record, At Home, was the Netherlands’ first to hit #1 in America. It’s serious rock heritage, containing the hit single Venus, destroyed by Bananarama and turned into a TV jingle, and the song Love Buzz, covered by Nirvana on their debut single. At this point in the band’s career their guitarist dabbled in sitar playing, but it’s his tasteful blues guitar work that’s made the biggest impact on me.
76 Plays | Download
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
Stray - All In Your Mind
Stray was hugely influential 70s psychedelic rock band that hailed from Britain. They get lumped in with guitar-focussed progressive rock bands like Captain Beyond and Wishbone Ash because some of their songs are similarly sprawling, but they just often wade through heavy blues riffs using as much distortion as possible like Toad or Leaf Hound. Iron Maiden fans might recognize this song, All In Your Mind, as the metal band did a cover of it on their Holy Smoke single, later included as a bonus track on No Prayer For The Dying’s reissue. This is the full on, 9 minute long meltdown version that kicked off Stray’s 1970 debut (Maiden covered the much shorter single version).
11 Plays | Download
Archie Whitewater - Country To The City
Honestly, I don’t know anything about Archie Whitewater other than that Common sampled one of the songs on this album. This isn’t that song either, so that’s not even a useful bit of information. Oh well; the music is beautiful. It straddles psychedelic rock and jazz by sporting a guitarist and a saxophone player that work in all sorts of interesting fills and solos. Enjoy.
20 Plays
Sugar Bear - Moccasin Mona
Next up on this list of Radioactive Records reissues is a band out of 70s Florida called Sugar Bear. They released just the one self-titled record in 1970. This song, Moccasin Mona, is ridiculously catchy. Me and my room-mate have been obnoxiously singing the chorus to each other for a few days now, and so it’s become out go-to car music. The record generally reminds me of other light psychedelic rock bands like The Collectors and Stained Glass (also reissued by Radioactive Records!) mixed with some Canned Heat. So basically they sound like all my favourite things.
20 Plays | Download
Zerfas - Stoney Wellitz
Zerfas was another American private press psychedelic band that put out this obscurity in 1973. As is usually the case with bands that have such a limited run, there’s not a lot of readily available information on them. The band is named after a pair of brothers in the band, and according to some notes on the album, they were big DIYers, making their own wine and their own synthesisers.
10 Plays | Download
