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Friday Full-Length: Eden’s Children, Eden’s Children

Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 4th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

Eden’s Children, Eden’s Children (1968)

One often hears about the fast pace of modern existence. Not inappropriately. Shit moves quick these days. Words come and go out of our lexicon before they’re defined thanks to rising and falling internet usage. Whatever happened to the “Dat Boi” meme? And so on. The thing is, if you think that’s anything new, you’re out of your mind. To wit, take a listen to the 1968 self-titled debut from heavy hippies Eden’s Children above and dig the context in which the album arrived.

It was 1968. Western culture, already 50 years post-collapsing, was re-collapsing. War, assassinations, popular uprising, and the closest thing to a cultural shift America has ever known gives even historical hindsight a sense of the tumult that must’ve been felt, and yet ABC Records was looking for something new. The prior year’s West Coast boom — Summer of Love and all that — was over, and it was time for the next thing. And while the “Bosstown Sound” out of New England wouldn’t produce another Janis Joplin, another Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix or Blue Cheer, it did bring an interesting breadth of artists in proto-heavy rock and psychedelic groove and folk. The Boston trio Eden’s Children, comprised of guitarist/vocalist Richard “Sham” Schamach, bassist Larry Kiley and drummer Jimmy Sturman, were one such act. Not a full year removed from the groundbreaking on a generation’s finest musical movement, it was old hat. The good old days, right?

Eden’s Children would release two LPs in the same year — this self-titled and the follow-up, Sure Looks Real — and among the standout aspects that the nine tracks of the 35-minute album boasts is something I think you can still hear New England bands bring to a heavy rock sound to this day. Of course, it’s easier to read into the material nearly half a century after the fact, but to listen to tracks like opener “Knocked Out” or the later “Stone Fox” and delightfully fuzzed “My Bad Habit,” Eden’s Children are definitely working in a post-Blue Cheer/Hendrix model, but they bring a tension and aggressive undertone to their approach that I think has always been central to the divide between East Coast and West Coast bands and very much remains so. Think about the differences between New York punk and California punk, or the current West Coast heavy psych boom and the Eastern Seaboard’s digging into increasingly vicious sludge. Obviously it’s a formative scale at work, but I think Eden’s Children‘s self-titled shows this same core difference happening even as the very notion of sound as something that could be “heavy” was beginning to take shape.

Which brings me back to my original point — it happened fast. The Bosstown Sound was a marketing scheme more than it was a grassroots musical movement, but Eden’s Children weren’t without something to offer to the mix of late-’60s psychedelia and nascent heft. Their delivery was tight, the songs on this record are memorable, and even almost 50 years later, one can hear how someone might’ve thought they’d be that always-sought next thing.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

Demolished.

Let’s go through next week’s notes. Subject to change:

Mon: Full stream/review for The Freeks’ new one; Wight tour news; Soldati video, etc.
Tue: Full stream/review of the new Iron Tongue; Boss Keloid video; big announcement from Seedy Jeezus, etc.
Wed: Year of the Cobra review, Monsternaut tour news, etc.
Thu: Full stream/review of the new Geezer.
Fri: Review of the new Akris.

More stuff will come up, but that’s how we’re beginning. There’s more news in there already than I’ve listed, but that seems like plenty to start with. I expect more fest news next week as well. Keep an eye out for that.

Woof. Feeling pretty dead to the world at this point. I just want to go home and play Final Fantasy V and not talk to anybody and hydrate and recover. I’ve had the same cold and had the pleasure of sharing it with The Patient Mrs. for the better part of the last three weeks. When I lie down I can feel the mucus shift in my chest and I can’t breathe. It’s dark in the morning when I go to work and dark at night on my way home. Up late the last couple nights with the sick dog. I need more sleep than there are hours in the day. I don’t say people’s names when I talk to them. Next Tuesday is the election.

Yeah. “Demolished” said it. That’s where I’m at.

To bed tomorrow and Sunday? Not a chance. Maybe sometime in January. Pretty much everything till then is booked. Blamo.

Have a great and safe weekend. Be awesome and visit the Forum and Radio stream.

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