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Five Heavy ’70s Records I Basically Stumbled on Doing Nothing

Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 30th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

I rag on the future in which we live a lot, and rightly so. We have neither jetpacks nor moon colonies nor the ability to breathe underwater for extended periods of time. We marvel at being able to look at boobs on cellphones like it’s the pinnacle of human achievement (because, sadly, it is) while elsewhere people actually die from diseases considered eradicated. We’re spoiled as shit, duped into giving all of our personal information to corporate overlords time and again, and even in the areas where we’ve managed some progression over, say, the last 500 years, it’s been pitifully slow.

These things occur to me and then I go dick around on YouTube for like 10 minutes and find five awesome and varied records from the period between 1969 and 1972 that I’d never heard before and once more I’m all, “Oooh the future is wonderful now take my money.” What can I say? Our greatest scientific and creative minds have been employed in neutralizing any and all resistance, and nothing’s gonna do that like classic riffage.

Indulge with me:

The Stone Circus, The Stone Circus (1969)

Yeah, yeah, you can play it technical and say this isn’t a heavy ’70s record because it came out before 1970 if you want, but we all know the phrase “heavy ’70s” covers ’68-’74, so get bent. And anyway, once the mouth-fart guitar fuzz on “Mr. Grey” kicks in, any argument will cease. Canadian group, recorded in New York.

 

Bulbous Creation, You Won’t Remember Dying (1970)

Hell yes. Check out the Sabbathery of “Satan.” So rare apparently that it doesn’t exist or something like that, Bulbous Creation‘s You Won’t Remember Dying seems like it’s ripe for the Repertoire Records treatment, or maybe even one of those Rise Above Relics reissues. So long as they don’t change the art, that’s cool.

 

Fresh Blueberry Pancake, Heavy (1970)

Satisfying in that same way as earliest Pentagram, don’t let the reissue cartoon art fool you, the 1970 private press Heavy by Fresh Blueberry Pancake more than lives up to its name. Dig the jam in “Stranded” that closes out and wake up three hours later from a trance shocked to find the record ended two and a half hours earlier. A buzz supreme.

 

Orang-Utan, Orang-Utan (1971)

Reminds a little of Cactus when they’d lock into a proto-sludgy groove or some of what Cream hinted at tonally and Leaf Hound made swagger so well, but even in the quiet stretches the bass satisfies awesomely and there’s a bluesy vibe that persists all the way to the back and the use of organ, which never hurts with this kind of thing. The riff in “Chocolate Piano” alone makes it.

 

Thirsty Moon, Thirsty Moon (1972)

Listening to original-era krautrock is like getting caught in quicksand. You could spend the rest of your life just trying to get through it all, and you never will. Still, when you get swept up in the progressive, space-rocking pulse of something like Thirsty Moon‘s Thirsty Moon, there’s little to do about it other than go along for the ride, which of course is awesome.

Consider these excursions into the obscurities of the past the perks of our dim future. If you checked out any of the above, I hope you enjoyed.

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