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The Holy Modal Rounders-LIVE IN 1965 CD (ESP-Disk')

Remember way back in an old issue of SPIN when Byron Coley actually mentioned my name and Robert Christgau's in the same stinkin' breath with regards to our undying fanditude for the Rounders/Hurley/Clamtones HAVE MOICY album? It didn't exactly bug me back then, but time has proven that the older I get, the thinner the skin becomes! Yeeesh!!! Naturally none of this has anything to do with the review at hand but hey, I thought what better way to open up this Rounders writeup than to dredge up this particularly meaningless factoid from the distant (twenny years) past!

Haven't been payin' much attention to the early, folky acoustic original Rounders duo as of late but ESP sure has, which is probably why they issued this neat live album recorded in Detroit '65 showing the band still in their early-sixties folk mode but more'n anxious to slide right into the late-sixties psycho-folkrock that gave us such stellars as INDIAN WAR WHOOP and THE MORAY EELS EAT THE HMR's. Second elpee tracks mingle with future nutcase hits and if anything the team of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber are just beggin' for some electric instruments and drums so's they can jump on the same rock & roll bandwagon a lotta their folkie contemps were. Of course they were probably a good two years away from that, but judging from Stampfel's Beatle bangs he was getting ready to make the big jump, perhaps warming up with the aforementioned Moray Eels not forgetting the All Night Workers of "Why Don't You Smile" fame.

Contains the future hits "Indian War Whoop" and "My Mind Capsized" (later to be immortalized on MORAY EELS...) in early yet psychedelic even at this stage versions as well as future Unholy Modal Rounder numbuh "Monday Morning" sounding as it probably did during Stampfel and co.'s stay at CBGB back in Spring '75. The liner booklet notes, although written with a Lower East Side hippoid mindset that kinda seemed dated at birth, say a load more about these sixties survivors than you ever could! At least now I know what "Black Eyed Susan" is really about! Yum!!!